“I have your mother in
the car.
This is a pretty ominous text message, and it took me a
minute to register the threat. Luckily I had no bandits to battle or ransoms to pay. My friend
Emily was driving home from her parents’ house in New Hampshire, where her dad
brews kombucha tea. She was bringing me
a mother kombucha, so that I could try brewing my own.
Pictured here: all the ingredients you need.
Kombucha is a special type of fermented tea that’s grown
from a “mother” culture called a Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast (yummy!), or SCOBY. I hate acronyms (they always look
like yelling) so I’m going to just keep calling it the mother. When the mother is allowed to feed on tea and
sugar for an extended period of time, it evolves into kombucha, a special type of tea that does
something.
But what does it do?
That question has no easy answer.
You can search and search the Internet, but information about kombucha is conflicting, and there is very little in the
way of citations. Kristen at Food Renegade
is a staunch promoter of kombucha, but right off the bat she refers to its
“rich anecdotal history” (emphasis mine). Kristen also claims that the reason kombucha isn't being held up for scientific scrutiny is because it’s too easy to brew at home, and therefore not profitable for the pharmaceutical industry.
That’s certainly a compelling argument, and I do love to side with renegades, but Kristen’s listed sources are somewhat less than reputable. One of them is a weird, rambling essay
written in 1993, and another is a website written entirely
in Comic Sans. A third appears to have
been run one too many times through Google Translator. It’s comprehensive, but a little bit goofy.
The opposing side is no more scientific in its arguments. The Mayo Clinic seems
content to rest on its laurels for this debate, issuing a terse warning
to avoid the brew altogether. For its
part, the American Cancer Society appears
equally unconvinced, albeit with a bit more of an explanation.
Meanwhile, Synergy, one of the most
recognizable names in kombucha commerce, makes no claims whatsoever on its website, scientific or otherwise, choosing instead to let the
product speak for itself.
Although this photo of the CEO suggests benefits include white teeth and perpetual radiance.
