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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Tea made from panda feces expected to be most expensive brew in the world

 	epa02238386 A panda approaches an icy birthday cake at the Shanghai Safari Park in Shanghai, China, on 06 July 2010. People hold a celebration for two pandas born after the Sichuan Earthquake. Ten young pandas from Sichuan are in the park in a mission to entertain tourists during the World Expo. EPA/Liu Xingzhe

Pandas snack on bamboo, which contains an element that can prevent cancer.

The world’s most expensive cup of tea is packed with cancer-fighting elements, but it’s not without a stomach-turning catch — the tea leaves get a boost from panda feces.

Wildlife expert An Yashi is launching the special blend of green tea, which could cost up to $36,000 per pound, Australia’s SBC.com reported.

Yashi, a college lecturer at Sinchuan University, said using panda excrement to fertilize the tea plants has a health-promoting upside because it contains nutrients from one of the bear’s favorite meals — bamboo.

“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat: that means their excrement is rich in fibers and nutrients,” said Yashi, noting that those nutrients make their way into the tea through the fertilization process.

“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.”

Yashi, who collects the dung at a panda breeding center in southern China, said he hopes the tea will snag him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records once it’s released.

But he’s not the first to use feces to fertilize tea plants. Kopi Luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, is made from droppings of the Indonesian civet cat. 

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