There Were 24 Cans of Kombucha

This Month's Randomazon Buy

I know that it’s frowned upon, but there’s no point in me writing these posts to you if I can’t be honest: I buy quite a lot of stuff from Amazon. I realise that’s as bad, in many eyes, as strangling lambs, but I’m just going to come clean from the start.

I buy quite a lot from Amazon because a) I regularly need things very urgently and b) nearly everything I need urgently is the weird type of thing I can’t get easily on the high street. If at all.

Niche stuff. Odd stuff.

Realistic bird wings shawl, women’s size M.

Full bodysuit with hood, hands and feet: aquamarine green.

Latex cosplay bald headed man mask.

And so, for my sins, I open my Amazon app and I click buy now and whatever bizarre thing I need miraculously appears in my parcel dropbox. Sometimes the very same day. Next day at the latest. Which I find remarkable - almost magical - because I live in the sort of rural place that nobody at all delivers to. Not Deliveroo, not Ubereats, not the local takeaway, not even Dominos. And Dominos would deliver to the moon, if they could get a motorbike up there.

So yes, I buy quite a lot of stuff. I buy things for the kids, because they constantly need this and that for school or they get invited to birthday parties that I forget about and need to order lego for at 11pm the night before; and I buy pet food, because nobody ever tells me it’s about to run out until the scoop hits the bottom of the bag. They don’t sell this special grain-free, gold-leaf-flecked pet food at any of my local pet shops, but they do at Amazon.

Often I buy shoot props I know I’ll need for the next day and I do rush orders on everything from emergency camera battery chargers to eye makeup remover. And - I will explain this one at a later date - I buy a lot of fancy dress accessories.

Actually, I don’t think I can just leave that fancy dress proclamation there for a later date: it makes it sound as though I do kinky dress-up stuff at home. And I don’t want you having some weird debauched visual burned into your memory, one where I’m, I don’t know, dressed as a pantomime horse but holding a feather-topped whip. I’d hate for you to think about me wearing - off the top of my head - a ski mask, nipple tassels and galoshes. Whilst brandishing a large rubber truncheon. Don’t even think about it.

Because none of that happens chez moi, I can guarantee you. The fancy dress accessories are not some kind of necessary evil for a monthly swinging evening, nor do I make use of them in the privacy of the marital bedroom. (To be honest, I’ve been tempted by the pantomime horse but have so far resisted.)

No, the reason I buy these fancy dress things is to make weird, offbeat Instagram adverts for some of my long-term clients. Again, this sounds vaguely sexual: it’s not. We’re talking family fun, here: clean-as-a-whistle household brands. For Sky, I have dressed up as an ancient wizard, a horror-film pumpkin, an elf, most of the characters from Dune Part Two and a giant poo. For Aromatherapy Associates I have been a fairy Godmother and the genie from Aladdin. I’ve dressed up as red riding hood. And the wolf.

As I read all of this back I’m not actually sure what’s worse; you all imagining some sort of sexual deviance going on or the bizarre reality. But anyway, that’s what I do with all of my costume paraphernalia. Which is usually of such bad quality - paper thin cloaks, brittle plastic masks - that I can barely stand to touch it. If I didn’t always need obscure things at short notice (and had unlimited budget) then I’d go to the theatrical costume hire place that’s around half an hour’s drive from me, but I do always need obscure things at short notice. So, random Amazon it is.

Randomazon.

Anyway, this month’s random Amazon purchase isn’t a necklace made from faux frog bones or a pair of steampunk goggles (really, don’t ask) but a twenty-four pack of Kombucha cans. Flavour: mixed assortment.

And look, you might not think that Kombucha-in-a-can is a particularly random buy but I can guarantee you that, in my fridge at least, it is as out of place and unwelcome as a loosely sealed petri dish containing a biological warfare sample.

I am a terrible cynic when it comes to things that I have no first hand experience of and Kombucha is one such thing I have had a casual, quiet disdain for. Does it actually do anything? Can it? If you pull open a cold can of the stuff and take a swig of the fizzy, ever-so-slightly vinegary liquid inside, it is incredibly difficult to imagine that it does anything good. Or anything bad, either. It tastes like the “lightly flavoured” water you can buy just about anywhere.

What is Kombucha supposed to do, anyway? I headed to the New York Times to find out. Which makes it sound as though I made an effort to do some actual research: sadly not. Publication chosen only because it was the first proper one to pop up on Google.

The NY Times said:

“The drinks are promoted as improving digestion and diabetes, strengthening the immune system, reducing blood pressure and being detoxifying. Proponents also contend kombucha helps rheumatism, gout, hemorrhoids, nervousness and liver function and fights cancer.”

Wow. Magic potion. Does it do any of this stuff? Back to the Times:

“We don’t know if it does anything,” said Franck Carbonero, a microbiome scientist at Washington State University-Spokane, in regards to health benefits.

Alrighty then. That was a rollercoaster.

I mean, obviously Franck isn’t the only person to have waded in on Kombucha’s effects, or non-effects, but there don’t seem to be a lot of science-led studies. I’ll have to do a bit more reading and see if I can tease out any good info.

But this post isn’t about whether Kombucha does anything or not. (I have little-to-zero interest, in all honesty. I don’t have a lot riding on it and am happy for everyone either way, whether they swear by it or disclaim it as nonsense.) No, this post is about why on God’s green earth I ordered twenty-four cans of the stuff, being the cynic I am and not having even the remotest interest in its purported health benefits.

I’ll tell you why: I ordered twenty four cans of it because I wanted to give up Coke.

Ah, Coca Cola: you can’t beat the real thing. Now this is a fizzy drink that unites scientists and nutritionists and snake-oil purveyors and even the most naive, ill-informed of punters in their opinion of its health benefits. Because it’s clear cut: it has none. Other than the - quite frankly - euphoric signals it sends to the brain as you’re drinking it, to say that you are satisfied, you are ecstatic, that you could, at that very moment, die and die happy.

Sorry, I’m a big fan. Despite the fact it contains enough sugar to service five builders’ teas, that the caffeine in it leaves me gurning and fidgety. Despite the fact that people use it to clean toilet bowls of their stains when nothing else has worked, or to take off rust, or to polish up their silver cutlery.

There’s little you could say to me about Coca Cola that would completely turn me off it, but my nine-year-long “habit” had started to rumble ever so slightly out of control. What had always been a twice a week affair (once on fish and chip night, once if I got the train to London and the trolley went past) had become an everyday crutch to get me through the afternoon. And yes, there are worse things you could be partaking in daily, but I wasn’t particularly enjoying feeling beholden to it. That I had started to drive to the shops under some weird pretence at needing an important ingredient for that night’s dinner if we ever ran out of cokes. That I would go out of my way, if I was in town, to find a shop or cafe that had 330ml cans of coke (my vessel of choice) rather than a plastic bottle, or even a glass bottle. (I would never, ever entertain a coke off tap. I’d rather eat soil.)

So the habit had taken a little bit of a hold and I didn’t like the feeling of being out of control. (Real Fear and Loathing kind of stuff going on here!) But then, a turning point: I went to see my friend Lily, and she offered me a cold drink (because I don’t drink tea or coffee, whole other story) and the choice was…water, or a can of Kombucha.

Well, wasn’t that can of Kombucha just absolutely delicious on that warmish day in London? I ganneted it down like someone who’d spent a week stranded in the Sahara. Yes, the aftertaste was odd and no, I couldn’t imagine that it had any kind of significant holistic benefit but it was cold, it was in a can and it felt like a bit of a treat. Pretty much sugar free, too. (Though how this could be, when it was literally made from sugar, was all too scientific for me to understand properly. Again, more reading required.)

Anyway, I made the decision there and then to knock the daily Cokes on the head and switch to Kombucha.

I’m embarrassed even typing that out.

The truth is, it could be a can of almost anything and I’d see it as a treat. Not Diet Coke, which I’m afraid I consider to be the Devil’s Drink (even though I lived on it when I was a model - that and Marlboro Lights, for the ultimate health recipe) and not those cans of citrussy San Pellegrino, which seem to take off the lining of my mouth and raise all the nobbles on the side of my tongue. And not anything alcoholic, because that would really put a full stop into my day.

But anything else.

Now that I think about it: what else is there, that doesn’t have artificial flavours or colourings, or masses or sugar, or alcohol, or weird chemicals? Answers on a postcard, please. For now I’ll stick to the cans of Kombucha, which have so far done nothing notable for my digestive system or immune system but make me feel miles more virtuous than smuggling cans of the sugary red stuff up to my office after lunch.

Will a Kombucha a day keep the doctor away? We shall see.