Panda Poo Used for World's Most Expensive Tea!

When 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!

A Chinese wildlife expert and university lecturer turned entrepreneur is brewing what will be the World's most expensive cup of green tea, fertilized with panda droppings, according to various reports. Sichuan 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. According to Yashi the tea has a mature, nutty taste and a very distinctive aroma while it's brewing.

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 everyone. “That means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients.”

Yashi is convinced that all 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.”

Mr. Yashi is collecting the dung at a panda breeding centre in southern China. Reports say that he has been given a patent by China Authorities to market the tea. He has reportedly resigned from Sichuan University to focus on his tea venture. He has already collected five tons of feces, started growing the tea and expects the first harvest to be ready by spring, according to various reports. For the first batch, buyers would get not only the tea but also a special panda-shaped tea set and two of the entrepreneur's panda paintings.This brew would be ten times the price of the current most expensive tea in the World!

Yashi, 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 and can sell for as much as $150 per pound.