My point was that kombucha is ascribed magical healing properties that it doesn't have. It's not going to cure cancer, relieve gout, make arthritis go away, fix autism, stop heart attacks, replace vaccines, cure the common cold, make your immune system invincible, keep you alive until you're 120, cure HIV, or a dozen other things kombucha(or latest fad) is claimed to do. Whether there's a hundred or a hundred billion fungal/bacterial colonies isn't terribly important. A hundred billion multiplied by zero ability to cure cancer is still zero. That's what I was driving at.
I would never argue that probiotics overall aren't generally healthful. There's a pretty decent amount of evidence piling up for fermented, live-culture products being generally good for digestion and helping with conditions in which there is a gut flora imbalance, which is nice. But don't take up chain smoking thinking that it'll balance out the risk of cancer, and don't give up the chemo once you've got the cancer, either; nor should you throw away the ibuprofen and expect to be running marathons on those worn-out joints just because of some bacteria-rich spoiled fungus tea. And if you've got HIV/AIDS, my god, don't go near the stuff; for the immunocompromised, if pouring live microorganisms into your face doesn't at least sound like a bad idea, Darwin might have some words for you.
It's also worth noting that drinking too much kombucha can actually lead to some gastric problems, as it's really quite acidic, being loaded with vinegar and carbonic acid. It can erode the teeth, throat, and stomach lining, leading to ulcers, and has been implicated in cases of severe lactic acidosis. I'd argue that while it may not be quite as microbially loaded as kombucha, yogurt is a more gentle way to treat one's insides, and comes in a nice fat-and-protein buffer solution. Arguably tastes better, too.
But broadly, if drinking a little kombucha keeps a person from eating big macs and drinking cokes and motivates them to adjust their lifestyle to fit what they think a "kombucha drinker" consumes, then yeah, they're going to start feeling better physically. The same is going to happen if they start eating, say, oatmeal for breakfast instead of a hot pocket and a red bull.
I am overall very much an advocate of eating "whole" type foods, including fermented stuff. I can't get enough of (real, sour-type) pickled cucumbers and other vegetables, sauerkraut, sour beer, miso and other fermented bean pastes, yogurt, kefir, kimchee, kombucha, fermented chile pastes, on and on... I also once ate stinky tofu, and that's a story for another post. But I don't think that any of it is magical medicine, and I don't think anyone else should, either.
so I wasn't really asking about kombucha to bust anyone's chops or anything. I was more just wondering if anyone was drinking it and had any opinions the.. "unique" flavor, found a brand they like/hate, or started brewing a variety that they particularly love or hate. But you couldn't have known that you were accidentally diving into a conversation with a real scientist.
Citations available upon request.
(Also, I am so very going to try your way of cooking a duck. That looks amazing, and I've never actually cooked a duck before.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clodfobble
This is not true, but you couldn't have known that you were accidentally diving into a conversation with a probiotic obsessive. Truly fresh kombucha that has been fermented for 24+ hours (which is not necessarily true for something you get from the store that calls itself kombucha, and certainly not "kombucha tea" which is like "cheese product,") has trillions of CFU of both beneficial bacteria and yeasts. Your average store yogurt has only about 5 billion CFU per serving, and what's more, it is artificially seeded with only 2-4 species of bacteria and no yeast, compared to literally hundreds of species in the kombucha mother which have evolved together into a balanced colony.
I'll grant you that store-bought yogurt is as probiotically useful as store-bought "kombucha tea." But real, fermented yogurt and kombucha are both entirely different things, and exponentially more potent.
As a favor to everyone else here, I'll leave the rant about the many proven health benefits for another time. |