Consumption. Kombucha, kefir, or miso: we explain the fermented product trend.

After a clothing brand, an album, and a gold record for his track Time Time , Squeezie is launching... fermented drinks with the launch of "Ciao Kombucha." France's second-largest YouTuber announced it on his social media last week. Inspired by his travels in Asia, this drink, presented as an alternative to soda, comes in six flavors, is low in sugar, and packed with probiotics, which are very beneficial for our digestive system.

If you're not yet familiar with kombucha, you shouldn't be long in hearing about it. This fermented beverage is slowly starting to invade the shelves of organic stores and supermarkets. More generally, fermented foods are experiencing a resurgence of interest among consumers. And manufacturers have understood this. "There are many innovations in this field from manufacturers to support the ecological food transition that consumers have been waiting for," summarizes Lydiane Nabec, a professor at the University of Paris-Saclay, specializing in social marketing.

Used for thousands of years, fermentation was primarily used to preserve food. This chemical process, to which live microorganisms such as yeast, bacteria, and mold are added, naturally transforms a food's sugar to create a new one, often one with more vitamins. The food will improve in flavor and nutrients and become more digestible. Fermentation is full of benefits for our bodies: it allows protective bacteria, such as probiotics, to proliferate and thus maintain our intestinal microbiota, considered our second brain.

Kefir, kimchi, miso or kombucha, foods resulting from fermentation, very fashionable, which we see flourishing on the shelves, often display their numerous benefits on their labels. "Healthy" foods with arguments that appeal to consumers, "increasingly attentive to labels and names. We see it with the Nutri-Score for example , since now, everyone knows the system, more than 60% of food products in supermarkets are sold with a Nutri-Score", explains Lydiane Nabec.

In fact, many other foods that we have long included in our diet and that we consume regularly are also produced by fermentation: yogurts, bread, cheese, sauerkraut, olives, pickles, ham, sausage, coffee, wine, beer, and many more.

But marketing and advertising have undeniable power. Brands don't hesitate to over-communicate about the benefits of these products. "That's the problem with all food innovations: there's a risk of consumer confusion. These products make a health claim, when health has a very individual dimension. These foods may work for some people, but not for others," warns the professor. "These products, integrated into our modern diet, are new, and we don't yet know them very well," she adds.

While these foods have many health benefits, we still need to carefully decipher the labels to determine the true nature of the product. Some manufacturers are quick to exploit the positive image of these superfoods to inflate prices, at the expense of quality. This was revealed by a UFC-Que Choisir survey a few months ago on dairy kefir. This very fashionable drink sells for up to three times more (around €4.50/L) than traditional fermented milk (around €2/L), even though, according to the consumer association, "many drinks sold in France under the name kefir have never actually contained a single grain of kefir."

The option to treat yourself without spending too much? Make your own kombucha or fruit kefir. This way, you'll also avoid the sometimes misleading "health" claims: a flavored kombucha-type drink can sometimes contain high sugar levels...