Why do our Guts Need Probiotics?

Written by Cilie Yack

Kids with food allergies...

Our Guts Need Probiotics to keep us healthy

Let's learn about these important Good bacteria

Cilie Yack's Sous Club Kids will learn why our guts need probiotics in this support group lesson. It is very important to have them in your diet, especially if you have celiac disease or food allergies. Probiotics keep us very healthy. But what if you are allergic to milk? How can you get probiotics? Let me tell you!

Do you remember Doc Curtin from Ennistymon? He's the man that literally saved me from the brink of disaster when I was little. He was the one who figured out that I must have celiac disease. I had so many stomach and gut problems when I met him.

Well, when he was in England a few years back he did a lot of research on probiotics. He said that our health comes right from our guts! If we want to be healthy we have to have healthy guts! So I thought I would share a little bit about what he told me.

Do you know what probiotics are?

Well, I'm sure you remember the first experiment we did with the yeast in Lesson 1, right? In that lesson you learned about the four different kinds of germs. Well, bad bacteria is one kind of germ and if you get it in your guts it will make you suffer a lot. You can get bad diarrhea, sore cramps, and a fever.

Remember when I mentioned that there are also good bacteria too, and they help your body break down the food you eat so you can use it to keep you healthy? Well, probiotic is a fancy name for good bacteria. Those guys go into your body and they make the bad bacteria move out!

And if you keep eating foods with probiotics every day, that bad bacteria will likely STAY OUT. That's pretty great news, isn't it?

Can you guess what food has lots of good bacteria in it?

Yogurt does!

Now regular yogurt is a problem for some Sous Club kids because it is made from cow's milk. So if you are allergic to milk you need to know how to read labels when you are shopping for probiotics and yogurts. Sometimes yogurts labeled dairy free still have casein in them. Casein is the protein found in milk.

Mum and I found out I needed a lot of probiotics when we learned I have celiac disease. My guts were so bad that I used to burp all day long. And if you read the chapter about "Poop Talk" in my story, then you know everything else that was going on with me too, all the way down to that bag of trail mix I ate!

Okay. Enough about that stuff. Let's talk about yogurt!

The yogurt we are going to be using today is a coconut yogurt. There are lots of dairy-free probiotics around these days. Coconut yogurt is only one kind, and in my opinion, the best kind, because you can dress it up and make a lovely snack with it!

Psst! Kombucha was invented in China a really, really, really long time ago (in 212 B.C., to be exact. B.C. means Before Christ, by the way). So if you do your math, it was around 2,220 years ago! There are other ways to get probiotics. You can take capsules, eat soy yogurts (if you are not allergic and you don't like coconut), and you can drink a tea called kombucha (say: kom-BOO-cha).  That stuff is really spicy. My brother Dessie just sucks it up until it's gone!

All these probiotics help your body get rid of bad bacteria. They also help you digest your food.

Do you know what it means to digest food?

Well, it's simple. When you digest food your body is breaking down all of the stuff you eat into tiny bits of energy that are used as fuel to keep you going. Boy, if your body isn't doing a good job of this, then you are going to have health problems for sure! So the probiotics are used to help you do the job right!

So let's get started in the kitchen with our Cocofruity Parfait, because we not only want to make something tasty to eat, but we also want to give our guts a hand too!