Australian supermarket kombucha taste test: ‘How can a beverage be so wet and so dry at the same time?’

‘You know what? Your gut can have too much health’: Jess Ho on their taste test of supermarket kombucha. Photograph: Eugene Hyland/The Guardian

I have pushed my body to the limit in the name of food and drink. During restaurant award season, when I was food and drink editor of a lifestyle publication, it was common for me to eat multiple three-course dinners, five nights a week for several weeks; bar awards season meant visiting six bars a night.

The fatigue, the meat sweats, the hangovers, the foggy brain and indigestion are all a walk in the park when compared to the after-effects of taste-testing seven kombuchas in a row. My body has never felt more uncomfortable, tied up and messed around. It felt as if I was under attack by the bajillion organic bacteria that are supposed to be great for gut health.