For over two months now the ministry has quietly been trying to persuade Nature Care, the manufacturer and distributor of Kombucha, the purportedly non-alcoholic health drink, that the drink was in fact alcoholic and did not conform to national food guidelines. The drink contained at least 2.2 percent alcohol, far above the 0.5 limit allowed for non-alcoholic drinks. It also contained frightening amounts of caffeine. The ministry was worried that consumers were misled into believing that the beverage was non-alcoholic. Public health - and by extension - safety was at stake. However, Nature Care refused to pull the beverage off the shelves and hundreds of unsuspecting customers continue to guzzle this potentially harmful drink in the belief that it will do well for their health. The MoH has since conducted tests, which have proved that the drink is indeed alcoholic. It is even alleged that some samples had alcohol content that is higher than that of ordinary lager. That means people who take it may actually become drunk. Sadly many people buy and consume the beverage during office hours. So we could be having tipsy or altogether drunk police officers, nurses, pharmacy personnel, rescue officers bank tellers and yeah, journalists all trying to work hard - and doing it the wrong way because they are drunk, but do just not know it! Because it is alcoholic and contains other by-products, we can never truly know how Kombucha will interact with prescription drugs or even with alcohol. Needless to say the interaction cannot be beneficial. Reports from other countries talk of toxicity owing to often unhygienic conditions in which the drink is produced. We call on the MoH to go beyond simply recalling Kombucha, but also ensuring that the conditions where it is brewed are acceptable. The people love Kombucha. It has obviously created employment for people who need to put food on the table. Thus we cannot call for its ban. After all it is folk medicine. However, we do applaud government for recalling it and hope that the manufacturer is assisted to make the drink conform to public health standards. We also urge those who may have stockpiled the drink to take it back to the manufacturer. The Kombucha saga should also be a lesson for the MoH. The market is awash with these so-called natural remedies, made from foods. Some of them may actually have curative properties, but until the MoH subjects them to the same lab tests as it did recently with Kombucha, we can never really be sure about the safety of the products. It is also important that the MoH should conduct lab and human tests on the drinks (and foods) to establish if indeed they have the purported curative properties. For all we know the distributors may be bleeding unsuspecting consumers of their hard-earned cash.
