I have been studying fermented foods for more than 40 years. Although I had a lot of company during that time, as a branch of microbiology, it was a rather small group. We usually published in applied microbiology journals and obtained grants from industry or commodity groups like the dairy board. The microbes we studied (mainly lactic acid bacteria) provided many scientific challenges, ranging from how they affect flavor and quality to how they defend themselves against viruses.
Flash-forward to 2021 and now interest in fermented foods has never been greater. I mentioned in class that the discovery of CRISPR in the yogurt organism, Streptococcus thermophilus, was published in 2007 in Science, one of the top journals in the world. Then in 2017, researchers at Harvard (yes, Harvard) published on the microbiota of cheese rinds in the journal Cell, another super high impact science journal.
Earlier in 2021, I was part of an international team of researchers who set out to define and describe properties of fermented foods. This led to a paper published in the medical journal, Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology.
Finally, a few months later, researchers at Stanford conducted a human clinical trial to assess the health properties of fermented foods. This widely reported study was also published in Cell.
So why all the interest in fermented foods? There are plenty of reasons, which I noted in class. But the notion that fermented foods, especially those that contain live microbes, can enhance human health, is likely one of the most important reasons. But even when the fermentation microbes are inactivated by heat or removed physically (e.g., bread and wine), they can still transform foods and increase nutritional properties.
Importantly, there is still considerable interest among microbiologists to address quality issues in fermented foods, just has there has been since Pasteur first began to study beer spoilage 150 years ago. Modern molecular and chemical methods have greatly enhanced these efforts.
For all of these reasons, it’s a great field to study, whether you have been at it for 40 years or just getting started.