We take great pains to make sure our food is as clean as possible. There are even government agencies dedicated to the task, and some of the most common practices in our own kitchens are geared to keep our food clean. Its in our nature. Still, we have free will and we can choose to defy our nature, even if sometimes it really seems like we shouldn’t. Humans have developed food items made from some of the things that most disgust us.

10Kopi Luwak

83 percent of adults in the US drink coffee. We love the stuff, and it comes in as many varieties as we could want, from exotic locales the world over. But one locale in particular might give even coffee lovers pause: A cat’s butt.

Kopi Luwak, the most expensive coffee in the world, is produced from coffee beans that have passed through the digestive system of a civet cat. This cat, native to Southeast Asia, loves coffee almost as much as we do. It eats the choicest coffee cherries, but it doesn’t digest the beans. Instead, it deposits them. Having gone through the digestive process, the bean is made less acidic, lower in protein, and lower in caffeine. Ultimately, this produces the smooth, aromatic, and low bitter Kopi Luwak coffee, prized the world over.

Fun Fact: when a civet wants to mark its territory it sprays a thick repulsive smelling oil. That oil is gathered up and is used as a perfume additive in the luxury perfume industry. Historically Civet musk traders would taste the oil to make sure it wasn’t adulterated with human feces (which is much cheaper and equally repulsive smelling). And like its close relative the Meerkat, it is not actually related to the cat family.

9Panda Dung Green Tea

Pandas famously diet on little except bamboo, but according to one tea entrepreneur, they digest only about 30 percent of the nutrients found in that bamboo. This leaves their excrement still rich in the vitamins and minerals present in the plant, in a form perfect for fertilizer. That tea entrepreneur is named An Yashi. He is a Sinchuan University lecturer and wildlife expert who has put that panda dung to work in making a unique green tea.

His tea is fertilized with the dung, to special effect. He says, “Just like green tea, bamboo contains an element that can prevent cancer and enhance green tea’s anti-cancer effects if it is used as fertilizer for the tea.” An Yashi’s panda dung green tea has a price tag of $35,000 a pound.

8Un, Kono Kuro

This beer’s name is a pun on the Japanese word for crap, Unko. Produced by Kanagawa-based brewery Sankt Gallen for April Fools 2013, this beer sold out within minutes of becoming available. The stout is made with an ingredient unusual for beers: coffee. Even more unusual for coffee, the beans were collected from the helpful elephants of Thailand’s Golden Triangle Elephant Foundation. Like Kopi Luwak, the beans pass through the digestive system and arrive at the other end. Unlike with the civet cat, most of the beans perish in the process. 33 kilograms of beans go in, but only 1 kilogram of usable beans emerge out the other end.

One reviewer, Mr. Sato, said of the beer, “After downing the last drop, slowly rising from my throat and mouth was that afterglow. The combination of bitter and sweet stayed fresh and lingered in my head. It was a familiar aroma that accompanied me through the entire beer. For some time after, I could still feel as if my body was saturated with that warm scent.” $104 dollars will net you 35 grams of this unique coffee, should you wish to enhance your own micro brews.

7Traditional Chicha

Chicha is a corn beer brewed in the Andes. The beverage dates back thousands of years and played a large role in the cultures of groups such as the Incas and Aztecs, who thought of drunkenness as a spiritual activity and sharing a drink as a sign of friendship.

Though you may have enjoyed a glass of Chicha, traditionally, the drink is brewed differently than most versions in the modern day. To begin the fermentation process, the Chicha brewers would begin by working maize thoroughly with their tongue, completely moistening it with their own saliva. The enzymes in our spit are enough to work the cornstarch into fermentable sugar. After a drying period, the maize cakes would be ready.

This step happens before the beer is brewed, so the final product is sterile, and some breweries still make the drink in the traditional fashion. One modern brewer was quoted by The New York Times during the first saliva-filled step of the process: “Would it be bad if I thed we bit off maw than we could thew? Heh, heh.”

6Honey

Bees have two stomachs, one of which is completely dedicated to storing the nectar they collect from flowers. When full, this stomach can weigh as much as the bee itself. These honeybees return to the hive after visiting upward of 1,500 flowers. Once there, they pass off the nectar to worker bees by vomiting it up out of their second stomach and into the worker bees’ waiting mouths. This regurgitation process is repeated until the partially digested nectar is finally prepared and then deposited into a honeycomb. From there, the water is fanned out of the nectar, which reduces the substance into the syrupy bug vomit we all know and love.

5Shellac

Shellac is an ingredient commonly used as a glaze. Though the name may be unfamiliar to us, we’re all likely familiar with the foods its used in. Coated candy, chocolate, and even waxed fresh fruit can contain shellac.

Just what is this versatile substance? Shellac is the purified form of lac. Lac is a secretion of the Laccifer lacca Kerr insect, cultivated in India, Thailand, and Burma. The secretions form on twigs, which are then soaked in water to clear away any debris such as insect parts and then soaked again in sodium carbonate to remove acid. This purified bug poop finds its way into many of our foods but is also useful as a varnish or wood primer.

4Baby Poop Sausages

Bacterial fermentation plays a huge role in the making of sausage. That spicy flavor pepperoni gives your pizza? It’s a result of bacteria. So it may not seem like a stretch when researchers say they’ve developed a way to ferment sausage that could result in a healthy, bacteria-rich food, like probiotic yogurts. The catch? The bacteria used was gathered from infant feces. Human infants, mind you.

The researchers behind this invention cultured the collected bacteria from 43 stool samples and used them when making six batches of fuet—a pork sausage. These sausages were all tested by professional tasters, who reported that the flavor was indistinguishable from normal fuet.

3Kuchikami No Sake

Much like Chicha, the preparation of sake has changed over the years. This rice-based alcohol is sometimes called “rice wine” but has more in common with a beer. Today, the rice is usually fermented with a mold (Aspergillus oryzae) that has the enzymes necessary to convert the rice starch into sugar, but before this mold was discovered, a different ingredient was used: Human saliva.

The brewers would begin by chewing rice, chestnuts, or acorns to begin the fermentation process. This special brand of Sake is called Kuchikami No Sake or “Mouth-Chewed Sake” and is still sometimes made today.

2Ambergris

This substance is an intestinal slurry produced in a sperm whale’s stomach or throat. Because of its rarity and variety of uses, it can fetch about $29 a gram. Some of those uses have famously been perfumes, but it has also been used in cooking eggs, ice cream, and even cocktails. The smell is said to be that of highly concentrated ocean.

One of the most common misconceptions about this miraculous slurry is that it’s the vomit of the sperm whale. Rest assured, this is not the case. Ambergris is much more likely to be pooped out than to be vomited.

1Yan Wo

Described as “the caviar of the east” because of its high cost and status as a delicacy in China, this ingredient is bird’s nest. The swiftlet, a swallow-like bird, produces these nests out of its own saliva secretions. The nests are built expressly for the purpose of raising young and are abandoned once this task is complete.

The protein-rich Yan Wo are used in soup, tonics, and even desserts. A decade ago, there were an estimated 1,000 swiftlet farms, and now, there are some 60,000. The industry behind these saliva nests has blown to an estimated $5 billion value.

And if that isn’t gross enough for you, it gets worse: the texture of Yan Wo when cooked in soup is like lumps of snot.

DNA testing is something in the realm of futuristic sci-fi movie territory: most people have heard of the concept, but we don’t really believe it works, know much about it, or want to be experimented on to find out! But like most futuristic concepts, DNA testing has some seriously cool applications that can change the way you live your life forever.

Nervous about taking the plunge with your own DNA test kit? Check out ten awesome things you can learn from one of these tests and how it can benefit your day-to-day life.

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #1

Discover new ancestors or distant relatives

DNA test kit services don’t just look at your DNA samples. Instead, they comb through an entire database of DNA samples and cross-reference your DNA with theirs to find common ancestors. This is an amazing discovery tool that has helped people learn about their family tree and relatives that they never even knew existed.

One story helped a woman from Honduras find out about a great, great, great, great, great grandfather who had been dead for three hundred years!

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #2

Getting back to your roots

Do you have a preference for a certain type of beer? Ever notice you’re particularly pedantic about the way people pronounce words? Maybe you have particularly rosy coloring in your cheeks that you just can’t place? Well, all these traits might be the result of your heritage, and DNA test kits can help you solve the mysteries at last. Scanning your DNA across hundreds of regions around the world, these tests can trace your lineage back for generations, and many times the results are enlightening. So, if you always felt like you had a bit of Irish in your heart, a DNA test could prove that you actually do…

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #3

Find a brother or sister you never knew you had…

A recent study showed that more than 22,000 babies are left in hospitals, at churches, or tragically on the side of the road. Sometimes, these babies are adopted by loving homes, cared for, and raised to adulthood. And when these kids grow up, they naturally have a lot of questions about where they came from, who they are, and who their birth parents are.

One of the biggest questions kids from adopted homes have is do they have any siblings. With DNA testing technology, people are finding their birth brothers and sisters, creating new bonds, and answering life-long questions at last. What’s really cool about these discoveries is that a lot of times you’ll find that one of your long-lost relatives looks just like you!

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #4

…or a Parent!

Even more emotionally cathartic than finding a sibling is being able to walk up to your birth mother or father for the first time and give them a hug, ask them your burning questions, or just say hello over a cup of coffee. With billions of records in their databases, DNA test services are making connections faster and easier than ever before. What’s really amazing is that even if your biological parent didn’t take a DNA test, you can still find each other. How? Because of the DNA chain. If anyone related to your birth mother or father took a DNA test, their results will be in the database. DNA services can use these results to connect your DNA back to the biological parent you are searching for.

Often, when people find their birth parents, they also discover many half-siblings that they never knew existed, extending their families even more.

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #5

You might be famous!

Well, you’d probably know if you were famous (paparazzi outside your windows is a good indication), but DNA testing can tell you if you’re related to someone famous. In fact, in one well-known case, a guy found out he was related to Abraham Lincoln from doing a simple DNA test from MyHeritage.

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #6

Or you might be Jewish

In another weird case, a woman who had been raised in a completely Irish Catholic home with Irish Catholicism coursing through their veins made a wild discovery. The woman had strong Jewish strands of DNA mixed in with her Catholic chromosomes. This was confusing to the family since as far back as both parents knew, there hadn’t been any intermarriage at all. After much digging and through the help of 23andMe, a genetic testing lab that does at-home DNA test kits, this family found out that the father had been accidentally switched at birth in the hospital! The two babies had been born at the same time in the same hospital (back in 1913), and because identification procedures were less than perfect back then, the two babies had been given to the wrong parents. After 100 years, the truth came out, both families were reunited, and now they are one big(ger) happy family!

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #7

You can trace your lineage back to locations

Many of us know what general area our heritage came from, but wouldn’t it be cool to know exactly where in that city your family tree took root? With a good DNA test kit service, you can narrow down your location to regions, countries, and sometimes even a specific town. Imagine visiting Sicily, hearing a story about the local butcher from 200 years ago, and knowing ‘hey, that was my granddaddy!’. Now that would be a trip!

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #8

Genetic disposition towards diseases

One of the most useful discoveries you can make from taking a DNA test is what genetic diseases you may be predisposed to. While this is not a medical diagnosis, DNA tests can show you that you have a stronger propensity towards a certain disease or condition than the general public. Since genetic risks are hugely based on probability, knowing what dispositions you have is the kind of early warning information that can help save your life.

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #9

Discovering your health/weight body type

Another fascinating discovery DNA test kits can help you make is what type of biological makeup you have going on inside you. With the right combination of results, you can find out what foods are good for you, how well your body responds to different types of exercises, and what type of eater you are. This kind of information is invaluable if you’ve been trying to lose weight and can’t seem to manage. These DNA test results can help you figure out what diet plan will work for you, how and when to exercise for maximum results, and which foods to avoid for optimal living.

Cool Discoveries and Gains You Can Make From DNA Testing #10

You could change the world

Finally, some DNA test kit services will offer you a chance to take part in a research program. These programs use your donated DNA samples to research the connections between various genetic information and traits or conditions to see if they can find causal relationships, preventative medicines, and cures. Current studies are working with infectious diseases, as well as life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and dementia. So, your DNA sample could really change the world for the better!

DNA test kits are non-invasive, quick, and easy to administer. And as technology advances, the price of these tests keeps going down. So, if you ever had a question about your heritage, personality, or body makeup, now is the time to find your answers.