Meet the chicken soup of avian flu

Korean research touts fermented cabbage as a possible cure
By KAREN HERZOG
Nov. 3, 2005

While President Bush scrambles to ward off an avian flu pandemic, the world's largest sauerkraut producer, tucked amid the glacial lakebeds of rural Wisconsin, is sitting atop a bumper crop of one possible preventative.

That's right: Sauerkraut.

An international buzz is surrounding the unassuming, fermented cruciferous vegetable that costs 89 cents per 14.5-ounce can. Scientists at Seoul National University in South Korea fed an extract of kimchi, a spicy Korean variant of sauerkraut, to 13 chickens infected with avian flu, and a week later, 11 of the birds started to recover, according to a report by the BBC Network.

"Unlike the government, we've got the preventative, and 115,000 tons of it in Wisconsin alone," said Ryan Downs, owner and general manager of Great Lakes Kraut Co., which has sauerkraut factories in Bear Creek and Shiocton, near Appleton, and Shortsville, N.Y. Great Lakes is the only remaining sauerkraut producer in Wisconsin.

Downs said more extensive scientific research obviously is needed to prove any curative link to avian flu, but he's more than happy to tout kraut as a healthy part of any diet.

"People are starting to realize kraut is a pretty doggone good food," Downs said Thursday, when contacted about the South Korean study. "We're ready to help keep the world healthy."

Several television and radio stations across the United States have picked up the BBC story, said Steve Lundin, spokesman for Frank's Sauerkraut, based in Fremont, Ohio.

After a Minneapolis CBS affiliate did its own story on sauerkraut's potential in the battle against avian flu, Frank's checked 54 Twin City area stores it supplies, and found an 850% spike in overall sauerkraut sales, Lundin said.
"People will do whatever they can if they can't rely on the government to provide them with a vaccine or other preventative," Lundin said.

Frank's refused to release actual sales figures from its stores. "I quite honestly think the percentage spike is very relevant and it's based on the same week of sales last year," said Chris Smith, vice president of marketing for Frank's.
Pressed a bit more, Smith said some supermarkets may have sold seven cans of sauerkraut in the same week last year, compared with 30 cans this year.

"This is new to us," he said. "It's a very serious thing, so we're paying close attention to it. People are looking for a way to protect themselves, and they know sauerkraut is a good way to begin."

South Koreans reportedly are eating more kimchi since news of the study came out. But Korean researchers acknowledged that if kimchi did have the effects they observed, it was unclear why.

Men's Health magazine fed the sauerkraut buzz in its November issue, suggesting Americans put together pandemic kits containing a few cans of sauerkraut, among other non-perishable foods, because - like kimchi - it is packed with lactic-acid bacteria "shown by Korean researchers to speed recovery of chickens infected with avian flu."

Another recently released study at the University of New Mexico indicates that sauerkraut may reduce the risk of breast cancer by up to 74%. That study set out to determine why the risk of breast cancer nearly triples in Polish women who immigrate to the United States.

Of the hundreds of Polish women and Polish-born U.S. immigrants observed in the study, those who ate four or more servings of sauerkraut and cabbage per week during adolescence were 74% less likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate 1.5 or fewer servings per week.

"If you look at a 19th century Old Farmer's Almanac, you'll find recipes for sauerkraut to treat virtually every ailment under the sun," noted Smith, of Frank's Sauerkraut. "It's truly one of the most unassuming super foods ever created."

Great Lakes Kraut expects to finish a record-breaking Wisconsin cabbage harvest today - some 115,000 tons of cabbage, Downs said. "We're taking every last head in everybody's field."

The previous record cabbage crop in Wisconsin, in 2002, was 80,000 tons, Downs said.

A dry summer was kind to the cabbage, which is grown in glacial lakebeds with loamy soil that keeps the water table relatively high. In rainy years, the crop gets too wet and picks up waterborne diseases, Downs explained.