I just came across something interesting. I was checking out high oxalic foods and ways to get around it (spinach and beets etc are so easy to grow in this (Scottish) climate; it seems a shame to limit consumption cos of the oxalic acid). Here's what I saw (from [www.calciumrichfoods.org] ) about how to reduce the oxalic acid:

"A more effective strategy is to ferment foods high in oxalates. This is my favorite strategy of course because you maintain the enzymes in the raw food, add beneficial bacteria to your diet, and increase the B vitamin content as I describe above. Boiling or steaming will also cause some mineral loss in the food.

In a 2005 study in Food Microbiology, researchers found that the soluble iron in the homemade vegetable juice in the study increased sixteen times with fermentation. What this means is that if you juice your own vegetable juice with a high iron vegetable like spinach and you ferment it, your body may absorb sixteen times more iron than it would have absorbed had you consumed the juice right out of the juicer."

Isn't that cool!! Reduce the oxalates AND increase the iron! Fermentation rocks I'm gonna experiment by adding spinach / beet juice to kefir. Has anyone ever tried anything like that? I usually just stick to adding fruit and herbs to the 2nd ferment, but I never thought to add veggies too. I added spirulina once and it made the kefir very fizzy, practically exploded out of the bottle.

I'm wondering now whether fermenting green veggie juice (ie leaving it in water kefir for a day) would negate the problem of nutrient loss if you don't drink it immediately.. hmmm.. I guess the ideal thing is to ferment the whole veggie - but I'm not as keen on sowerkraut and kimchi as I am on kefir.

now I'm thinking the obvious thing would be to ferment green smoothies.. is it weird that I'm so excited about this lol

I've read that a little bit of vitamin C increases the iron absorption 3 times. So if you add a few baby tomatoes in a salad, you would get three times as much iron.

To ferment greens, mix them in with cabbage or beets. Bacteria need starch or sugar to propagate and multiply.

The Storm: Yes you could just make the green smoothie using rejulavac instead of water. But I have kefir ready to use, so I did it today like this: made a green smoothie as per usual, then added it to some water kefir that I'd prepared yesterday, and mixed it in. (I didn't blend up the kefir as I'm not sure how that would affect it - it's a living organism after all so I wouldn't think it would be too happy getting 'blended alive', lol) I'll leave it standing till tomorrow.

Panchito: yes, but this way you can increase iron absorption by 16 times! and get rid of the oxalic acid! And add in lots of great probiotics! It's a win win win situation

Prana, yes that's what I was thinking, that they need sugar, and kefir loves fruit sugar, so that's why I thought about using green smoothies. Today's one was apple and spinach, plus some chlorella and spirulina.