Kefir Kommunity

The Mambo Sprouts "Go Mambo!" team just completed week two of their Rocky Mountain tour. Their mobile sampling station cruises around and introduces folks to healthy, natural and organic products. The tour is currently in Colorado and we strongly encourage our friends to stop by the Mambo Sprouts website and see when the fun is coming to their area!

Itchin’ for a new snack? Your taste buds are in luck: Foodchannel.com just released its 2010 Top Ten Snack Trends list. Oh, and what a surprise…probiotics are on the list!

We love the summertime for lots of reasons: Pool parties, fireworks, the ice cream man…and farmer’s markets. It’s always fun to wake up on a Saturday morning and mosey over to the local jam, where farmers from near and (not-too) far congregate to sell their delicious goods. You can literally feel the love and attention paid to every strawberry, every beet, every dozen eggs.

But did you know there are lots of health benefits to shopping at the farmer’s market? Here’s a bunch:


1. The produce is picked at its peak of freshness. Worried you won’t b able to finish a big bag of apples or basket of tomatoes? You can freeze them -- freezing preserves all of the vitamins and nutrients while preventing waste.

2. Besides being incredibly fresh, the fruits and vegetables available are all in season, which means they’ll be at their best color, smell and texture. Have you ever smelled a tomato fresh of the vine? Heaven!

3. By buying local, you’re helping the environment because your food doesn’t have to be shipped on gas-guzzling airplanes and trucks. Before reaching your table, the average food item in American travels a whopping 1,300 miles

4. The person selling your food likely has lots of fantastic ideas for cooking that pork loin or rhubarb. Ask him or her for tips - they’ll be happy to share!

5. Just walking around a farmer’s market gives you a little dose of exercise, and the sunshine is critical for your daily Vitamin D needs.

6. Quite often, produce, dairy and meats sold at the farmer’s market are organic and pesticide- or hormone-free.

6. Towards the end of many farmer’s markets, you can bargain!

On Saturdays, you can find Lifeway kefir at the Morton Grove Farmers' Market between 7:30am and 12:30pm @ 8930 Waukegan Road in Morton Grove. www.mgfarmersmarket.com

Move over Bachelorette. Step aside Millionaire Matchmaker. There’s a new reality star in Hollywood. This Fall, probiotics will take their rightful place in the spotlight when they star in a new series of TV documentaries.

Most women of childbearing age know they need to take a prenatal vitamin to give their future baby the best chance at being born healthy. But according to a new study, moms-to-be might want to add a prenatal probiotic to their daily routine.

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that children born to women who drank probiotic-enriched milk from 36 weeks of gestation to 3 months postnatal during breastfeeding were half as likely to have eczema  at age 2 than those whose mothers drank milk with no probiotics. And of the children in the probiotics group who did develop eczema, they demonstrated less severe symptoms.

Two of the strains of healthy bacteria found in the milk used in the study -- Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. acidophilus – are also found in Lifeway kefir. Over and over, we hear from pregnant women and new moms who love our kefir and feed it to their kids, almost from Day 1.  One mom even used it to ease her child’s formula-to-milk transition. We say, if there’s a simple, healthy step you can take that will slash your baby’s risk of being born with this itchy, irritating skin condition…why not?

A viewer wrote in to Dr. Manny asking about the health benefits of kefir. Where did they head for a shining example of kefir production? To our manufacturing facility in Morton Grove, of course!

In the Lifeway kefir family, we’ve got bottles of all different shapes and sizes. Mama and Papa Kefir are 32 oz. tall and strong to manage the household. Our first bundle of joy, Daughter Kefir, entered the world at 8 oz of low-fat peachy goodness. And then, imagine how shocked we were when we learned we were having quadruplets! Mama Kefir delivered a four-pack of 5 oz Baby Boy Probugs, all of whom we nicknamed Gooberry, a la George Foreman. 

So. You went out and got yourself a sunburn. You’re probably in pain right now, so we won’t add insult to injury by chastising you on the health risks of lying out. (OK, we will: A person's risk for melanoma--the most serious form ofskin cancer--doubles if he or she has had five or more sunburns.)

Most people associate July with fireworks, corn on the cob, watermelon and the hot summer sun. But did you know July is also National Blueberry Month?