Kombucha Tea

An effervescent, fizzy drink, Kombucha Tea serves as a functional food, meaning it helps promote certain health benefits or prevents certain diseases from occurring...

Unfortunately there are greedy individuals and companies looking to prey on people with health concerns by exploiting the popularity of Kombucha and the ignorance of the public. They attempt to sell other forms of Kombucha that simply do not work and are marketed as the cheaper, and unbelievably, more convenient option over brewing Kombucha Tea the traditional way. Some of these products aren't even cheap but are marketed on the supposed convenience option targeting people ignorant about Kombucha so that they end up paying higher prices.

Only in the recent years has Kombucha Tea started to be bottled commercially and by most, including myself, it is considered to be a great beverage. However, the commercially bottled tea often sells upwards to four dollars, per bottle! This is eight times the cost of what it would cost for you to easily home brew this remarkable beverage; as has traditionally been done for thousands of years.

Commercially bottled unpasteurized Kombucha is often more carbonated and that is not a health benefit. Further still, if bottled and stored too long before being sold the raw tea often tastes too sour or acidic because the living pro-biotic bacteria and yeast of Kombucha continue the fermentation of the tea even in the bottle. The longer it is left to ferment the sourer or acidic it becomes. Some commercial brewers of Kombucha will sell a pasteurized tea to overcome this problem but once pasteurized most pro-biotic benefits to drinking the tea are destroyed.

One example of a fraudulent Kombucha product are the Kombucha Tea tablets, or capsules, as sold on some Kombucha web sites, by Internet vendors of health products, and in brick & mortar health food store chains. Just in the sense of logic, the only way to realize the health benefits of Kombucha Tea is to drink the actual tea; tablets/capsules simply do not have the same effect, if any, that the tea does. In fact, there is no actual evidence that properly links these supposed beneficial "convenience products" and any kind of health benefit what-so-ever.

Many Kombucha web sites market what are known as continuous brewing systems. The problem with these, besides the fact that they are extremely expensive, is that Kombucha Tea requires brewing much like beer or wine. Continuous brewing systems are not used to ferment these kinds of beverages. Brewing continuously contributes to the over-fermentation of the tea resulting in the tea becoming too acidic or sour to the taste. The profit incentive is the main reason continuous brewing systems are being sold and even if you wanted to continuous brew Kombucha it is not necessary that you purchase any such expensive brewing system to do so.

Another terrible offense is the sale of supposed Kombucha extracts with claims of health benefits. So-called extract is really just regular Kombucha Tea that has gone sour and vinegary, sold for high prices in tiny amounts. This is nothing more than a consumer rip-off. The same can be said for tea bags being sold that are labeled with the name Kombucha. You simply cannot dry up the metabolic acids and living pro-biotic bacteria and yeasts then put them in a bag and expect them render any more of a health benefit than eating cardboard.

Traditionally delicious home brewed Kombucha Tea is fermented using what is called a Kombucha mushroom; it is not a mushroom but only popularly called that. Many of the marketers on the Internet who sell Kombucha mushrooms attempt to increase their sales by advertising that their particular strain of mushrooms are better than a competitor because they are larger, organic, or supposedly the original strain of Kombucha. This is nothing more than sales hype. Smaller mushrooms ferment a new batch of prepared tea in the exact same way as larger mushrooms do; by introducing Kombucha bacteria and yeast into the tea causing the tea to ferment.

Different strains of Kombucha have never been categorized and no studies have ever been conducted to prove any one strain, if they exist, is more potent than another. Such a study to be valid would have to involve tracking thousands of individuals drinking different strains of Kombucha Tea over scores of years to determine any overall health differences between groups. Such a study would be very cost prohibitive.

Understand the different scams that marketers try to pull, and you will not find yourself taken advantage of, or disappointed, if and when you decide to start drinking this amazing health elixir called Kombucha Tea.

Following is a list of some companies marketing bogus Kombucha products on the Internet. Do you really want to do business with firms that wish to rip you off?

GetKombucha.com

In the case of GetKombucha.com, the owner (a twit by the name of David Lindenbaum) was caught stealing my copyrighted customer's testimonials, he had been publishing them on his web site as his customer's testimonials, and now he brags about being a trusted source even as he continues, in my opinion, to rip his customers off by selling bogus products! He even had the gall to threaten me with legal or punitive action if I did not remove this information from my web site.

HappyHerbalist.com

YogiProducts.com

Livamed.com

IHerb.com

VitaDigest.com

Kombucha2000.com

HerbsPro.com

AnahataBalance.com

Pronaturainc.com

Amazon.com

evitamins.com