Recently I’ve been asked about the sugar, alcohol and caffeine content of kombucha, so here are my answers.
Firstly, there is no such thing as completely sugar-free kombucha.
While kombucha can confer health benefits through its anti-oxidant and probiotic properties (it contains good gut bacteria), not all kombuchas are created equal.
To make kombucha you need three ingredients:
- tea
- SCOBY (an acronym for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast)
- sugar.
Sugar feeds the yeast and bacteria so that they multiply and result in fermentation. Most of the sugar is consumed during the fermentation process but a small amount of sugar remains. This is a lot less than in cordials, juices and soft drinks. Some brands state that they test their kombucha to make certain there is no sugar left after fermentation. This means there must be negligible sugar and it’s fair to say the drink is sugar-free.
However, depending on the brand, some kombucha makers then ADD sugar — with or without various flavourings — to make the kombucha taste more appealing. I have seen kombuchas with up to 28 grams (7 teaspoons) of sugar per 240mL serving. Yikes! Read labels carefully and choose brands that have no added sugar or artificial flavours. Check the grams of sugar per serving to work out how many teaspoons you are consuming. One teaspoon of sugar is approximately 4 grams. The World Health Organisation recommends no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar per day for an adult woman, and no more than 8 teaspoons of sugar for a man (very generous in my opinion!), so it’s up to you to choose how you want to consume your daily 6 or 8-teaspoon allowance. Drinking sugar on an empty stomach leads to much faster absorption and a greater spike in blood sugar levels than eating sugar at the end of a meal.
The other thing to be aware of is that many kombucha makers who call themselves sugar-free nonetheless use artificial sweeteners such as erythritol and stevia. I am not a fan of artificial sweeteners (I have a chapter in Can Adventure Prevent Dementia? about sweeteners called ‘You can’t fool your brain’) because artificial sweeteners train our tastebuds to want sweet foods, and they have a negative impact on our gut bacteria. This is ironic given that people drink kombucha to improve their gut health.
In addition, a byproduct of fermentation is small amounts of alcohol. Whilst for most people this is negligible, kombucha is not recommended for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding because different brands allow different trace amounts of alcohol.
Kombucha also contains a little caffeine because its main ingredient is tea. The dose of caffeine in a cup of kombucha is about 5 times less than in a cup of tea, but if you’re very sensitive to caffeine, even this amount may disrupt sleep if consumed in the latter half of the day.
On another note, if you suffer from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), kombucha may exacerbate your symptoms because it contains a class of carbohydrates called FODMAPs. Drunk in very large amounts, kombucha can cause anyone to experience bloating, diarrhoea or stomach cramps.
So what’s my conclusion? A serving (about 240mL) of good quality, well-fermented kombucha made with organic tea leaves and no additives can be good for gut health. Choose kombucha in dark glass bottles because this protects the probiotics from damage by light. If you brew kombucha at home, only use glass containers because chemicals from ceramics or lead containers can contaminate your beverage.
Cheers!
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who likes to drink kombucha.
