The United States government, having successfully optimized energy policy, the federal budget, and international trade, has turned its considerable expertise to the question of fermented cabbage. Several members of the current cabinet have reportedly embraced expensive probiotic diets — raw milk, kimchi, kombucha, the whole fizzing portfolio — and a physician has stepped forward to say this is actually quite healthy, provided one maintains balance. Balance. From a cabinet. Filed under: sentences that write themselves.
Now, I want to be fair. Fermentation is, technically, a form of controlled decay — you take something, seal it up, and wait while invisible organisms transform it into something entirely different from what you started with. If that sounds familiar, it is because you have been following the news cycle. The process is identical. The main difference is that at the end of fermentation you get something people willingly put in their mouths.
The doctor's suggestion that the trend should be “balanced” raises the natural follow-up question of balanced against what, exactly. The cabinets of history have not historically been measured in probiotics. We do not audit the Secretary of Agriculture's sourdough starter alongside the farm bill. We do not ask whether the trade representative's gut flora is positioned correctly before a tariff announcement. And yet here we are, in an era where the wellness choices of people who control the levers of federal power are filed under “health news,” right alongside the part where a doctor has to remind them that expensive fermented food diets should be balanced. The doctor is doing the lord's work. The lord's work, in this case, is explaining portion control to people who set portion sizes for the rest of us.
To be clear: fermented foods are genuinely good for you. The problem is not the kimchi. The kimchi is blameless. The kimchi did not set tariff policy. The kimchi did not attend a single confirmation hearing. The kimchi has more cultures in it than the process that produced the people eating it, and unlike that process, the kimchi is transparent about what it contains.
A doctor says the craze should be balanced. The craze says hold my kombucha.