APPETITE ADDITION — Sauerkraut Festival '09!

Sauerkraut shows time and again it is greater than the sum of its parts

By Darryl Swan

The South County Spotlight, Sep 16, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

Every third Saturday in September for the past two decades, Scappoose’s population triples as people flock to the city in celebration of the pungent, manila-colored majesty of sauerkraut.

Some may snigger that such an unassuming, quirky food could garner such attention. But let’s examine the facts:

Sauerkraut’s history stretches back two millennia, when the Chinese pickled cabbage in rice wine. According to www.sauerkraut.com, which labels sauerkraut as the world’s first “superfood,” Chinese laborers building the Great Wall in an attempt to thwart the invading Mongol hoards ate sauerkraut as standard fare; it didn’t require refrigeration and provided a nutritious, vitamin-packed food source.

In fact, the benefits of sauerkraut can hardly be overstated. It contains phytochemicals created during the fermentation process that are proven to bolster the immune system. Several studies have indicated that sauerkraut, which contains compounds known as isothiocynates, works as a cancer inhibitor, and is believed to prevent cancer growth in breast, colon, lung and liver cancer cases.

It is one of the few foods to contain the bacterium lactobacilli plantarum, a strain of good-for-you bacteria that aids digestion.

And, perhaps most relevant to today’s topics, sauerkraut is believed by many to be an effective flu-fighting agent, both on the prevention and recovery front.

Locally, Scappoose was a pickling and packaging center for Steinfeld’s, operating from 1942 until the plant was shuttered in 2001.

The tradition of great sauerkraut has lived on, however, and this year’s festival installment will mark the completion of two decades since the Scappoose Community Club’s inaugural event in 1989.

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