Why is Kombucha tea great for you?
The craze for kombucha has long surpassed the handful of people who deal with organic food and has passed to the general public.
The craze for kombucha has long surpassed the handful of people who deal with organic food and has passed to the general public. It is a fermented beverage - similar to yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut - but it is based on tea.
Namely, kombucha is made with the help of black or green tea. Sweetened tea is fermented with an additive called SCOBY, which gives this drink a small dose of alcohol and a slightly bitter-sweet taste. The health benefits of kombucha are mainly attributed to probiotics, beneficial microbes such as lactobacillus. The mixture that forms a floating film forms on the surface of the kombucha while it boils, looks a bit like a mushroom, which is why kombucha is sometimes called "mushroom tea", despite the fact that it has nothing to do with mushrooms.
This drink has come a long way since its beginnings in Asia more than 2,000 years ago until today, when, in the United States alone, it grew into a multimillion-dollar industry.
Kombucha has a good reputation for aiding digestion as well as treating diabetes, strengthening the immune system, lowering blood pressure, and detoxifying the body. Its proponents also claim that it helps patients suffering from rheumatism, hemorrhoids, liver dysfunction, cancer, and nervous diseases.
Unfortunately, this information is not completely true. What kombucha tea certainly is, is a probiotic that probably has a beneficial effect on the intestinal microbiome, and in that sense it should be taken. In recent years, more and more has been revealed about how important the microbiome in the digestive organs is for our overall health, but no, kombucha tea is not a cure for all diseases or "tea of eternal life" as the Chinese called it. In a word, we remember that anything that cures everything - does not cure anything.
WHAT KOMBUCHA ACTUALLY DOES?
So far, nothing is scientifically proven. One study on patients with diabetes who did not receive insulin showed that, after three months, those who consumed it regularly had normal blood sugar levels. Animal tests show that kombucha can have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects, as well as dark chocolate, is rich in phenols that have a strong antioxidant effect.
Kombucha is a good way to get a variety of good bacteria, although, unlike fermented dairy products, it has not been proven to contain exactly those cultures of bacteria that we need for a healthy digestive system. Some commercial manufacturers even add probiotics to the kombucha drink in an artificial way.
