Kyoto University student Tsuyoshi Maruoka has been making tea with caterpillar excreta. The tea has a fruity aroma and doesn't need to be heated up during production. He has been doing research on the tea in the hope to commercialise it.
Even though tea now comes in a variety of flavours, many people prefer to make it the old-fashioned way. Japan appears to have chosen a very different course, though. At Kyoto University, a graduate student has been using caterpillar waste to make tea.
Chu-hi-cha tea is a variety of tea made from caterpillar excrement. Tsuyoshi Maruoka’s experiment of testing 40 various combinations and analysing which performed the best was inspired by the fact that the flavour and perfume of the tea varies depending on the leaves that the caterpillar eats and their faeces.
Caterpillar Dropping Tea
Takeshi allegedly claimed that the tea made from the leaves of sakura or apple trees has a fruity aroma. Additionally, since they don’t have to be heated up during manufacture, they’re better for the environment and have worth as healthy teas. Takeshi has been studying the tea in an effort to make it more marketable.
Maruoka is about to complete his degree this year and is presently enrolled in the university’s master’s programme in agriculture. The student, a resident of Kyoto’s Sakyo Ward, grew gipsy moth larvae on sakura leaves using the substantial collection of caterpillars his senior colleagues had obtained. In May 2021, Maruoka made the experiment of consuming part of the dried excreta after pouring boiling water over it. He discovered that the mixture tasted and smelled a lot like black tea, which gave him optimism that he might routinely produce a tasty beverage using the droppings of moth larvae.
Maruoka attempted to create a flavorful and aromatic tea that would be similar to the traditional tea and for which he collected plants and insects from various locations. Approximately 20 different insect species, including the Asian swallowtail, and seeds from 17 different plant species, including corn and mikan mandarin oranges, were used to set up his business. Maruoka’s team narrowed down all the combinations to two that ended out to be “really wonderful.”
Chu-hi-cha tea is a variety of tea made from caterpillar excrement. Tsuyoshi Maruoka’s experiment of testing 40 various combinations and analysing which performed the best was inspired by the fact that the flavour and perfume of the tea vary depending on the leaves that the caterpillar eats and their faeces.
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