Best Brand: Inner-Eco Probiotics

Best Brand: Inner-Eco Probiotics

In a recent Healing Gourmet post (Could Antibiotics Make You Fat?), you learned about the big impact that your gut flora has on your health (including your risk of obesity).

You see, these “good bugs” perform hundreds of vital functions in your body. They:

• Synthesize vitamins (including the all-important B vitamins)
• Disarm carcinogens
• Train your immune system
• Regulate your hormones
• Break down pesticides
• Remove some of the anti-nutrients from grains and legumes
• Boost the bioavailability of nutrients, and
• Impact the way your body uses calories and stores fat

But in our modern world, it’s all too easy for your inner ecosystem to get out of balance. When pathogenic bacteria take over, the result can be a disaster for your health.

This can deplete your immunity. It can also cause allergies, auto-immune diseases, cancer, hormonal imbalances, the inability to lose weight and much more.

That’s why consuming some form of probiotic is critical. This can help to replenish the numbers of healthy gut bacteria in your gut. But the truth is that many probiotic foods and supplements are completely ineffective.

Are Your Probiotics D.O.A.?

If you read the small print on probiotic supplements, you may see something like: “20 billion colony forming units at time of manufacture”. The key words here are “at the time of manufacture”. The friendly bacteria found in these products are very fragile. They can be easily destroyed with the time and heat that comes with transit and storage.

That’s why it’s better to enjoy naturally fermented foods – like sauerkraut and kefir. But we’re not talking about the kind of sauerkraut you might buy in a can… or the kefir you might find in the cold dairy section of your local grocery store. In the case of sauerkraut, these products are vinegar-cured, instead of fermented. They don’t contain any of the “good bugs” you’re looking for.

And the kefir in the dairy section is usually heat-pasteurized. That may increase the shelf life. But it destroys most of the billions of friendly flora that would find in a raw, lacto-fermented version.

Unfortunately, acquiring real probiotic foods can be a challenge for many.

The Champagne of Probiotics

But a company called Inner-Eco has solved this problem with their line of coconut kefir products.

Kefir is Turkish for “good feeling”. This fermented milk beverage originated when shepherds of the Caucasus Mountains packed their milk in leather pouches, where it would ferment into a living food. Kefir is believed to be one of the main reasons that people of this region live such long (often over one hundred years) and disease-free lives.

But Inner Eco doesn’t use milk to make their kefir. Instead, they use freshly harvested coconut water from young green coconuts. They add the kefir culture and let the fermentation process work its microbial magic.

The result is a delicious, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, vegan and 100% natural probiotic product. Best of all, it is lab tested to contain an average of over 100 billion live, health-supporting cultures per serving.

That’s as much as five to 10 times the number of live and active flora that are contained in most probiotic “supplements.” And it’s just a fraction of the cost. You can pick up a 30-serving bottle in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods for just $16.99.  That’s about half the cost of many probiotic supplements.

And the taste? I like to think of it as probiotic champagne. It’s light and effervescent. It’s delicious by the spoonful – right out of the bottle. Or you can add it to smoothies and juice drinks for a powerful probiotic punch.

Pick up a bottle of Inner-Eco in their Original, Wild Berry or Tropical flavor to make your friendly flora flourish today!

Inner-Eco Strawberries & “Champagne” Smoothie

Ingredients

•  ¼ cup coconut milk (full fat)
• 1/2 cup filtered or spring water
•  ¼ cup sparkling mineral water
• 8 frozen organic strawberries
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 1 Tbsp. Inner-Eco Original
• Stevia (to taste)

Preparation

• Add the strawberries, protein powder, spring water and coconut milk to a blender.
• Blend on high.
• Then slowly add the sparkling water and Inner Eco.
• Sweeten with stevia and enjoy!