I always thought coffee tasted like dirt

Imagine me living in France. Where there's no water-vending machine in my school but there's a hot coffee machine. Where every meal is followed by a coffee. Where people sometimes look at me like I'm insane when I tell them I don't drink it. Where I don't tell everyone my true opinion of coffee (that no one could actually like the taste and that anyone who drinks it is just addicted) for fear of being shunned, or cursed out in a language I wouldn't understand.

I've held out. I haven't had a single coffee since I've been here. Nor do i intend to. And now, I have a reason to think drinkers of this specific type of coffee are bat-shit insane.

I read this article on Sociological images today. It's about this super-expensive, super "exotic" coffee called Kopi Luwak Arabica. Why is it so exclusive? Apparently it has less caffeine and is less bitter than regular. So what's the price you have to pay for this coffee? In addition to the $180 a pound, you also have to buckle down and settle to ingest a drink in which "the beans...were eaten by a civet and then handpicked out of its crap to be brewed into coffee for you!"

Wow! And here's the lovely animal whose poop you can raid to make your awesome coffee:



It's an interesting piece over at Sociological Images. It's true that it's totally unfair of me to think this coffee is gross and honey is OK. They both come from digestive tracks, after all. It's a good question the author raises: why do we have these conceptions about what's cool to eat and what's not. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't drink this even if I liked coffee.