Is Celebrity Favorite Kombucha Really a Health and Anti-Aging Cure?

It costs just a few bucks per bottle in your local supermarket and is claimed to reverse the aging process and cure everything from baldness to cancer. For pennies, it can even be brewed at home, if you don’t mind a little slime.

So who wouldn’t join Madonna, Halle Berry, Lindsay Lohan, and Gwyneth Paltrow on the kombucha bandwagon, especially now that new scientific studies appear to support all those claims? A sparkling golden fermented beverage that packs a massive antioxidant punch and looks and tastes like a cross between Champagne and vinegar, kombucha is now a $150-million-a-year industry that’s growing exponentially, despite worries about possible side effects and health risks.

Comprising acetic acid, malic acid, butyric acid, oxalic acid, lactic acid, and a teensy bit of alcohol, kombucha has been a standard refresher, alleged hangover cure, and all-around home remedy in Asia and Eastern Europe for millennia. Its origins and etymology are veiled in mystery: cha is Chinese for “tea,” but debates rage over those first two syllables. Some say kombucha was brought to Russia by Manchurian traders. Others trace it to southern China, Korea, and Japan. Some go so far as to call it ancient.

Is Celebrity Favorite Kombucha Really a Health and Anti-Aging Cure? – The Daily Beast

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