Kombucha Your Good Self and Get Yourself Good
Sometimes a joyous wellness drink enters your life and changes the way you feel about soft drinks that pack a pun-cha. That’s the way kombucha rolls.
Ever desired an artisan soft drink that feels sophisticatedly grown up, is wellness functional and isn’t full of sugars or sweeteners? Yup -us, too! Could kombucha be the drink to scratch that itch? We think so!
Ancient and Modern
It’s as old as time and as fresh as now, that’s the role that kombucha has carved out for itself. As a tea-based beverage, it’s cha-cha-charming. This little darling is at once modern nutraceutical but, equally, its existence was documented in Manchuria, now NorthEast China, over 2000 years ago when it was given the monica, Elixir of Immortality, by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Another ancient legend tells of a Korean doctor, Dr Kombu (ah, ok, that makes sense now - kombu-cha!), healing the Japanese Emperor Inkyo’s digestive problems. What’s betting that Emperor Inkyo’s gut microbiome was off, hey? Because, if there’s something wrong with our gut microbiome, there’s something wrong with us, according to Dr. Guilia Enders in her best seller, Gut. And aren’t we all waking up to that, brothers and sisters! Science agrees that probiotics are noteworthy for ‘Balancing and restoration of the gut microbiota, protection against pathogens, immunomodulation, and maintenance of intestinal barrier integrity’ [*] and, as the world increasingly wakes up to fermented food and drinks, kombucha, with its synbiotic mix of pre- and pro- biotics, can support our guts fighting the good fight. Hurrah!
You had us at elixir!
The fermented tea drink sashayed into Europe during the last century, its longevity testimony to its refreshing and sophisticated flavours. It was given a boost in popularity in the second half of the century when a study in Switzerland [*] compared its health benefits to those of live yoghurt - that’ll be because of its pre- and pro- biotic properties, of course. By the 90s, it had gathered a mythical status for its seeming abilities to benefit the immune system. Turns out, when the boffins unravelled it, that status isn’t mere myth: the gut bacteria kombucha supports play an important role in our first line of immune-defence - our gut microbiome. Its curative potential is once again famed today and its popularity continues to grow, as do the scientific studies on its functional properties. All in all, exciting times for us and kombucha!
Time for WillPowders to spill the tea
With all this ancient and modern provenance, it seemed imperative, given that WillPowderers are no friend to sugar or sweeteners, that we magic up a sugar- and sweetener-free blend so you can enjoy all the benefits without compromising what kombucha can do for your gut. At WillPowders, none of those dreaded S words get past our keen senses or into our products! And so, with the abracadabra of our wizards in product development, we brought our Fresh, Warm and Light Kombucha to life to liven up your lives and especially those of your gut bacteria. We even did it in innovative (Will)powder form, an encapsulated powdered kombucha (patented, don’t you know) that keeps more of the good stuff in where other kombucha drinks might lose their pizazz, and helps to feed your good gut bacteria with the fibre it loves too. In this way, you can chic up your cold beverage life and gird your guts to boot.
Where TF did we go to make this happen?
We knew that the tea in our kombucha had to be as pure as possible - no rascally chemicals and pesticides here. Thanks, but no thanks! We decided on teas from the Alishan Mountains of Taiwan. These mountainous regions are rural and so the air and soil are protected from industrialisation. In order to survive the cold overnight temperatures and the winters, these tea plants have to develop mighty root systems and so pesticides wouldn’t do the plants or its growers any favours at all. In fact, the tea that we bring you in our kombucha is fertilised with the yeasts and bacterias that a little while ago, were actually helping to make the kombucha. It’s a case of circular sustainability. See - we’re always thinking!
It ain’t easy growing tea up in them-there-hills, due to the altitude. It’s a long, slow process, but definitely worthwhile as that’s what gives the tea its superior flavours. Some might say these high mountain teas are the champagne of teas! High mountain teas are renowned for having less bitterness and more complexity and sweetness in their flavour spectrum. This is particularly true of Alishan High Mountain teas. Delicious! To amplify the flavours of the fresh leaves, like a fine wine, we also put charcoal-roasted small leaf tea to work. Depth of flavour being our aim. Your brain loves a layered flavour to keep it intrigued which leads to better brain satisfaction. We are most happy to oblige.
From cha to kombu-cha-cha-cha!
While your average cup of tea has benefits for the gut, fermenting tea amps up these benefits and chucks in a few more, just for you. It's a case of probiotics a-go-go! Plus, the fermentation process packs in a whole new punch of flavour layers and, suddenly, borrowing phrases from the world of fine wine is necessary to do justice to the taste. While we love a functional drink, we have to remember the sensory experience of sipping it, right? No having to hold your nose and hope for the best with WillPowders! Remember, we eat for health, but Mother Nature made us seek out variety in flavour for pleasure. WillPowders won’t deny and deprive you pleasure - our kombuchas work with your hardwiring of being a flavour and olfactory hedonist! And, as a rule, we won’t adulterate your pleasures with nasties! This is one of the reasons we think our WillPowders kombucha serves you well. Let us feed the pleasure centres in your brain and throw in a pretty good amount of potential gut health for good measure.
Did you know that good gut bacteria take up the spaces in your gut where the bad bacteria would like to get in and take up squatter’s rights? Having a gut full of the bacteria that love you (because you are their fabulous host, after all) means there’s far less chance of the hostile ones moving in and staking an acreage. We’ve created a more indepth look at kombucha, you and your microbiome here. WillPowders Kombucha won’t spike your blood sugars and so will help keep your bloodstream in that gorgeous homeostasis it enjoys - no peaks or troughs of sugar and insulin, more of the Goldilocks zone for you. And, we’re sure your tastebuds will be dancing to the tune of our Fresh, Warm and Light kombucha range and your gut flora might well throw you a dance party, too! Fab-u-lous!
Get Fresh with green tea kombucha
Fresh is crafted from the green tea grown in the Alishan mountains. The green tea of the region is famed for its floral notes, sometimes described as akin to gardenia or orchids. A bouquet in a cup, ooh, la la! WillPowders Fresh Kombucha is packed with polyphenols, linked with lowering blood sugars and the risk of heart disease and promoting healthy digestion and brain function. This kombucha actively detoxifies and flushes out toxins. As a bonus, green tea kombucha has been linked to positively improving oral microbiota [*] - after all, the mouth is where our gut starts! Green tea antioxidant catechins are also associated with anti-viral, anti-bacterial, anti-aging, anti-cancer and hypotensive (that’s lowering your blood pressure for the uninitiated) effects [*]. Fresh is great for when you’re feeling a little ugh and you want to work with that feeling of out with the old and in with the new!
Are you feeling Warm?
Are you feeling Warm?
Our Warm kombucha is crafted from the finest high mountain green and black tea leaves for a silky, buttery mouthfeel. With WillPowders Warm Kombucha, you’ll get all those lovely sweet floral notes from the green tea and a tickle of ripe plum acidity from the black tea. You might even detect some warm, lingering, soft honey. Oh, yes, please! It’s a tea-ny little marriage made in heaven. The WillPowders warm beauty of a kombucha actively supports metabolism - you know, those processes which create your energy.
Alongside polyphenols and catechins offering their health favours, with black tea you’re also being treated to flavonoids and theaflavins. Flavanols may lower the risk of stroke, apparent in this study and lower the risk of coronary heart disease [*]. Theaflavins only reveal their magic once tea is fermented, and get to work preventing one of our modern diet’s most prevalent diseases - metabolic syndrome. It has been suggested that, ‘Theaflavins, … in fermented teas such as black tea, are advantageous in preventing and treating Metabolic Syndrome through modulation on the lipid and glucose metabolism, and the gut microbiota [*]’. All in all, Warm - you can cuddle our bellies anytime!
Give it up for Light. Ooh la la!
Light is crafted from the finest Alishan Mountain green and oolong tea leaves. Seriously, if you aren’t drinking fermented oolong tea for the name of the tea alone, then where’s your head at?! You’ll get the delicate, sweet, fresh florals and the creamy texture and, your palette might detect a subtle nuttiness. Bonus! Known for centuries for helping digestion, the oolong tea in Light has all the benefits of catechins and theaflavins plus thearubigins. Thearubigins are another of tea’s antioxidant properties and, science suggests, ‘thearubigins should be considered a significant constituent of human diet, being simultaneously one of the most important non-nutrients’ [*]. So, let’s help you get some of them in you! If you want to throw all the benefits that fermented tea has at yourself, then Light is the tea for you as it has the triple of polyphenols, theaflavins, and thearubigins. All good things come in threes!
Now let’s go do some SCOBY snacks! SCOBY? WTF is that?
When it comes to fermentation, to make kombucha, you need a SCOBY snack (ok, so it’s often a disc, we just couldn't resist the pun!). SCOBY stands for a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast held in an insoluble cellulose material, sometimes referred to as The Kombucha Mother. And yes, when it comes to creating kombucha, she really is the goddess. It’s the combination of the bioactive ingredients in the tea and the SCOBY that give you double-bubble when it comes to the functionality of our kombucha. The bacteria and yeasts are the seductresses that go to work teasing the fructose in the steeped tea to become functional, gut loving kombucha. Those yeast and bacterial sirens swimming in the tea will go to work for a fortnight or so, creating an almost alchemical transformation, giving us the distinctive sweet, tangy, acidic taste associated with kombuchas.
Prebiotics? Probiotics? Postbiotics? Actually, symbiotics are our jam!
When The Kombucha Mother’s work is done, our kombucha undergoes an ultra heat treatment. You might ask why we heat treat the kombucha’s microbiota at this point and we know that it seems like sacrilege, if we cling to the old idea that probiotics, once dead, are pointless. But, fret not! Science tells us that this is not the case: ‘heat-killed probiotics can contain inactive bacterial cells and/or metabolites that are produced by live probiotics … , which have been shown to effectively modulate the gut microbiome and improve aspects of health’ [*]. Let’s be 2024 functional food forward and beyond about this, the science now tells us that what are beginning to be termed as ‘postbiotics’ (it’s not yet an officially adopted term), demonstrate ‘that nonviable bacteria and associated fractions could better traverse through or around mucus and stimulate several cells more consistently than live cells of the same type while also exhibiting similar potential to positively impact health when compared to live cells’ [*]. You see, at WillPowders, if the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, we don’t squeeze! In this case, we are certain we are bringing you the familiar benefits of probiotics while also standing on the cutting edge of where next for your gut microbiome.
It’s at this point that we use a patented fibre encapsulation technique to preserve all that kombucha goodness. Those functional properties that were there on the very day that our Fresh, Warm and Light Kombucha Powders were freeze dried are there when you play mixologist and reanimate their deliciousness. The fibre acts as a prebiotic, providing the food for your good gut bacteria to flourish. We also added in a healthy dollop of the probiotic L. paracasei Lpc-37 at this point.
Preserving as many active compounds as possible is something not all other kombucha purveyors do, but, rest assured, at WillPowders, we SCOBY SCOBY do!
SOD-like activity
Our kombucha could help with that all important job of mopping up free radicals due to its superoxide dismutase (SOD) like activity. Free radicals might sound like a trendy rock band, but, alas, they are not. Free radicals have been linked through studies to a whole horrible list of diseases such as diabetes and inflammatory disorders. They are thought to accelerate ageing and so seem to herald in degeneration associated with age. Antioxidants can donate an electron to oxygen molecules that have split into single atoms that have unpaired electrons - these are our free radical culprits. Without antioxidants to make up the electron numbers, those single atoms of oxygen can bond with more unsuitable molecules, causing oxidative stress which can damage the body’s cells. They are linked with causing wrinkles as a visible sign of their rampage, but, on the inside, where we can’t see, they have been blamed for autoimmune and central nervous system diseases. Free radicals are still under the microscope of science to see what they are and how they operate so, in the meantime, a drink with SOD-like activity might just possibly be a future proof insurance policy.
So, whether you choose to romance the flavours of Fresh, Warm or Light, or take each of them on as several new lovers, there’ll be no roller coaster sugar spikes, but there could be support for your immune and metabolic systems as well as antioxidant properties and you’ll be getting that gut flora partying. What’s not to like?
Further Reading:
Read this ScienceDirect article on Kombucha for a broader scope on its history.
To read more about the benefits of green tea to oral microbiota try here
Beneficial Properties of Green Tea National Library of Medicine tells you about the benefits of green tea
For more on theaflavins, try Beneficial Effects of Theaflavins on Metabolic Syndrome: From Molecular Evidence to Gut Microbiome
You can read about metabolic syndrome here.
To read more about the emerging futures of our relationship with synbiotics and postbiotics, try It’s Dead! Can Postbiotics Really Help Performance and Recovery? A Systematic Review by Kerksick, Moon and Jäger
Disclaimer
Our blogs are written with love in the hope that they go some way in helping you feel like the rockstar you are, and whilst we do our due diligence, research like maniacs and fact check our stuff, we know everyone’s journey is different. They are intended to educate and empower you, not usurp medical advice. We would never advise you to stop, adjust, or modify any prescription medication without the direct supervision of your healthcare practitioner, but don’t be afraid to talk to your doctor about your new found knowledge, brought to you by the marvels of nature because they don't know everything!
