Small stuff doing great things

What you do you think of when I say the word, MICROBES?   You might think, whatever those are, I think I need to attack them with the Lysol!  Microbes are microscopic organisms that usually cannot be see by the naked eye.  They include organisms like bacteria and fungi, but also tiny plants such as algae, and tiny animals that make up plankton (good food for baleen whales).  So they’re not all bad.  Bacteria and Fungi, in particular, do some pretty amazing things.  My two two favorite microbial activities include fermentation and decomposition.

Fermentation is a way for organisms to produce energy in the absence of oxygen.  Our own muscles sometimes use fermentation to produce energy.  During an intense workout, your blood can’t shuttle oxygen to your muscles fast enough, and so they, through fermentation, produce some energy and lactic acid.  That’s why you ” feel the burn!”.

When yeasts undergo fermentation, they produce ethanol instead of lactic acid, as well as CO2.    You use yeasts to make your bread nice and fluffy, and your beer and wine delicious and intoxicating. Two species of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Saccharomyces pastorianus and responsible for ales and lager beers, respectively.  The former is also used in the fermentation of wine grapes.  Yeasts are just trying to survive, but as they are doing so, they are creating some good stuff for humans to consume.  Take beer, for example.  There are very few ingredients that go into beer (traditionally).  They include a starch source (typically barley malt, or wheat)*, hops, yeast and water.  Isn’t it magical that with so few ingredients, you can get so many different flavors?  Is you’re not sure what “flavors” I’m talking about, immediately put down your Corona, head straight to your nearest alehouse (The Blind Tiger and the Waterfront Alehouse are nice places to start) and ask the bartender for help.  Different strains of yeast are involved in producing these flavors.  They have enzymes that break down the sugars in barley, as well as the other molecules that make up the vegetative structure of barley.  I can’t even begin to explain all the molecules that end up in your beer through these enzymatic processes….but the results are delicious!

The process of decomposition is not as enticing as fermentation, but it is biologically important.  Decomposition is necessary to breakdown dead organisms so that the nutrients contained in these dead organisms can become available to living organisms.  Nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, are finite in the environment.  Bacteria and fungi break down dead plants and animals in the natural environment and allow their nutrients to cycle to plants, then herbivores, and on up the food chain.  Unfortunately, when you throw old food in the garbage, their nutrients end up locked away forever in a landfill.  They will not be able to cycle back to living plants, like the ones that make you more food, and feed your friends.   I recently started a composting bin to address this issue.  The wonderful result is that, once the fruits, veggies, garden clippings and leaf litter in there break down, I will have a rich, natural fertilizer to spread on my garden. It requires some maintenance: it must be stirred and aerated frequently to provide air for the microbes (and so it doesn’t smell).  However, I reduced the amount of garbage I produce…and I was able to watch my Halloween pumpkins break down within a few weeks!   For the city-dwellers, you can reduce your trash by bringing your fruit and vegetable wastes to green markets around NYC.

If you’re not ready to collect and/ or shovel around your old food, but you want to appreciate microbial activity, grab a beer and a hunk of bleu cheese and say, “thanks, little guys!”.

 

*Rice or corn if you’re cheap, like Budweiser