Humans are quite bizarre. The fact that we are willing to pay exorbitant sums of money for the privilege of drinking poop should be proof enough of that! There has recently been a great deal of hype around the much anticipated panda poop tea, which is fetching huge prices, and is in extraordinary demand! When I saw this article it got me wondering about what other delightful drinks are made from this rather humble and smelly ingredient, and I was pretty amazed at the range of options out there. So next time you fancy a cuppa, keep these tasty treats in mind!
Panda poop – a precious commoditea
An Yashi, a wildlife expert and lecturer at Sinchuan University, has concocted a special blend of green tea, that is fetilised by panda excrement! The unique tea is valued at $35 000 (R266 441) per pound- that’s not an insignificant amount of cash! The poop is apparently pretty powerful stuff- because the panda’s digestive system is so poor, their excrement is full of vitamins and minerals from their bamboo rich diet. Supposedly these nutrients can help to combat cancer, enhancing the green tea’s own healing and preventative properties. Yashi is set to make a fortune, and is looking for a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records. He takes his faeces from a panda breeding centre in Southern China. If this tea means that people are going to focus on looking after pandas and launching breeding programs, in order to get more dung, then I’m all for it! In fact, there are rumours that rhino dung is equally beneficial for your health…
A civet story
The tiny Kopi Luwak or civet cat is a nocturnal creature with a rather discerning palate. Only the choicest coffee beans will do for this little connoisseur, who rummages through the coffee growing areas of South-East Asia munching only the ripest and most delicious coffee cherries. The beans go through the cat’s digestive tract, and are fermented by its stomach acids and enzymes. In the process supposedly they lose their bitter aftertaste, and evolve a deep chocolaty flavour, which people are currently paying over R600 per expresso shot to taste! The critical caffeine-guzzling cats are now being bred and fed on a diet of pure coffee cherries, leading to a debate regarding whether the stress of captivity impacts on the final product at all. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it certainly is going down well in New York, where ‘cat poo coffee’ is often the order of the day in top restaurants and coffee houses.
Jacu who? Jacu poo!
The rare South American Jacu bird has rather a distinguished palate, and will only sample the tastiest of Arabica Brazilian Coffee beans, which it then delicately excretes in piles under coffee trees, for people to collect, wash (hopefully) and then dry and roast like normal coffee beans. A new international sensation, these little guys are in hot demand, for their delightfully flavoured excrement, which is selling at a mere R80 a cup in some places overseas.
Well even if you ‘poo poo’ the idea, there’s no denying that the faeces is flying, with more and more people choosing poop as their drink of choice! It’s an interesting experiment in human psychology really, when does drinking dung change from a horror fest on Fear Factor to an acceptable social practice and why? One really does have to ask why.
Images by Kabacchi, Kevin Dooley, Marcelo Frasel and Puuikibeach.
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