NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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.
rmurray@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/tea-made-panda-feces-expected-expensive-brew-world-article-1.978191#ixzz1f2xGIuKx
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