Fermented Foods and Obesity

Copyright: © 2012 Uvere PO. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Fermented foods are foods produced by the desirable modification of food properties by microorganisms and enzymes without complete stabilisation of the nutrients to carbon dioxide, water and energy. It results in a significant increase in the soluble fraction of a food, but the anti-nutritional factors decline. The concentration of vitamins, minerals and protein appear to increase when measured on a dry weight basis. This makes fermentation an important option for food processing, although some authors argue that no improvement is recorded in the nutritive value of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits, safety of fruits, stability of legumes and cereals and safety of cereals.