Dung Coffee

Its not a new concept, but the story on NPR today introduced a new form factor for me - elephants:

Quote:

Canadian entrepreneur Blake Dinkin, 44, is betting his life savings that he can turn his idea into, well, gold. Here's the catch: His is made by passing coffee beans through the not insubstantial stomachs of elephants and then picking the beans out of, well, yeah, that.

Anyway, after sharing the usual "what the hell is wrong with people?" words with my colleague, she said something along the lines of "can't they simply replicate the conditions of the elephants digestive system in the lab and get the exact same results? That'd be so much better!"



I looked at her a bit sideways and said that if the lab had the same inputs, the same digestive juices - bacterial flora,enzymes, heat, mixing, etc... they could, in theory, get the same output.



But if its the same output... then its the same output! How can the exact same thing be ok on the one hand and disgusting on the other?



She looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said "because one comes out of an elephant's *******!"



So, the stupidity of elephant poop coffee aside, what do you think - if the end product is identical would you be more likely to try the *all natural* elephant poop coffee, or the lab-created elephant poop coffee?

via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1pMCDYB