IT'S HARD TO PASS UP a shot at perfect health, even if it involves a blob of stuff that looks like pond scum. So when a friend told Deborah Burkett about a miracle tea called kombucha - made from a slimy fungus - she was game to try it.
She took home the fungus her friend gave her and began brewing it in a bowl filled with water, sugar and tea bags. She put the bowl in a quiet, cool place "away from bad vibrations and loud noises," as instructed in the literature her friend gave her along with the fungus. After a week or so the fungus had grown as wide as the bowl, and the tea was ready to drink.That was three weeks ago, and Burkett has been brewing and drinking ever since. Now, she says, she no longer has sore knees and sore muscles when she works out. She has more energy and she sleeps like a baby. "I'm committed to it for life," she says.
And she is hardly alone. There are kom-buchas multiplying in kitchens across Salt Lake City and America these days, testimony to the human longing for immortality, or at least an end to gray hair and indigestion.
The claims for kombucha tea promise that and much more: cures for acne, allergies, arthritis, baldness, cataracts, fatigue, insomnia, wrinkles, AIDS, cancer and osteo-porosis.
Of course, kombucha isn't the first elixir to promise this kind of panacea. But kom-bucha, unlike other magic potions (aloe vera, wheat grass), has become a true cross-over hit, spanning the gap between health-food fanaticism and mainstream America.
The reason may stem from the nature of the yeast. It looks like a festering omelet, and it smells like vinegar. But it has two redeeming qualities: For most people it produces an immediate sense of well-being. And it's basically free.
If you take care of your kombucha it can last you a lifetime. ("Talk to it, channel some good energy to it now and then," instructs the photocopied literature popular in kom-bucha circles. Some people even give their fungus a name, much like you would a pet). And each time the kombucha brews, the mother fungus clones a baby fungus underneath - the perfect gift for a friend.
If you prefer, you can buy the fungus (also called Manchurian Mushroom, even though it's not really a mushroom) and the already-brewed tea. Laurel Farms of Studio City, Calif., sells one blob for $50. It will also give a "substantial discount" to "those challenged by cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other catastrophic illnesses," according to its answering machine.
Kathy's Ranch Market sells the tea, already brewed and shipped in from California, for $4.99 a pint. The other day the store had received a case of 48 bottles at 2 p.m. and had sold two-thirds of them by 6. New Frontiers also sells the tea, as well as a mushroom kit for $44.
A recent ad in the Thrifty Nickel, tucked in among notices for used wedding rings and 1980 Chevettes, offers "Manchurian mushrooms or Kombucha, for the naturally fermented drink." A call to the West Jordan woman who placed the ad reveals that she is actually giving away the fungi for free. She says she just couldn't bear to throw them away.
There seems to be a communal, almost messianic spirit to the whole thing. The New York Times calls the phenomenon a "New Age chain letter."
But not everybody is sold on kombucha.
The Iowa Department of Health, with help from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration, is investigating the death of a Iowa kombucha drinker in April.
According to Kevin Teale of the Iowa Department of Health, the 59-year-old woman died of a perforated bowel and had acidosis. A second Iowa tea drinker, a woman from the same town of Spencer, was hospitalized with acidosis and suffered a heart stoppage but lived. Acidosis, a condition characterized by excessive acid in the blood and tissues, can be caused by an accumulation of acidic products. It can occur in chronic diabetics; the woman who died did have diabetes, but the other woman did not.
Whether the tea was the culprit or just an innocent bystander in the death and the near-death is not clear. The FDA is doing a chemical analysis, brewing more batches from the fungi belonging to both women.
"Given the interest in this, the FDA wants to make sure they're very thorough," says Teale.
Even before the Iowa death, the FDA had issued a caution: "FDA studies have found no evidence of contamination of kombucha products fermented under sterile conditions. . . . However, the agency still has concerns that home-brewed versions of this tea manufactured under non-sterile conditions may be prone to microbiological contamination."
Contamination is also what worries mycologist Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti, a gourmet mushroom company in Olympia, Wash.
Kombucha's symbiotic combination of bacteria and yeast - brewed at room temperature and under what Stamets calls the kind of "benign neglect" that most people employ in the kitchen - can be a breeding ground for unwelcome molds (the average room has 10,000 particles per million in the air, while a sterile laboratory has 100). Stamets is particularly worried about aspergillus, a mold that can sometimes be carcinogenic and poisonous. Some molds, he says, are hard to see.
"I say don't drink the tea," Stamets told the author of an article published in the People With AIDS Coalition newsletter.
A new edition of "Medicinal Mushrooms" by Christopher Hobbs suggests that if the fungus falls apart when handled it is best to discard it.
Literature passed along to new kombucha converts stresses the precautions necessary for brewing the tea: wash hands with anti-bacterial soap, use only clean glass bowls, allow no contact with metal (even jewelry), cover the mixture with cheesecloth while brewing.
In addition to contamination, kombucha detractors worry that, because the tea appears to contain natural antibiotics, its daily use might foster resistant germs.
Kombucha drinkers point out that people have been drinking the stuff for at least 2,000 years with no apparent danger (according to Hobbs, the first recorded use was 221 B.C. in China, where it was called "the Remedy for Immortality.")
The FDA and others, including nutritionist Joan Benson of the University of Utah, point out that there have been no scientific studies that show that kombucha is effective as a cure for anything.
But most kombucha drinkers would disagree. Since she started drinking the tea less than two months ago, Nancy Morgan has found that her bursitis has disappeared, age spots are diminishing, the gray hair at her temples is gone.
Mary Kay Bergen used to have to crawl to her coffeepot each morning but now has enough energy to go swimming before breakfast. Helen McKay of Santaquin, who is 81, says that in the six months she has been drinking the tea her hair has gotten thicker, and the last time she went to the eye doctor he told her that her macular degeneration had improved.
The testimonials continue to mount, as do the reservations among health officials. In the meantime, some people are even giving kombucha to their pets.