A decade ago, doctors gave Cori Deans a bleak outlook about her Crohn’s disease, claiming she’d likely have to remain on medications for life. Yet instead of succumbing to that fate, Deans turned to nutrition as her saving grace, subsequently establishing a successful business known as Small Town Cultures that specializes in small batch fermented foods and is growing rapidly along the East Coast.
All this began with Deans taking a closer look at her own body and its needs. She was already on a fiber-deprived diet, accompanied by a troublesome mixture of immunosuppressant medications, antibiotics, and steroids; however, she still wasn’t finding any solutions. Consequently, she went to great lengths to research her condition and eventually found the book Patient Heal Thyself which offered an alternative path to healing. After committing to a diet full of nutrient-dense, whole foods, and incorporating an assortment of fermented foods into her routine, as well as reducing her stress levels, her condition started to improve.
“I realized that many autoimmune diseases may be caused by the fact that we’re eating dead food,” she explained to Forbes. “Plus our vegetables are coming from soils that are dead, which doesn’t help, because they’re lacking in the good bacteria. Fermented foods, however, are the opposite of that. They’re full of life.”
Within a few months, Deans observed her symptoms vanishing. Nowadays, she can eat whatever she likes and still remains an enthusiast of fermented veggies. She even started creating her own sauerkraut when she learnt of the microbe-packed features of such edibles. “The majority of commercially accessible versions are heat-treated and that signifies you don’t obtain the same health advantages,” she elucidates.
As Dean began exploring with her weekly veggie box supplied by a nearby CSA, she found that the jars of fermented veggies were benefitting her; however, it was too much for her to eat on her own. In response to this, she began distributing them to relatives and acquaintances, and the positive feedback pushed her to create a little sideline venture in 2017, alongside her job as a massage therapist which she still maintained.
Before long, Dean’s fermented jars had reached the hands of a regional food distributor and ended up at Cedar Run, a market in her hometown of Keene, New York. It was well-received, and soon enough it had spread to a dozen stores.
In spite of never having managed a team or operated a business, Dean says she was taught as she went. “I went from tackling all of the work alone to looking after a whole team,” she notes.
The demand for her clear jars of fermented green beans, cabbage, carrots, and other products increased and she needed to find a larger factory to meet it. In addition, she had to shift her product offering since she couldn’t keep up with foraging all the necessary ingredients ethically.
“The ingredients now come from upstate New York farms. Apart from lemons, all of them come from the regional food network which I believe is important.” She states that freshness can be preserved if the food isn’t transported over long distances or heavily processed, which in turn maintains the colonies of bacteria that support the gut. Conversely, she notes that hydroponic veggies don’t work for fermenting because they haven’t been exposed to soil and the microbes it contains.
With a successful business of 10 employees across 400 stores, Small Town Cultures is rapidly expanding, having raised $1 million in angel funding to incorporate into 40 additional Whole Foods locations.
The goal of this venture is to make fermented foods more accessible and affordable for everyday consumers, allowing for just a few bites to promote improved health. Deans has experienced the positive benefits firsthand, with her chronic symptoms dissipating within months of introducing the diet into her lifestyle.
What’s more, she is a passionate advocate of developing a food ecosystem that promotes human health, wanting to revive a dietary practice that has been around for centuries.
