Kombucha

Kombucha is the ferment that is still working when you drink it: the culture is alive in the bottle and keeps producing acids and amines on the shelf and in your fridge. A bottle opened and left for a week is a different drink from the one you bought. Refrigerate it and drink it soon.

Kombucha is a live culture still working in the bottle, on the shelf and in your fridge - which makes it the one drink here whose tyramine keeps rising after you buy it. A bottle opened and left for a week is not the drink you bought.

Kombucha starts as sweet tea and the culture eats most of the FODMAP sugar, which is what brings it here - but how much is left depends entirely on how long it fermented, and the bottle does not say. A sweet kombucha and a vinegary one are different foods on this axis.

Kombucha starts as sweet tea and the culture eats most of the sugar - how much depends on how long it fermented, which the bottle does not say. Longer fermentation means less fructose and more acid.

Kombucha starts as sweet tea and the culture eats the sugar as it ferments - how much is left depends entirely on how long it was left, which the bottle does not tell you. A tart, vinegary one has less than a sweet one.

The tea base carries the salicylate, and fermentation does not remove it — a kombucha made from black tea starts higher than one from green.

Kombucha is brewed from tea, so it starts with the tea leaf's oxalate - then it is diluted, fermented and usually drunk in small bottles. Less concentrated than the tea it came from.