Our son just turned 2 and oddly enough his favorite food now is raw goats milk kefir. I say oddly because he can be a picky eater and kefir can be strong. Then you mix that in with the goatiness that comes from fermented goats milk. But sure enough, he fell in love right away. It’s one of the very few foods he requests. The way he pronounces it is like “milk people”, instead of milk kefir. We get a good laugh as that is a very apt name for kefir. We envision a little community of milk people (bacteria) happily coexisting together. When he drinks it, he takes is slow and savors every last drop. And at the end, he almost always says, “mmm, yummy”.
A while back, he got a bad case of the stomach flu. He couldn’t keep much of anything down. At one point he requested his “milk people”. We were very tentative to give him any due to the acidic dairy content. We did not want him to get a taste aversion if he threw it up. But one of the many things that working with cultures over the years taught us is that its best to trust your body and your senses. And I think children are more in tune with their bodies than adults. So we ultimately gave him a little. Sure enough he held his cup like something precious and slowly sipped it away. And at the end said, “mmm yummy”.
He didn’t throw it up. In fact over the next couple days, it was one of the few foods that managed to stay down. And I should say that this is not a food recommendation for people with stomach flu, but for our little boy, it seemed to help. For us, there’s no need to look for bacteria count or vitamin profiles to try to figure out the value and benefits of kefir. All we need to hear is that “mmm, yummy” from a 2 year old. That’s enough for us.
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