Kombucha is My Kool-Aid
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Among the Experience Life staff, we joke that you’ve got to drink the Kool-Aid. Which I admit sounds a little (lot) cultish, but we just mean that to truly thrive at our jobs, each of us must embrace the type of healthy lifestyle the magazine promotes. Which is not to say we don’t have plenty of unhealthy habits or off days. Really off days — one afternoon a few weeks back, Anjula, Laine and myself all realized that so far that day, we’d primarily eaten chocolate and cheese. But I digress.
A couple years back, I saw a flashy new drink called GT’s Kombucha (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) on the Whole Foods shelves. It looked delicious — bright purple liquid, pretty packaging, health claims involving probiotics and amino acids, with no added ingredients — 95 percent raw, organic kombucha (whatever that was) and 5 percent fruit juice.
Susceptible as I am to the marketing of actually healthy things (like chia seeds!), not to mention purple drinks, I was sold. (Does it sound like I’m continuing to digress? I’m not — I’m actually going somewhere with this.)
ONCE I GOT THE THING HOME, I further investigated — if by “investigated” you mean “read the bottle,” which said:
Kombucha is a handmade Chinese tea that is delicately cultured for 30 days. During this time, essential nutrients form like: Active Enzymes, Viable Probiotics, Amino Acids, Antioxidants, and Polyphenols. All of these combine to create an elixir that immediately works with the body to restore balance and vitality.
What else did I need to know? I shook the bottle hard to stir up the sediment that had formed in the bottom and started to crack the thing open … only to have it fizz out all over the place. OK, so … it’s carbonated (or fermented, rather). Missed that somehow.
And then I noticed that my hands smelled vinegary, as if I’d just dyed Easter eggs. (Sure enough, the process of making kombucha is essentially the old-world process of making vinegar.) This did not bode well, and indeed, when you want a grape-tasting treat, kombucha would not come to mind. So I poured most of the bottle out and thought that was that.
But kombucha kept cropping up. In Experience Life’s Inside Out (Health and Beauty Bits) department in July/August 2006, which means our editor in chief, Pilar, is a fan. In an August 2007 interview with comedian Tina Fey on the Late Show With David Letterman (minutes 4:10 to 6:02 are devoted entirely to Fey’s kombucha habit). And before a planning meeting last month, it seemed like all the EL staffers were comparing notes on the best ways to drink it. (Laine’s suggestion? Cut it with water and fill your glass with ice.)
I mean, the stuff is supposed to improve digestion, detox the liver and boost energy, so I see the appeal, and just recently, I decided to try it again.
Maybe it’s just the power of suggestion at work, but I’m on board now. Kombucha is my Kool-Aid.
