Where I work, everyone is obsessed with the Synergy kombacha tea drinks, which are purported to have all sorts of fabulous benefits, from curing cancer to anti-aging and weight control. A lot of my co-workers have expressed that they feel addicted to the drinks and want to have one every day. But here, and elsewhere, I’ve read that kombacha may be unsafe.
The drinks are weird, and they have thready bits of raw culture that are like mucous at the bottom, but they’re raw and organic and supposedly good for you. My question is, could they be bad for you in great quantity, say one 16 oz beverage a day? Or better to avoid?
Full disclosure: I’m drinking one right now. I don’t drink them at work because the trace amount of alcohol from the fermentation makes me feel… inappropriate at work. But I tend to really, really want one. Which weirds me out.
So, what’s up with Kombacha?
ZJ
Here’s some info for anyone who, like me, has never heard of Kombucha.
I used to brew kombucha years ago, and for about US$1 you can make a couple of gallons a week. All you need is a sterile brewing bucket, black tea, white sugar, and some kombucha starter culture. The slime from the bottom of a commercial kombucha drink should do for the latter.
The biggest danger comes from infection in the culture, but it’s quite obvious when this happens, and it’s no different from any other food spoilage poisoning. I never had it happen to me.
As for the health benefits, they are very real, but it seems that the best way to use kombucha is as an occasional tonic, as the beneficial effects seem to tail off with regular use, though it doesn’t seem to do any harm. Possibly this is because kombucha is a good detox agent and once the body is reasonably detoxed then the effects will level out. Certainly it’s not a drink to consume with a kicking hangover, as it tends to bring it out and make one feel even worse.
I had a jar with a giant blob of it living at home in Russia. You just feed it a little sugar (and I think tea) once in a while and it keeps making a reasonably tasty soft drink. I probably drank a lot of it every day for a few years as a kid, all using the same blob (we pruned it occasionally).
I’m still alive and reasonably healthy, so if it caused any problems they are not evident yet.
What I want to know is, where did kombucha originate from? Given that it’s a symbiotic organism that lives on tea and sugar, what is its natural habitat?
It’s a biofilm, not a ‘symbiotic organism’, made up of a collection of microorganisms, including various yeasts. It’s quite likely that the original culture(s) was naturally innoculated with organisms present in the environment (in much the same way traditional west-country cider is made). Looking at the wiki article, the list of yeasts, with the exception of Z. bailli are used in the production of wine and beer.
As for the health benefits, this article raises some doubts over the safety of the drink. Kombucha has been linked to liver damage, metabolic acidosis and cutaneous anthrax infections, and one fatality is on record.