Subject: Kombucha mushrooms

From: [email-masked] (Robert Woodhouse)
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 18:07:16 GMT

"I just inherited a baby Kombucha from my friend.  I am interested in finding out
any information that you might have regarding what this could do for me.  I know
how to prepare the tea and I have started drinking it.  I'd just like to hear
>from  others who have had experience with it."

Above is from a person in my organization who is using this "mushroom".
Does anyone out there have info on what this criter is scientifically
and does it have any nasty side effects or interesting chemical constituents?
Thanks for any info that is forth coming.

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From: [email-masked] (Ian B Staples)
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 1995 11:18:08 GMT

In sci.bio.botany [email-masked] (Robert Woodhouse) quotes & writes:

>"I just inherited a baby Kombucha from my friend.
[ ... ]
>"I know how to prepare the tea and I have started drinking it. ... " 

>and does it have any nasty side effects or interesting chemical constituents?

This whole modern(?) trend to swallowing "traditional" plant foods
and medicines is intriguing.  People go off their brain over vanishingly
small probabilities of side effects from synthetic drugs, pesticides, etc.
yet happily quaff down virtually untested potents and other "natural"
products.  It costs a 100 million dollars to put a new aspro on the market,
but toxicity tests on natural products are done for peanuts, if at all.

It seems to be accepted that if it's "traditional" (i.e. consumed by some
ethnic group somewhere in the world) then it's safe.  No one seems concerned
by the fact that people in many of these groups die before they are old,
or suffer from chronic liver disease or oesophageal cancer or whatever -- at
least some of which problems have already been traced to the plants they eat.

Oh well, guess we're only human.

Cheers,  Ian S.

-- 

Ian Staples                        E-mail : [email-masked]
c/- P.O. Box 1054 MAREEBA          Phone  : +61 (0)70 928 555 Home 924 847
Queensland Australia 4880            Fax  : +61 (0)70 923 593   "   "   "

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From: [email-masked] (Whitey)
Date: 10 Sep 1995 14:44:47 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, 
[email-masked] says...
>but toxicity tests on natural products are done for peanuts, if at all.

One of the reasons "traditional" plant foods and medicines don't get tested is 
that they contain a pharmacopia of chemicals that likely interect to achieve 
any medicinal affect.  Drug companies aren't going to test them because they 
can't patent a natural compound and it is even more expensive and time 
consuming to test suites of chemicals, which would then be more difficult to 
synthetically produce, than the great western, golden bullet, single chemical, 
cure all.  So, there are probably many, many traditional treatments that are 
valuble and undescribed because they don't conform to normal western testing 
practices.  Of course, because diffrent groups and individuals have different 
sensitivities they are more likely to react negativly to some part of the 
plants pharmacopia then they are to a tab of asprin (another traditional 
drug!).  
I hope this thread does not deteriorate much farther from s.b.botany! so I 
won't comment on the other social, economic, political, and personal aspects 
of your comments, good or bad.
Captain Cook's crew seem to have enjoyed their "spurce beer" brewed from some 
of your Aurucarias or Podocarps. (you happen to know for sure what they used, 
would you?)