Each spring seems to rearrange my thoughts.
This year it returned me to something quiet and obvious: there was a time when no one asked whether food carried probiotics or added vitamins.
Milk turned into kefir.
Cabbage became sauerkraut.
Sweetened tea rested until it transformed into kombucha.
Fermentation carried winter. It preserved what could not survive the cold months. It required patience, yet it created a kind of steadiness. You trusted the jar because you had watched it change.
No one optimized it. No one extracted a single strain to amplify results. The whole ecosystem developed together, slowly and visibly.
Food felt safe because it was familiar.
Today fast food rarely means only a drive-through window. It also means fast drinks, fast protein, fast energy — beverages engineered for immediate effect. Preservatives injected. Probiotics added. Nutrients isolated and inserted.
They adopted the language of fermentation. The vocabulary feels familiar, but the process is absent. The slow unfolding that gives a drink its meaning is missing. When microbes (good bacteria/ probiotics) are isolated instead of cultivated, the drink no longer reflects an environment. It is simply a formula. Formula is efficient. It performs the same way every time.
Fermentation reflects a place. It carries temperature, season, air. It develops instead of assembling.
I choose convenience sometimes. Life moves quickly now, and I adopt to it when I need to.
Still, it feels as if we are drifting further from what is real — from food and drinks that truly nourish instead of perform.
This season makes me notice that.
And I choose real.
