The World’s Most Expensive Tea: Made From Panda Poo!?
EmailWhen one thinks of tea, they may think of sitting back and relaxing in a comfortable armchair, cozying up to a roaring fire and then indulging in a warm, chewy chocolate chip cookie.
They don’t think about pandas and certainly not panda poo.
But, turns out, it’s all about the panda dung. Wildlife expert and Sinchuan University lecturer An Yashi is debuting a special blend of green tea that is expected to go for as much as approximately $35,000 per pound, Australia’s SBC.com reported. And guess what? It’s fertilized using panda excrement.
Why is the poo so popular? Turns out panda excrement is loaded with various vitamins and minerals that come from bamboo – what pandas primarily eat.
“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat,” Yashi told the Australian website. “That means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients.”
According to Yashi, those important nutrients end up in the tea through that fertilization process.
These nutrients are no joke, and Yashi claims that they are immensely powerful.
“Just like green tea, bamboo contains an element that can prevent cancer and enhance green tea’s anti-cancer effects if it is used as fertilizer for the tea,” he told SBC.com.
Yashi, who collects the dung at a panda breeding center in southern China, is hoping the discovery – along with it’s hefty price tag – will earn him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.
He might not be far off track with that idea. Kopi Lupak, an Indonesian coffee, is brewed from beans that have been eaten and then digested by the Asian palm civet, a catlike wild animal. That java can sell for as much as $150 per pound.
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Rather misleading title to this article, since the panda poo is only used to fertilize the tea plants, not in the brewed tea itself, as the title would lead you to believe.
Posted by: Amanda | November 18, 2011, 6:27 am 6:27 am
Once again, another example of the European influence on America;
In this country, we call it POOP. Not “poo”.
We are not British. We are American. Use AMERICAN ENGLISH.
Posted by: antihistamine | November 18, 2011, 6:38 am 6:38 am
It’s especially tasty when mixed with powdered rhino horn and some shark fins.
Posted by: fred lehne | November 18, 2011, 6:42 am 6:42 am
If you are in the 99.9% that cannot dish out $35,000 per pound of tea, you can get the same, if not better, nutritional benefits from 1 tablet of generic store brand multivitamin and 3 teaspoons of fiber supplements for a cost of $50 a year. If you really crave the panda poop-fed-tea experience, you can simulate a reasonably close experience by watching Kung Fu Panda DVD while sitting next to a pail of horse manure for about $20.
Posted by: Dr No | November 18, 2011, 10:18 am 10:18 am
The author of this article needs to go back to school and learn how to accurately choose a proper title. I wonder when they are going to say that vegetable from the market is made of from Nitrogen, Potassium, and Sulfur because, in fact, these are main ingredients for fertilizer. How sad!
Posted by: Tempo | November 20, 2011, 6:09 pm 6:09 pm
Since pandas can poop up to 40 times a day, they have a lot of material to work with.
Posted by: Kawaii Panda | November 25, 2011, 1:42 pm 1:42 pm