mbanu,
Thank you for sharing the references. William Ukers has been a hero but we all know the accuracy of our knowledge improves with time as more and more scholars share efforts in improving the understanding of things.
Quite many years ago I took notice of this “mushroom” tea trend in the West. The kombucha that is popular in the West today has not been well documented here in the East. As a matter of fact, I cannot personally find any historical writing about it in the Chinese language. Yet it is presumed that this comes from the East. Your reference is really contemporary.
That’s okay. It really is not my concern that there are new flavours of bottled drinks somewhere in the market. There are new ones almost every other week anyway. It is my concern though, that it has the association of tea and is potentially toxic and is not health contributing as it claims so loudly to be. There are quite a number of official announcements disqualifying the claims, but I think you may like to read this more accessible one on the net by NYU:
The thousand years of human heritage has left for us a lot of treasures and it is up to us to select those that is worth our continual efforts in developing. Tea is one. As for kombucha, I have much doubt in it.
