About Naomi Vance

    I didn’t set out to become a fermentation nerd. Honestly, I just wanted to stop feeling terrible after every meal.

    For most of my twenties, I ate the way a lot of busy, fitness-minded people eat — protein bars in my gym bag, Greek yogurt from the big tubs at Costco, grilled chicken I prepped every Sunday, whether I wanted it or not. I tracked my macros. I hit my protein goals. I worked out five days a week. And I still felt bloated, exhausted, and weirdly inflamed most of the time.

    My doctor said I was fine. My bloodwork was fine. My weight was fine. Everything was fine, which somehow made it worse, because fine didn’t match how I actually felt.

    The jar that changed everything

    It started with a jar of homemade sauerkraut at a neighbor’s cookout. I ate maybe two forkfuls, skeptically, because I was raised on the shelf-stable stuff in plastic bags and I expected the same sour, soggy texture. Instead, it was bright and crunchy and alive in a way I couldn’t explain. I asked her how she made it. She laughed and said, “You just leave cabbage and salt alone long enough.”

    That was it. That was the whole recipe.

    I went home and made my first batch that weekend. Two pounds of cabbage, a tablespoon of salt, a mason jar, and a plate on top to weigh it down. I checked it every morning like it was a living thing. Because it was — that’s the part nobody tells you. Fermentation is literally billions of bacteria doing work you’d otherwise have to do yourself.

    Four weeks later, I noticed something: the bloating was quieter. Not gone overnight, not some miraculous transformation — just quieter. The post-meal sluggishness I’d written off as normal started lifting. I slept better. I stopped needing three cups of coffee to feel human by 10 am.

    I didn’t know enough yet to explain why. So I started reading.

    What the research actually says (and why nobody teaches it well)

    The more I read about the gut microbiome, the more furious I got — not at the science, but at how badly it was being communicated. The wellness world had taken a genuinely fascinating area of biology and turned it into a supplement aisle. Buy this probiotic capsule. Drink this powder. Order this kit.

    Meanwhile, humans had been maintaining thriving gut microbiomes for thousands of years with fermented foods that cost almost nothing to make: yogurt, kefir, kimchi, tempeh, sourdough, miso, and kvass. Foods that had protein in them. Foods that kept people full, strong, and healthy without a single branded supplement.

    That was the gap nobody was filling: the overlap between fermented foods and high-protein eating. Every fitness blog I found was pushing protein shakes. Every gut-health blog I found was scared of protein or just ignored it. Nobody was connecting the two, even though the connection is obvious once you see it:

    • Greek yogurt: 17-20g protein per cup, billions of live cultures
    • Tempeh: 20g protein per 100g, more probiotic activity than most supplements
    • Kefir: 8-10g protein per cup, 30+ strains of live bacteria and yeasts
    • Aged sourdough: easier to digest than any commercial bread, thanks to long fermentation that pre-digests the gluten
    • Cottage cheese: 25g protein per cup, fermented dairy that supports the microbiome when it’s the real-culture kind

    This is what I started building my diet around. And this is what I built New Health Wire to share.

    What I actually do

    I’m a home cook. Not a registered dietitian, not a personal trainer, not a functional medicine practitioner. I’m someone who has spent years in her kitchen with a scale, a Dutch oven, a sourdough starter named Gerald, and an ever-growing collection of mason jars in various stages of fermentation.

    Every recipe on this site is something I cook for myself and my family. Every sourdough loaf is baked in my real oven. Every kefir I photograph is cultured on my actual counter, usually next to my coffee maker where it’s warm enough to work overnight.

    I’ve killed three sourdough starters, cried over a batch of kimchi that went wrong (too warm, learned my lesson), made kefir so thick it came out of the jar in one piece, and slowly figured out what works — not from a food science lab but from doing it over and over in a regular home kitchen.

    When I reference research, I link to the actual paper. When I’m not sure about something, I say so. When a recipe didn’t work on my first try, I tell you what I changed and why.

    Who this site is for

    New Health Wire is for people who go to the gym, care about what they eat, and have started to realize that how you digest your food matters as much as what you eat.

    It’s for you if:

    • You eat high-protein but feel like your gut is constantly fighting back
    • You’ve heard about probiotics but don’t want to spend $60 a month on capsules
    • You want to try fermentation but feel intimidated by the idea of leaving food out on the counter
    • You’re tired of recipe blogs that treat “healthy” as either joyless or fake

    If that’s you, pull up a chair. I think you’re going to like it here.

    A few things you should probably know about me

    I have strong opinions about sourdough hydration. I think most protein bars taste like sweetened chalk, and I’ll say it to their face. I keep at least two active fermentation projects going at any given time, which my family has learned to tolerate with varying levels of enthusiasm. I believe the best meals come from slowing down — low heat, long ferments, real ingredients — and that this approach is more compatible with fitness than the fitness industry would have you believe.

    Gerald the sourdough starter has been alive for three years. I consider this a meaningful relationship.

    Welcome to New Health Wire.

    — Naomi

    Have a question, a recipe idea, or just want to tell me about your own fermentation experiment? Reach me at 

    Where to start: