Are Health Trends Cyclical?

I had the pleasure to share my knowledge with Ryuji, who was writing an article at Taylor's university on the topic of kombucha. It was indeed a learning experience for both of us.  

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the kombucha revolution is also making a comeback in Japan and goes by the name of koucha-kinoko. 

Below is his published article. Happy reading!

B Y R Y U J I  S A K U M A

  

“I hope more and more people adopt kombucha especially current generation", said Boon,   the founder of a kombucha shop, Scoby Farm Homemade Kombucha in Malaysia.

What is kombucha ?
Kombucha is a probiotic drink, fermented sugar tea by a chunk of fungi   which  is  called SCOBY(Symbolic Culture Of Bacteria & Yeast).    The fermentation process takes 7-10 days. 

The drink could be made of any kinds of tea such as black, green and oolong   one. According to Boon, the basic taste is like an apple-cider. The flavor is             diverse for example-strawberry, mango and rosehip.

How does  it affect your health ? 

Boon said the beverage helps detoxification with the full of bacteria, so  you can mainly improve your digestion which contributes to general well being.   In addition, the tea has an expectation of that you can have better hair, skin, nail and immunity indirectly. 

However, even though it is a fermented drink, certain amount of sugar still remains. Therefore, the drinkers should restrict the drink to around 150ml a day. The beverage is becoming popular gradually all over the world as a healthy drink. According to a report from Markets and Markets, in the US market, the rate of kombucha market is increasing 25%  every year. The statistic expects the growth will keep going by 2020

   Why is this trend making a comeback?

An international reason considered influence from celebrities. For instance, the influence from a famed singer, Demi Lovato got captured on a photo while she was drinking kombucha. Boon told me a domestic reason  that  Malaysians are shifting to a healthier lifestyle. 

According to a journal published by Canadian Center of Science and Education, the necessity of functional foods like kombucha is rising because the rate of Malaysian lifestyle diseases is now high through the domestic economic growth.

source: zimbio

Boon’s activity

Even though  Boon feels kombucha is becoming trendy, he still strives to expand the knowledge morethrough holding Scoby Farm’s workshop and booth periodically. According to Boon, people who are aware of kombucha tend to be adult but not youth in now situation. 

Thus, he is currently eager to convey his knowledge to especially young people. In the workshop, you can brew your own bottle of kombucha through the accurate procedure taught  by him.

He said he can see the learners acquire self-satisfaction from the experience. Even when I interviewed Boon, he was also holding Scoby Farm's booth at an event, Yayasan Sime Darby Environment Day 2017 at KLPac inorder to promote its activity. He said he plans to pop up the booth on June-July as well, the place will be uploaded on Scoby Farm’s FaceBook page.

Kombucha was also trendy in Japan 

  “Diet was the main factor to start drinking koucha-kinoko as a healthy              method",  said Kimiko Ashihara who is managing supplement store in Chiba      Prefecture, Japan. In 1970s-80s, kombucha  was also a trendy health method       but it was called in a different name, koucha-kinoko. 

  Koucha means black tea, kinoko means mushroom(the shape of  SCOBY  looked like a mushroom) in Japanese.   In that time, hand-making was a common  way to acquire koucha-kinoko, so  many people shared SCOBY and brewed their own bottles. Kimiko also received part of SCOBY from her friends then brewed her own bottles.

According to Kimiko who started drinking the fashionable drink about 37 years ago, influences from celebrities and media triggered the past boom. Although, she initially started the practice for diet, she felt the tea contributed to bowel movement and detoxification better.

The boom ended, but...

Turning to 1980s, she stopped drinking kombucha since she could not eventually figure out the perfect way to brew it. During that time, some drinkers including her found it difficult to keep rendering the tea fermented correctly, then unconsciously spoiled it through wrong hand-making processes because there was less knowledge of it, however, we have the Internet now.

After the end of the boom in Japan, koucha-kinoko had been known as just a past peculiar healthy method due to the strange name and the mushroom shape of fungi. 

However, koucha-kinoko came back to the country as a brand- new name, kombucha. As first happening, NHK(Japan Broadcasting Corp) reported the past trend is becoming trendy all over the world as kombucha in 2017. Secondary, Japanese model, Hikari Mori  introduced kombucha as her recommendation on TV show. Hence, kombucha is becoming more and more famous also in Japan again.

A youngster’s response to kombucha

Student Kaori Hano, 23, has tried more than 10 kinds of trendy ones such as banana. vinegar and yogurt diet. She tried a flavor of kombucha, Roselle. “The taste is nice, it’s not so  sour and comfortable to drink", she said. According to her, if she can brew it well by herself, she wants to adopt it. Therefore, it is highly expected for kombucha  to be drunk more by people from current generation in the future.

 In summary, kombucha is a current, remarkable healthy method which managed to revive, despite it was known as just a peculiar way in Japan. In Japanese history, there are some more past health methods which were recognized as peculiar ones-for example, drinking urine and ingesting maggot diet methods. 

Do  you think those methods which were also trendy in Japan, will become  world trend like kombucha did ?