Kombucha

From RationalWiki

Kombucha is a drink made by fermenting black tea with a mish-mash of assorted fungus, mold, yeast, and bacteria that is allowed to float on top of the tea ^[1] until the tea ferments.

This congealed clump of slimy little beasties that forms on top of the tea is called a "kombucha mushroom"; however, it is not in any meaningful sense a mushroom, but a polyculture of various microorganisms. What critters wind up in said clump of gunk varies from batch to batch and place to place, but acetobacteria (creating vinegar) and yeasts of various species seem to be a constant. Thus the fermented kombucha usually contains a mix of several vinegars, a small amount of alcohol, "live cultures", and who knows what else. It usually has a slight carbonation.

Unsurprisingly, kombucha is a YUCC (Yet-another Untested Cancer Cure) that also cures everything else.^{Do You Believe That?} Specifically, it is touted by its promoters as being able to cure arthritis, AIDS, asthma, bronchitis, flu, warts, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.^[2]

Truth be told, polycultures can be very difficult to manage, and kombucha consumers always run the risk of the organisms within being knocked out of equilibrium or being contaminated. If you must, you are probably just as well off finding the slimiest, nastiest pool of standing water, preferaby one with dead bugs and fungus floating on top, and drinking that. One of these days a batch of kombucha is going to wind up contaminated with e. coli or anthrax or something like that. It hasn't happened yet ^[3] but if you don't want to take the chance of being the first to find out when it does, try this recipe for fake kombucha instead.

Contents 1 Better live cultured foods to play with 2 See also 3 External links 4 Footnotes

[edit] Better live cultured foods to play with

If you're into the whole live culture thing but don't feel like messing with squicky and potentially toxic polycultures of questionable provenance, RationalWiki offers the following list of better live cultured foods to have around:

• bottle-conditioned beer
• yogurt
• sourdough starter (see also [1][2])
• Blue cheese

[edit] See also

• Fad diet
• Food woo

[edit] External links

• If for some reason you still want to try to make the stuff... See the Wikipedia article on Kombucha.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ It is superficially similar to the yeast cake on the surface of a batch of fermenting beer, or the acetobacter culture in a container of maturing vinegar.
2. ↑ And probably everything from sunburn to post-traumatic stress disorder to computer viruses!
3. ↑ Or has it?

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