Eight Reasons to Drink Kombucha

Kombucha is a delicious fermented drink that is made from tea, sugar and a culture known as a S.C.O.B.Y. (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast)

You can make kombucha at home or buy it at your local grocery store in the refrigerator section. A common brand we use to buy ALL THE TIME is GT Kombucha.

When raw GT’s Kombucha was pulled off the shelves a few years back, GT’s split their line into two product categories “Classic” and “Enlightened”. To buy Classic you have to be over 21 and find a liquor store that sells it. Thank you government agency… First you take away my raw milk and now you’ve pulled my favorite drink off the shelves?

“To control the drink’s alcohol content, Dave reduced the number of probiotics that produce alcohol and increased the probiotics that do not.” Medill Reports, Chicago

“Enlightened GT Kombucha has a differnt probiotic ratio and a shorter shelf life to make sure the alcohol content remains below 0.5 percent”. Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS

Now when you find GT’s in the grocery store,  you’re buying and drinking  GT’s Enlighten Kombucha thinking that it’s the Classic GT Kombucha, but they are not the same. Both lines of GT’s Kombucha are “raw” and “unpasturized” (I contacted the company and asked them about it), but the issue is that Enlightened Kombucha is pretty much just a juice and a sugary black tea!

I thought of going through all the work to ask my local liquor store to carry Classic GT’s, but really? It’s not an alcoholic drink unless it is left at room temperature for a long time and miss handled. That’s a lot of brain damage just to get hold of real raw SCOBY fermented Kombucha that has the best ratio of organic acids, enzymes and probiotics!

So then I started thinking, why don’t I just make my own brew since I can’t easily buy the good stuff (this is the same line of thinking that got us our first family milk cow). Click HERE for directions on how to make kombucha at home.

Eight reasons to drink and make REAL SCOBY cultured Kombucha

1.) You can NOT buy properly brewed Kombucha with all the health benefits at most grocery store (unless they have a liquor license and you’re over 21 years old!). If you’re buying a big name well distributed kombucha… know that it is not properly brewed with a real traditional scoby. Kombucha is very simple to make, ingredients include tea, sugar, water and a mother culture (SCOBY).

2.) Kombucha contains flavonoids such as quercetin, theaflavin and catechins which help reduce inflammation, promote heart health and fight cancer (Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS).

3.) Kombucha contains probiotic microorganisms and enzymes that boost digestive and immune system health. Bucha is a living food with powerful probiotic strains such as S. Cerevisiae, S. boulardii and Lactobacillus (Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS)

4.) Kombucha contains, “glucuronic acid (aids in detoxification), chondroitin sulphate (a component of cartilage), and B-vitamins” Food Feature, Dori Oliver

5.) Kombucha is a liver detoxifier! In order to live, our bodes must continuously eliminate toxins, heavy metals, pesticides, chemicals in food, tobacco smoke, synthetic fragrances, exhaust fumes, cleaning products, etc, etc “For the liver to eliminate theses toxins certain nutrient cofactors need to be met. Kombucha is packed with detox cofactors that detox and eliminate toxic substances from the body”(Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS).

6.) Kombucha contains “glucuronic acid, a powerful chelator of heavy metals and other toxins”. Gluconic acid binds to zinc and iron, enabling their absorption.  (Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS).

7.) Kombucha fights candida and all bad yeast over growth in the body with beneficial yeasts! Kombucha helps your body have more “good guys” than “bad guys”. Beneficial yeasts include Zygosaccharomyces kombuchaenis (discovered from USDA), Brettanomyces, Zygosaccharomyces and Saccharomyces cerevisiae and two frendly strains of Candida (C. Lambia and C. valid) yeasts  (Kombucha, Diana Allen, MS, CNS)!

8.) Bottled Kombucha at the store, costs over $4.00 a bottle! That’s $48 a box of 12 bottles! At home, you can make the same brew for as little as $1 for that whole box of 12 bottles! That’s a big savings.

Click HERE for directions on how to make Kombucha!

Kombucha mother culture, SCOBY fermented in a crock

My back up butcha mother that I keep in the refrigerator for emergency’s

Sources:

“Kombucha” by Diana Allen MS, CNS. Woodland Publishing.

“Flavored Kombucha, A Home Brewer’s Guide” WAPF Journal Food Feature, by Dori Oliver

“Kombucha tea producer reworks formula to reduce alcohol content” by Tavaner K. Bushman. Oct 20, 2010. Medill Reports, Chicago

This blog post is linked to:

The Prairie Homestead at Homestead Barn Hop

Fight Back Friday’s at Food Renegade

Party Wave at Holistic Squid

Tasty Traditions at Cultured Palate

Small Footprint Fridays at Small Footprint Family

Kelly the Kitchen Kop at Real Food Wednesday