Kombucha has been popular everywhere for the last few years. There has been so much hype to this drink and you can easily find it available anywhere. Regardless of it being made fresh or bought from a store, this fermented tea is not just delicious, but also healthy for your gut health.
What is Kombucha?
Kombucha is a fizzy drink that is made with tea. In general, most people would describe it as a drink that is both sour and slightly sweet. Nowadays, there are many different types of kombucha and therefore it can also taste floral, fruity or even spicy.
Even though it has started to become popular in the last few years, it actually has existed for around 2000 years. It was first documented in China and then it spread towards the rest of the world. Nowadays, it is represented as a popular health and energy drink.
Kombucha is basically made with 3 ingredients: black tea, yeast and sugar. However, you can also find many kombucha drinks that have additional ingredients added to spice it up a little bit more. After the ingredients are mixed, the drink is left for around a week or more. It is during this time where acid, bacteria and a little bit of alcohol is formed in the drink. This is known as fermentation and is considered as a similar process to how foods such as kimchi and yogurt are made.
Kombucha contains a variety of common yeasts, acetic acid bacteria and lactic acid bacteria. It uses the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) to process the tea into kombucha. This process of fermentation leads to the carbonation of the tea and creating the sweet-sour flavour while also providing it with metabolites.
Drinking Kombucha for Gut Health
Not only does fermentation help food last longer, it also helps provide kombucha with more antioxidants, probiotics and live bacteria. This can help boost the health of your intestinal cells and also improve your immune system and even aid your body in the digestion of food.
Kombucha is rich in several species of lactic acid bacteria that can have potential probiotic benefits. Probiotics help provide your gut with health bacteria that can help improve aspects of your digestion. For example, there has been evidence that suggest that probiotic supplements can help cure antibiotic diarrhoea. This type of diarrhoea is caused when people take antibiotics for a while and unfortunately has killed many of their natural bacteria in their guts and thereby shifting their gut balance and allowing harmful bacterias to exist.
Some other studies also suggest that probiotics might have an impact against inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. However, further research is still needed to fully understand their effectiveness.
How Much Kombucha Should You Drink?
When it comes to how much kombucha you should drink, there still is not really a standard suggestion. As always, you can go overboard with drinking everything (even water). Too much of anything is bad for you. In general, it is recommended you should drink only about 100ml to 350ml of kombucha a day.
This means that sometimes an average bottle of kombucha you can buy might exceed your daily amount. Drinking too much might lead to negative side effects such as nausea, headache and GI distress. In addition, pregnant and children should consider avoiding kombucha.