Millet Ambuli: Daisy's Fermented Gut Drink Recipe

Many of us treat gut trouble, blood sugar swings and hormone problems as separate issues. Daisy believes most of them trace back to a weak gut. Her answer is ambuli, a fermented millet drink she has taken for years. It takes about 10 minutes of work, and the pot does the rest overnight.

Why Daisy focuses on the gut

Daisy says the gut is the one thing she works on, and the rest follows. In her view, nutrients such as protein and iron only help if the gut can absorb them. A weak gut, she says, makes the body sensitive to even simple foods.

She points to the work of Padmashri Dr. Khadar Vali, known as the millet man of India. She credits him for a major part of her weight loss and her energy. She quotes his words: “When your food is right, no medicine is needed. When your food is wrong, no medicine works.”

Daisy says people around the world have used his millet protocol, meaning ambuli, to reverse serious conditions. She reports this as what she has seen, not as a medical guarantee. If you take medicine for any of these conditions, keep your doctor in the loop.

Why millet ambuli, and not idli or rice kanji

Daisy loves idli, dosa and dhokla, and agrees they are good for the gut. The difference is cooking. When you steam an idli, the live bacteria die. You still get the by-products they made during fermentation, but not the bacteria.

Ambuli is never heated after it ferments. So Daisy says you get three things together:

• Prebiotic: the fibre in the millet, which feeds gut bacteria.
• Probiotic: the live bacteria that grew overnight.
• Postbiotic: the by-products those bacteria make, such as vitamins and acids.

Rice kanji and vegetable ferments are good too, she says, but the fibre is different. Rice is low in fibre. Vegetable fibre she calls immature. Millet fibre, she says, is a regulatory fibre that soaks up toxins, excess sugar and free radicals in the gut.

Daisy also says millets release glucose slowly over 6 to 8 hours, while rice does it within 20 to 30 minutes. That slow release, she says, avoids an insulin spike.

Which millets to use

Dr. Khadar Vali calls five millets “positive”: foxtail, little, kodo, barnyard and brown top. Daisy says they have between 8 and 12.5 percent fibre. She says jowar, bajra and ragi are nutritious but less therapeutic, because their fibre is lower.

Each day, she picks a different millet from a set of five. Her reason is that every millet adds its own bacteria, so rotating gives more variety. She also shows a chart in the video of which millet suits which condition. She notes that brown top targets thyroid health.

How to make it, and why the pot matters

Daisy soaks one tablespoon of millet in about 700 ml of water for 8 hours. She cooks it on the lowest flame, since a mud pot can crack on high heat. Once cool, she covers it with muslin and leaves it overnight.

The next morning it is still watery, and that is the point. Daisy says the thin texture lets the live bacteria survive the stomach acid and reach the gut. Do not turn it into a porridge.

She adds coriander, black salt and roasted jeera. She does not add oil or tadka, and she warns against adding salt or vegetables during cooking and fermenting.

On the pot, Daisy says an unglazed clay pot is porous, so it lets in a little air that the lactic acid bacteria need. Steel, aluminium or glass, she says, shifts the balance towards less useful bacteria. She has used her pot for about four years for fermenting, and says the taste is now the same each day. She advises washing it with salt, vinegar or hot water, or lime and salt if it is greasy.

What about vitamin B12?

Daisy is clear that ambuli does not contain B12. She says Dr. Khadar Vali teaches that a healthier gut may restore its own B12 production over time, which could help vegetarians. She adds that this is slow, not instant. She still takes a B12 supplement and plans to taper it later.

What research says

Daisy’s reasoning draws on tradition and Dr. Khadar Vali’s field experience. Research on millets is encouraging but still limited. A 2021 review pooled 65 human studies. It found that millets have a glycaemic index about 36 percent lower than milled rice and refined wheat. In people with diabetes, long-term millet eating lowered fasting glucose by about 12 percent and after-meal glucose by about 15 percent. The authors noted that many studies were small, only two involved prediabetic people, and some bias was likely. See the Frontiers in Nutrition review.

This research is about whole millets in meals, not about ambuli itself. For fermented foods, a small Stanford trial of healthy adults found that a high-fermented-food diet raised gut microbiome diversity and lowered markers of inflammation in a 17-week randomised study. A high-fibre diet did not raise diversity. The study had 18 people per group and did not test ambuli. See the Cell paper. We found no study that tests ambuli on disease reversal.

Daisy’s tips

• Drink it on an empty stomach. Daisy has hers after her amla drink and a 2-hour gap.
• Skip tea and coffee right after. She says milk, tea and coffee interfere.
• Never reheat it after fermenting, or you kill the live bacteria.
• Use a breathable cloth cover, not plastic.
• Wash the millet well before soaking.
• Give it time. If you feel bloated, Daisy says wait 3 to 4 weeks as your gut adapts.
• If you are on heavy diabetes medicine, expect your doctor to adjust doses as your sugar falls.
• If you have a severe thyroid condition, start under guidance.
• Try it for 2 to 3 months and watch how your body responds. Daisy says every body is different.

Daisy shows every step in the video above. It takes about 18 minutes.