Kopi Luwak: Costliest and Cruelest But Also Most Cherished and Conservational Coffee in the World
The sixth module, between the images labeled "Kannur (English: Cananore), Laccadive Sea port city on southwestern India's Malabar Coast" and "Coffea fruits are known as coffee berries or coffee sherries," advises us that "The most common back-story for kopi luwak connects the emergence of the drink with Dutch-speaking coffee plantation owners on the Indonesian islands of:
Bali;
Java;
Sumatra.
Colonialists experienced considerable pressure from colleagues and counterparts in the respective European home countries to make economic endeavors super-profitable. Coffee-growers therefore followed policies of allowing native laborers rampant contact with all parts of the coffee shrubs. But at the same time, they let no local workers remove anything for individual or non-plantation uses. The obedient but observant locals probably noticed simultaneous changes in the habits of Asian common palm civets, already appreciated and useful for flesh, fragrance, and fur."
Its last sentence alerts us to the colonialist impact that "The native civets switched from favoring palm pulp to relishing coffee berries."
Can the two food sources, coffee berries and palm pulp, be equivalent in calories, energy and nutrition?
DerdriuMarriner, Jun 16, 2025