Why Stocking Kefir in Your Workplace Kitchen Will Help Your Employees’ Gut Health
Good gut health forms the basis for good overall health. Adding one item to your workplace kitchen can help strengthen the gut health of your employees.
Good gut health is the backbone of good overall health. A healthy gut is a one that contains plenty of healthy, diverse bacteria that fights off infectious viruses; it is essential to our immunologic functioning.
A healthy gut = a healthier employee = improved productivity and less absenteeism. So what is one way you can assist in improving the gut health of your employees?
Kefir is a fermented milk drink (either cow’s or goat’s milk), that has had kefir grains added to it to aid fermentation over a short period of time; usually 24 –48 hours. It comes from the Turkish work ‘keyif’ which means “feeling good after eating” (*hint hint, you can see where I’m going with this).
So what’s the difference between kefir and yoghurt?
Whilst both yoghurt and kefir are a good source of live bacteria, kefir has over three times as many probiotics compared to yoghurt. What’s more, it also has a much wider array with 61 strains of probiotics present in kefir (https://bit.ly/3dMpJJn). So not only does it outperform yoghurt in terms of volume, it also wins in terms of diversity. Research also suggests that kefir is much more effective in restoring gut bacteria after depletion, such as after a course of antibiotics.
Stepping away from gut health for a moment, results from a 2017 study focusing on the effect kefir has on cancer prevention and treatment (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28956261/) showed that kefir resulted in a 56% reduction of breast cancer cells, compared to yoghurt at 14% (*to note, this was not a human trials study). This particular research was built upon earlier studies which revealed that kefir acts on various other cancers such as colorectal and malignant T lymphocytes, adding to the growing concensus that kefir can hold cancer-fighting properties, albeit to varying degrees.
So by now I bet you’re thinking, “That’s all very well and good Kate but what does this mean for me?” The easiest way to improve your gut health, and that of your employees’, is to consume kefir.
When it comes to ways to improve our health and wellbeing, we can often look to the most expensive, complicated and time consuming methods. What’s the new diet? The new gadget? What product or subscription do I need to buy next??
More often than not, it’s the simplest (and free!) changes that can be most effective. Small tweaks, done consistently, open big doors.
