This holistic nutritionist gets funky with tea. When Daina Trout began making kombucha in her tiny kitchen years ago for fun, she couldn't have predicted that she'd launch a beverage empire - but that's how LA-based Health-Ade got started. The effervescent elixir is made from three ingredients - tea, water and sugar - plus a scoby, a starter culture.

Trout uses a blend of black and green teas from Asia an FAfraica. "We originally got the tea from Whole Foods," she says. "We'd call and say, 'Do you have, like 200 cases of green tea?' Then we'd pack our cars with as many cases as we could fit." Making kombucha starts with steeping the tea. The next step is adding the scoby, which floats on top of the cooled tea, eating up sugars and transfomring them into healthy acids as the tea ferments. To create different flaors - think California grape or ginger-lemon - Trout misxes in organic cold-pressed juices.

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