Truffles, a pricey fungus, have reputation as an aphrodisiac, but now they've been outstripped in both cost and potency by another fungal wonder: cordyceps, or the so-called Himalayan Viagra. If you take cordyceps as a supplement and you don't know its origin, you might want to stop reading here, because it gets kind of gross. Cordyceps is a parasitic fungus that infects a species of caterpillar, kills it ats a mushroom out of its head. Then it's harvested, dried, and ground into a powder. You might wonder why people would go out of their way to ingest the stuff, let alone pay for it, but people also pay a premium price to drink coffee that got pooped out of a civet's butt, so go figure.
These days, there's a critical shortage of the caterpillar fungus, probably due to a combination of overharvesting and climate change. As a result, the price has skyrocketed to about $11,000 a pound for the premium grade. But Chinese herbal experts say those who are sitting on stockpiles of the supplement or buying it up as an investment are misguided, because it doesn't keep that well.
Somewhat like the housing market, or tech stocks, the price of the remedy has has its ups and downs. But this shortage is also having an impact on the Tibetans who harvest the fungus for their livelihood, and on the environment of the region. If someone could figure out a way to sustainably farm the parasitic fungi, they could stand to make a killing.
