Health & Fitness

Research shows that periodontitis, severe gum disease, is linked to higher blood pressure in otherwise healthy individuals. This study of 500 adults with and without gum disease found that approximately 50% of adults could have undetected hypertension. Promotion of good oral health could help reduce gum disease and the risk of high blood pressure and its complications.

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Scientists have highlighted the key role of a protein called paxillin, which enables cells to perceive their environment and anchor at the right place with the help of cellular 'crampons'. Indeed, without functional paxillin, the cell is unable to attach properly and slips continuously. These results shed new light on how cells adhere or migrate, mechanisms essential to the good functioning of our organs, but also involved in the development of metastatic tumors.

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Sustained low-intensity exercise does not completely counteract the effects of weightlessness on the heart muscle, which will atrophy over time in a gravity-free environment. Short bursts of repeated high-intensity activity during shorter space missions may be more successful in keeping the heart healthy.

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It typically takes a lot longer for truth to become public knowledge than the finely orchestrated propaganda we are all exposed to on a daily basis, but eventually, truth tends to rise to the surface.

This appears to be the case with the origin of SARS-CoV-2 as well, as we’re now starting to see more mainstream media reporting what alternative media have been saying for months, which is that the most likely origin of the virus is a laboratory.

I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in my February 4, 2020, article, “Novel Coronavirus — The Latest Pandemic Scare.” Currently, the mainstream narrative is that while it may indeed have been a lab creation after all, it’s certainly not part of a bioweapons project.

Well, at least that brings us halfway, and this is good news. Personally, I wouldn’t dismiss the bioweapon’s angle just yet, though. In the end, we may well find that this pandemic was the result of a bioweapon program after all, which is precisely why I believe we need to permanently ban gain-of-function research. The risks to public health are simply too great.

As noted by investigative journalist Alison Young in a recent USA Today op-ed, in which she details a number of hair-raising near-misses involving extremely lethal pathogens that could have led to unmitigated disaster were it not for sheer luck:¹

“The risk that a laboratory-released virus — carried into the community by a worker who didn’t know they were infected or through the leak of infectious waste — could cause a deadly outbreak has been a growing concern for many years.

In America, scientists and members of Congress … and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office have expressed concerns for years. In reports and hearings, they’ve worried that the proliferation of laboratories working with high-risk pathogens is increasing the aggregate threat of a deliberate or accidental lab release causing a catastrophic outbreak …

If the COVID-19 pandemic were found to have been caused by a lab accident, it would have far-reaching implications for the fragmented and secretive oversight of biological research in the United States and worldwide that currently relies heavily on the scientific community to police itself.”

US State Department Suspects Lab Leak

In a March 21, 2021, interview with Sky News Australia² (video above), David Asher, former lead investigator for the U.S. State Department’s task force that looked into the origins of COVID-19, said the data they collected “made us feel the Wuhan Institute was highly probably the source of the COVID pandemic.”

According to Asher, three workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) who worked with the RatG13 coronavirus — the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 identified to date — appear to have been the first cluster of cases of COVID-19. They fell ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 as early as October 2019. At least one of the workers required hospitalization.

He also points out there is evidence in the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 suggesting it’s been synthetically altered. It has the backbone of a bat coronavirus, combined with a pangolin receptor and “some sort of humanized mice transceptor.” “These things don’t naturally make sense,” Asher says, adding that experts around the world agree that the odds of this configuration occurring naturally is “very low.”

Another troubling indicator that something was amiss at the WIV was the Chinese government’s taking down of a WIV database in September 2019. According to the Chinese, this was done because of “thousands of hacking attempts.”

However, Asher points out many other databases were taken offline around the same time as well.³ The Chinese also tried to remove data posted in a European database containing viral sequencing from patients exhibiting COVID-19-related symptoms.

SARS-CoV-2, a Suspected Bioweapon Vector

Interestingly, the sequences posted in the European database included adenovirus, which is a vaccine vector. This, Asher says, could indicate that SARS-CoV-2 is part of a vaccine program.

Now, it doesn’t make sense to create a vaccine for just any virus that they happen to be working on. It is, however, consistent with a biological weapons program. Meaning, first a biological weapon is created, and then an antidote, such as a vaccine, is developed to defend your own population and your allies.

In an earlier article⁴ by The Sun, Asher is quoted saying the WIV “was operating a secret, classified program,” and that “In my view … it was a biological weapons program.” He stops short of accusing China of intentional release, however, which also would not make sense from a bioweapon point of view. Instead, he said he believes is was a weapon vector that, during development, “somehow leaked.”⁵

This falls in line with a March 27, 2020, assessment report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, which stated that SARS-CoV-2 was likely an accidental release from an infectious diseases laboratory. According to Newsweek,⁶ “The classified report, titled ‘China: Origins of COVID-19 Outbreak Remain Unknown,’ ruled out that the disease was genetically engineered or released intentionally as a biological weapon.”

In a March 8, 2021, Politico article,⁷ columnist Josh Rogin also pointed out that “just months into the pandemic, a large swath of the government already believed the virus had escaped from the WIV lab, rather than having leaped from an animal to a human …”

Hallmarks of Guilt

Asher also told Sky News⁸ he’s never seen a more systematic cover-up, and The Sun⁹ quotes him as saying that “Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this.”

Regardless of how the virus came about, Asher is unequivocal about China’s behavior resulting in a global pandemic, as they delayed border closings and even claimed the virus didn’t appear to spread from human to human, even though there were clear indications that it did. Indeed, people were secretly complaining about China’s lack of transparency from the earliest days of the pandemic. As reported by RTE:¹⁰

“China insists that it was transparent during the early outbreak, delivering ‘timely’ information to the WHO. Indeed, the WHO publicly praised China for its openness and cooperation. Yet behind the scenes, the Irishman leading the emergency response complained they weren't getting the information or access they needed.

In leaked recordings obtained by Prime Time, Dr. Michael Ryan is heard comparing it to China's cover-up during the SARS outbreak in 2003. ‘This is exactly the same scenario, endlessly trying to get updates from China about what was going on in Guangdong and then, bang,’ he said.

‘The WHO barely got out of that one with its neck intact given the issues that arose around transparency in southern China … We do need to shift gears here.

‘There's been no evidence of human-to-human transmission' is not good enough,’ Dr. Ryan is heard saying in the recordings … ‘We need to see the data, we need to be able to determine for ourselves the geographic distribution, the timeline, the epicurve and all of that,’ he said.”

Chinese Researchers Sought to Distance China From the Virus

In a March 22, 2021, article,¹¹ The Sun also reported that emails from Dr. Shi Zhengli at WIV, obtained by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) via freedom of information act requests, “shows how Chinese scientists fought to shift blame” for the pandemic away from China and Wuhan.

To distance themselves from the virus, they initially tried to get it renamed, as SARS-CoV-2 links it to the Chinese SARS outbreak of 2003. Shi suggested the virus be called TARS-CoV or HARS-CoV, to clearly differentiate it from the Chinese SARS outbreak.

They also feared the virus might become known as the “Wuhan coronavirus” or “Wuhan pneumonia.” The scientists’ effort to change the scientific name “shows their conscription into political processes,” Gary Ruskin, executive director of USRTK said, adding that “The power to name is the power to define.”

Congress Demands Information From the NIH

Other good news includes a March 18, 2021, letter¹² from the U.S. Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce to the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, requesting “information, assistance and needed-leadership” from the agency “to advance an independent scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In the letter, they quote Stanford professor David Relman, who in a November 2020 commentary in the journal PNAS stated that:

“A more complete understanding of the origins of COVID-19 clearly serves the interests of every person in every country on this planet. It will limit further recriminations and diminish the likelihood of conflict; it will lead to more effective responses to this pandemic, as well as efforts to anticipate and prevent the next one.

It will also advance our discussions about risky science. And it will do something else: Delineating COVID-19’s origin story will help elucidate the nature of our very precarious coexistence within the biosphere.”

The Committee also stresses that while the WHO attempted to investigate the origins of the virus and had vowed to be guided by science and not exclude any hypothesis, they failed to live up to this promise, as China “did not provide complete access or independence” for the team.

Without conducting a thorough investigation, but rather relying on information provided by the Chinese, the team roundly dismissed the lab-origin theory and announced it would no longer be part of their investigation.

Within days, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus walked back the team’s outright dismissal saying “I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study.”¹³ Perhaps he realized the WHO was about to make a public relations mistake so severe it would never recover.

China Cites ‘Privacy Laws’ to Avoid Crucial Data Sharing

In response to questions as to why China refused to share original patient data with the WHO’s investigative team, the Chinese head of the WHO joint team claims such data cannot be copied and shared due to patient privacy and data protection laws.¹⁴

As noted by OneShared.World founder Jamie Metzl in a Tweet,¹⁵ this sounds like a dubious justification considering the Chinese government is “forcibly extracting genetic samples from Uighurs [and] Tibetans,” a practice reported by The New York Times in June 2020.¹⁶ Besides, Metzl notes, “If anonymized data can be shared safely in democracies, it can be shared safely everywhere.”

WHO Investigation Was Tainted From the Start

Lastly, while not discussed in the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce’s letter, the WHO’s investigative team was also severely biased from the start, thanks to the inclusion of Peter Daszak, Ph.D., president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on pandemic prevention that worked closely with bat coronavirus researchers at the WIV, including Shi.

Daszak was also found to have played a central role in the early plot to obscure the lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 by crafting a scientific statement condemning such inquiries as “conspiracy theory.”^17,18 Mainstream media have been referring to and relying on this manufactured “consensus” statement ever since to “debunk” counternarratives.

Was US-Funded Research Used in Chinese Bioweapons Program?

The Committee on Energy and Commerce does raise the issue of the U.S. having potentially funded the research that resulted in SARS-CoV-2, and that the Chinese military may have been involved as well. According to the letter,¹⁹ the U.S. government has “determined that the WIV has collaborated on projects with China’s military,” and “engaged in classified research … on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

Disturbingly, since the NIH has funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the WIV through grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, this could mean the U.S. actually funded research that ended up being used in a Chinese military bioweapons program.

“Accordingly, it is imperative to determine not only where SARS-CoV-2 originated, but also how and if NIH’s funding and research to projects at the WIV could have contributed to SARS CoV-2,” the letter states.²⁰

The letter includes a long list of information requests, including:

• All information the NIH has about laboratory accidents at the WIV since January 2015.
• Any communication between NIH staff, grantees, subgrantees, contractors and subcontractors with the China-based NIH, the Chinese National Science Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese CDC, regarding events at the WIV between August 2019 and the present.
• Whether the WIV invited researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston (UTMBG), as indicated in an April 2018 State Department cable, whether any UTMBG researchers ended up conducting research there, and any documents relating to that research.
• All correspondence between the NIH and EcoHealth Alliance since January 1, 2020, related to funding involving the WIV.
• The sources for its April 2020 communication with EcoHealth Alliance, in which the NIH stated it had “received reports” that the WIV “has been conducting research … that pose serious biosafety concerns.”

Scientists Also Call for Independent Investigation

Two dozen scientists and policy experts have also signed an open letter²¹ calling for an independent investigation into the virus’ origin,²² listing a number of flaws in the joint WHO-China inquiry, including the universal absence of evidence demonstrating a wholly natural origin of SARS-CoV-2. If the virus was truly natural, surely, we’d have some evidence of its evolution at this point, yet we have nothing.

In addition to the shortcomings of the WHO’s investigative commission, the letter also details what a full and independent investigation “should look like,” starting with the creation of a multidisciplinary team, whose members have “no unresolved conflicts of interest and no full or partial control by any specific agenda or country.”

They also recommend “considering all possible scenarios for each pathway,” and then following standard forensic approaches, which include securing full access to all relevant sites, records, logs, databases and samples.

Gain-of-Function Research Must Be Banned

I firmly believe we need to ban gain-of-function research across the world. As noted by Marc Lipsitch in his 2018 review, “Why Do Exceptionally Dangerous Gain-of-Function Experiments in Influenza?”:²³

“This is a question of intense debate … Experiments to create potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) are nearly unique in that they present biosafety risks that extend well beyond the experimenter or laboratory performing them; an accidental release could, as the name suggests, lead to global spread of a virulent virus, a biosafety incident on a scale never before seen …

While there are indisputably certain questions that can be answered only by gain-of-function experiments in highly pathogenic strains, these questions are narrow and unlikely to meaningfully advance public health goals such as vaccine production and pandemic prediction.

Alternative approaches to experimental influenza virology and characterization of existing strains are in general completely safe, higher throughput, more generalizable, and less costly than creation of PPP in the laboratory and can thereby better inform public health. Indeed, virtually every finding of recent PPP experiments that has been cited for its public health value was predated by similar findings using safe methodologies.”

While the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains to be conclusively proven, a paper²⁴ published in Nature in 2015 discussed how a “lab-made coronavirus related to SARS” capable of infecting human cells had stirred up debate as to whether or not this kind of research is worth the risks:

“Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that ‘grows remarkably well’ in human cells. ‘If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,’ he says.”

With 20/20 hindsight, we now have a much clearer idea of what the release of such a virus can do. We may chalk it up to luck that SARS-CoV-2 turned out to be orders of magnitude less lethal than initially suspected, although government containment measures have turned out to be devastating and deadly as well. If this kind of research is allowed to continue, the next time there’s a leak, we may not be nearly as lucky.

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Traditionally, fermented foods are a simple strategy to affect and optimize the health of your gut. Fermented foods are teeming with beneficial microbes that are sadly lacking in many Americans’ diets. Nearly every culture has a recipe for fermented food that has been passed down through the generations.

Kimchi has a long tradition in Korea where it's served as a side dish with most meals.¹ Cabbage and radish are the two most popular vegetables used in the preparation of kimchi, but some family recipes also use cucumber, onion and carrot as the primary vegetable.

The flavor and microflora of kimchi are impacted by additional ingredients such as garlic, salt and fermented fish sauce. Most Korean families have their own recipes, which are closely guarded secrets.² Yet, the nature of the process of fermenting means that no two batches ever taste exactly the same. In addition to the ingredients, the temperature and length of fermentation contribute to the flavor of the finished product.

Originally, fermenting cabbage and other common vegetables to make kimchi was a way of preserving fresh vegetables for the winter months.³ Although it is available commercially, you can easily experiment at home with your own vegetables to develop a flavor and nutritional profile you enjoy.

While the flavor will vary depending upon the ingredients you use, most kimchi is sour and spicy. If you use garlic during fermentation, the flavor and taste of the vegetable will intensify.

As it has become more popular, it can be found in the refrigerated section of many grocery stores or purchased at Asian markets and sushi bars. Because it's made with vegetables and fermented it contains an ample amount of fiber and is rich in microbes that help feed a healthy gut.

Importance of Probiotic Foods to Your Health

Foods rich in beneficial bacteria act as probiotics. Using a probiotic supplement or eating fermented foods has become increasingly popular as evidence mounts that probiotics have a beneficial effect on the bacterial communities residing in your gut.⁴

The most common bacteria found in probiotics are from the lactobacillus and bifidobacterium groups.⁵ Information from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey showed approximately 4 million adults in the U.S. had used probiotics or prebiotics in the 30 days leading up to the survey.⁶

Recent information published in 2019⁷ also recorded approximately 3.9 million people regularly take probiotic supplements with the expectation that they will help improve digestion and immune function, prevent heart disease and improve mental health.

Food manufacturers have recognized the benefits of eating probiotic foods and have incorporated this in their advertising, especially for fermented dairy foods like yogurt. However, store-bought yogurt brands are also high in sugar, which feeds harmful bacteria in the gut. In this case, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages of consuming probiotics from store-bought yogurt.

The production of kimchi is accomplished by fermenting vegetables with lactic acid bacteria (LAB), the same bacteria used in fermenting yogurt.⁸ This group of bacteria is one of the most significant groups of probiotics, demonstrating a high survival rate in test conditions and resistance to low pH indicating reasonable tolerance to bile.⁹

Probiotics Benefit Leaky Gut and Inflammation

Although some bacteria can cause disease, there are nearly 100 trillion of them living in your gut, which are collectively called the gut microbiota.¹⁰ What exists in your gut is a balance of harmful and beneficial bacteria that contribute to your body’s control of the inflammatory response.¹¹

When the bacteria in your gut are out of balance it increases the permeability of the membrane lining your intestinal wall. This is referred to as leaky gut. The tiny gaps allow undigested food, bacteria and metabolic waste to enter your bloodstream, which sets up an inflammatory response in your body.

This inflammation also confuses the immune system and increases the risk for an autoimmune attack.¹² Leaky gut syndrome has been associated with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. However, even healthy people can have varying degrees of intestinal permeability that can lead to a variety of health symptoms.

Kimchi plays two roles in protecting your gut health. In the first place, it is a rich source of probiotics helping to reseed your gut microbiota with healthy, beneficial bacteria. Kimchi is also high in insoluble fiber, which is the preferred source of nutrition for beneficial microbes.

Research from the University of California¹³ has shown the microbial balance in the gut microbiota is driven in part by the intestinal tract’s ability to limit resources to harmful microbes when beneficial microbes are given adequate nutrition. In addition to helping to close intestinal permeability, beneficial bacteria produce short-chain fatty acids as a byproduct of metabolism.¹⁴

These fatty acids signal the cells in the large bowel to limit the amount of oxygen within the large intestines. Beneficial bacteria are anaerobic and don't survive well in an environment high in oxygen. This is another pathway in which the microbiota and your intestinal cells collaborate to promote a cycle that maintains gut health.

The signaling pathway can malfunction when beneficial bacteria are not provided adequate nutrition. If you eat a diet high in sugar and carbohydrates, it feeds the harmful bacteria. This both increases the oxygen level and intestinal permeability and makes your body more susceptible to aerobic enteric pathogens, such as E. coli and salmonella.

Animal studies have also indicated that probiotics can help reduce inflammation and improved the physical functioning of the intestinal tract in older mice.¹⁵ The researchers found a probiotic cocktail “could ameliorate age-related leaky gut and inflammation, hence opening up novel avenues to explore and exploit the clinical utilities of such therapeutic regimens.”¹⁶

Your Gut Health Impacts Disease Risk

Protecting your gut health can also reduce your disease risk. Scientific evidence has demonstrated that many conditions and diseases, such as learning disabilities, diabetes, obesity and Parkinson's disease, are influenced by your gut microbiome. One review published in 2020 goes so far as to say that most inflammatory diseases begin in the gut.¹⁷

Dr. Alessio Fasano,¹⁸ a pediatric gastroenterologist, researcher and director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment, points out that there are simply not enough genes to account for the high number of chronic diseases that affect humans.

Genetics also cannot explain the timing of the disease onset. Instead, he suggests that it's important to look at the gut microbiome as “it is the interplay between us as individuals and the environment in which we live that dictates our clinical destiny.”¹⁹

Evidence has shown that exposure to bacterial overgrowth and gluten are the two most powerful triggers to stimulate the production of zonulin by intestinal epithelial cells.²⁰ Zonulin is a family of proteins that are a biomarker for gut permeability. Activation of the pathway may be a defense mechanism to remove bacterial overgrowth or changes in composition (dysbiosis) or both.

Kimchi can help protect against bacterial overgrowth and thus limit the activation of the zonulin pathway. Chronic inflammatory diseases that have been associated with dysregulation of this pathway include autoimmune and metabolic disorders, intestinal diseases and neuroinflammatory diseases.²¹

In other words, you can affect the potential risk and reduce the symptoms of health conditions far outside your gut when you take care of your gut microbiome by providing a diet rich in probiotics and nutrition to feed your beneficial bacteria.

Gut Health May Improve Sleep and Support Your Immune System

Researchers have discovered there is a curious bidirectional link between your gut and your sleep habits. Two studies shed light on this connection. The first was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry²² and focused on the role that your gut microbiome plays in insomnia and depression. The authors wrote:²³

“There is considerable evidence showing that the gut microbiome not only affects the digestive, metabolic, and immune functions of the host but also regulates host sleep and mental states through the microbiome-gut-brain axis.

Preliminary evidence indicates that microorganisms and circadian genes can interact with each other. The characteristics of the gastrointestinal microbiome and metabolism are related to the host's sleep and circadian rhythm."

As noted in the paper, there is mounting research that suggests your gut microbiome affects your sleep cycle through what's known as the gut-brain axis. According to the authors, this happens through three different pathways, all of which use a bidirectional flow.

In a second study,²⁴ researchers investigated how your sleep affects the microbes in the gut, which we already know have far-reaching effects on your general health and the strength of your immune system.²⁵ Using advanced sleep measuring devices, the quality of a participant’s sleep was measured and then compared to the composition of their gut microbiome to see if a correlation could be made.

The researchers found that diversity was positively correlated with sleep efficiency and total sleep time. They also found several bacterial groups that were negatively correlated with sleep quality indicating there is a link between the composition of your gut microbiome, sleep physiology and your immune system.

In addition to supporting your sleep hygiene, a healthy gut may also protect against viral infections, such as severe COVID-19 disease.²⁶ In a review²⁷ of more than 1,000 patient records, researchers found that those who presented on admission to the hospital with GI symptoms and suspected COVID-19 infection had worse outcomes than those who did not have GI symptoms.

Even after adjusting for comorbidities, demographics and other clinical symptoms, the results held. You can read more about the links between COVID-19 and your gut microbiome in “A Healthy Gut to Help Combat COVID.” One of the researchers from Rush University spoke with a journalist from MedPageToday, saying:²⁸

"We knew that GI symptoms could be part of the infection but we did not know if they made a difference and conferred higher risk. So we wanted to look into the impact of initial GI symptoms to see if they might coincide with more serious disease and we found that those with GI symptoms also had established risk factors for severity, such as older age, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension."

More Kimchi Benefits

In addition to the probiotic benefits from kimchi, the nutritive content has also been extensively studied. Researchers have found the dish is high in vitamins A and C along with 34 amino acids.²⁹ The major carotenoids reported are lutein and beta-carotene in a variety of concentrations that are related to the agricultural practice, harvesting and fermentation methods used.

Depending on the raw materials, kimchi may also be high in calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium. The most important bioactive compounds are phytochemicals that have been prized for their medicinal potential with antiobesity, anticancer and anti-atherosclerotic properties.

Researchers have focused on the polyphenolic contents of kimchi as it relates to health claims that include protective effects against a variety of different types of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and cardiovascular disease. Many of the raw materials are important sources of dietary phytochemicals, including onions, which are a source of flavonoids, including quercetin.

Animal studies have demonstrated antiobesity actions as it relates to the animal size, weight and inflammatory response from fat tissue. Other studies have shown kimchi can help balance cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.

Regular consumption may help to reduce the potential for metabolic syndrome and balance high blood pressure. Fermentation appears to boost the benefits of the raw materials used in kimchi to improve metabolic parameters with antiaging effects.³⁰

The LAB bacteria, dominant in the fermentation of kimchi,³¹ appears to reduce or eradicate putrefactive and pathogenic bacteria that may be present in the process. This helps to increase the functionality of the food and contributes to the large number of health benefits found in research, including the effects on obesity, cancer and colorectal health.

Control Quality by Making Your Own Fermented Vegetables

Some people start out making fermented foods for health benefits and then get hooked on the flavor or vice versa. Kimchi has a high level of beneficial bacteria that are ideal for optimizing your gut flora, and it is high in fiber to help nourish those bacteria. Eating one-quarter to one-half cup of fermented veggies with one to three meals each day can have a dramatic impact on your health.

If you're new to fermented foods, introduce them gradually, beginning with as little as 1 teaspoon of kimchi with a meal. Observe your reactions for a couple of days before adding another small portion and increase your dose gradually as your body can tolerate.

While cabbage is the main ingredient in traditional kimchi, other common elements include mustard greens, garlic, ginger root, Asian radish and Korean chili powder.

It is surprisingly easy to make your own kimchi at home, which allows you to tweak the recipe to suit your taste and to control the quality of the ingredients. You can find recipes for homemade kimchi in “The Tangy Tasty Superfood Korean Families Eat with Every Meal” and “Join the Kinetic Culture and Make Your Own Fermented Vegetables.”

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While being in the spotlight might be a part of her job, MasterChef Australia judge Melissa Leong says her passion and drive for her work are more important. 

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