Truffles: The Most Expensive Food in the World

Tournayre: I looked for them all over Europe. I found a world I didn't know about. It's a world that's rotten to the core.

Stahl: Did you find your dogs?

Tournayre: Never.

But it's not criminals or climate change that worry the trufflers the most. It's China! For years, Chinese farmers used truffles as feed for their pigs. That was until a businessman supposedly said, "The hell with the pigs, let's feed the French!" Even if the taste of a Chinese truffle leaves something to be desired.

Stahl: Let's talk about the Chinese truffles.

Bruno: Catastrophe.

Stahl: Catastrophic? Why?

Bruno: The Chinese truffle is worthless. No-- no-- no taste, and no smell.

Stahl: No perfume, you couldn't smell it. Nothing.

Stahl: No taste? If I went to China and took it out of the ground, it still wouldn't taste as good?

Urbani: It's the truffle itself. It's like eating a piece of wood.

She says that's because of the way truffles in China are farmed. Unlike in France, where dogs smell when a truffle is ripe, the Chinese rake at the earth with no dogs - as a CBS News producer in China discovered - and harvest the truffles the minute they find them. Which explains why - while the two truffles look the same - the price is drastically different.

Urbani: Prices of winter truffles is about $1,000 a pound. A pound of Chinese, maybe $20, $30. There are many people, bad people, who mix them. So maybe they put 30 percent of Chinese, 70 percent of...

Stahl: And they think you won't see it?

On the day we were at the Urbani factory, sorters found a number of Chinese truffles mixed in with that day's purchases. They were separated out into specially marked red baskets. More and more, Chinese truffles are slipped in with the good French or Italian strains. Experts say it's like cutting flour into cocaine.

Stahl: But look, your own farmers or middle men, are putting the Chinese in with your truffles.

Urbani: Yes.

Stahl: You're telling us you have to be on guard, not from the Chinese, but from your own people.

Urbani: Yeah, I know.

Stahl: And then you're selling them.

Urbani: I know.

Food importers and middle men are bringing 28 tons of Chinese truffles into France a year. And many are being passed off as the real thing in some French restaurants. Michel Tournayre says he's brought home some slices from his dinners out and studied them under a microscope in his lab at home to check their origin.

Tournayre has tried to blow the whistle on the restaurants that sell Chinese truffles at French prices, but the police have more important matters on their plate and rarely do anything about it.

Stahl: Twenty, 28 tons of Chinese truffles come into France every year? Where do they go?

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[NorweiganVikingPrincess]

60 minutes didn't do their homework or they would have learned the Urbani was convicted of fraud. And Ms. Urbani was the one who encouraged the Chinese to sell their truffles. Plus the truffle production has be down for decades but that's another story.

[amerilatino]

Let the clueless fools spin and prance over expensive fetishes and wild fungi that look like fuzzy livestock turds. In the meantime, I will soon retire to half a million dollars in AAA funds, general obligation bond portfolios and Mercury accounts amassed by 32 years of driving used, cheap cars, packing brown bag lunches and doing quiet side work. Then I will move to Belize, the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica where I can feed the tropical birds from my porch, wear light linens and Panama hats all year, consume cigars and seafood that are forbidden by law in the U.S. and drink daiquiris as I absolutely, positively refuse to speak English and acknowledge all solicitations and proposals that are made to me.

[Double G100]

Facinating segment.

It would be great to have another segment that hits a little closer to home such as the issue with Chinese Honey being illegally imported into the US through other countries to avoid the tarrifs, and some of the chemicals found in some of the chinese honey imports.

[mvob]

wow how lame are the folks who admin this page, deleting my past posts. freedom of expression is to much for you people at CBS? So Sad

[mike1341]

For decades, American wine makers have been mocked and sneered at by their counterparts in Europe. Aside from the unique soil, water and climate where grapes are being raised in Europe, American wine industry has vastly adopted new technology and modern science and engineered its wines to meet the market taste. The reality is, no matter how good the old world claims it's wines are they are losing ground while wines from the new world, i.e. U.S., Australia and New Zealand and South America are steadily gaining market share. I can't afford to buy a dish with truffles so I don't know how it tastes like. But I wonder if the difference between inferior Chinese truffles and their superior French or Italian cousins is as big as claimed in the program, or if the superiority is actually a mixture of distinctive quality, prestige, arrogance and exertive influence from so-called experts? Had a blind taste testing being done, can ordinary people like me tell the difference? In today's media, anything from China must be bad. If it is true, then I must be a bad human being, because I come from China too.

[stuwerb]

Chinese truffles are junk. And there are no enforced regulations on the soil quality from which they are harvested. Could be next to an e-waste junkyard for all we know.

[stuwerb]

...Good hearty bottom 20%'er food. Lots of minearls.

[stuwerb]

But how nutritious are they? Are they considered a super food like blueberries?

[The_rest_of_us]

I arrived home after my Occupy Olympia (Washington State) meeting just in time to watch 60 Minutes. The Truffle Story? You have to be kidding. Talk about the lifestyles of the 1%. I can really identify with people who fly a helicopter to go have lunch at their favorite restaurant. Who spend $150 just to buy a hamburger. In Washington State a single person who receives food stamps get $150 per month. Try to eat well off of $5 a day. Is there any wonder there is a Occupy Movement.

Part of the 99% and long time 60 Minutes viewer.

[stuwerb]

I think it's time for the 1% to blow off the frivolous goodies like truffles, caviar, and rare vintage wines, and just buy up all the super-nutritious foods like blueberries and raspberries and salad greens (foods with the highest ANDI scores), and block those with less money from getting them. Our society should be set up so that the richer one is, the more nutritious the foods one can access -- an extension of the "survival for the fittest" concept! I'm sure I can get some buy-in from Mitt Romney and John Beener for that proposal.

[Roliwolf]

I'm really with you on this one! Who in the world, given the state of our economy, thought that this would make a good story? Unbelieveable!

[sarah_mcneil]

I completely agree with this comment. I was shocked and disappointed that 60 Minutes would air such a ridiculous story. Leslie Stahl demonstrated probably the worst journalistic values I've seen on a show that used to be known for its heavy-hitting, high caliber news reporting. Watching her stroll through the hills of France, giddy with the excitement of truffle hunting with probably some of the richest people in France was offensive. It was insulting to see her sip wine and roll her eyes with the Urbanis as they discussed the sad state of affairs regarding "knock off" truffle flakes being sold in the U.S. Get with it 60 Minutes; the truffles saga is a high-class problem and your viewers are smarter than this, more grounded then you give them credit and they want real news.

[Bojax39]

"European white truffles can sell for as much as $3,600 a pound, making them and their fellow fungi the most expensive food in the world."

Nonsense. The price of truffles is dwarfed by the cost of the spice saffron at up to $5000+ US dollars a pound depending upon supply.

Saffron is the reproductive parts of a certain breed of flowering crocus and must be gathered by hand, one tiny thread at a time. 90% of the world's saffron production comes out of Iran.

[rr03kx]

Saffron is a spice. Maybe they don't consider that as food.

[Dunestrider]

Wow, just check out the photograph for this story! Someone in the background of the photo is standing, wearing a full-length fur coat. Oh, those glorious 1%ers! Have they no shame?

[Dunestrider]

OK, EmpireGeorge. You don't need a fur coat to stay warm. Apparently you rich people haven't figured it out yet.

[Dunestrider]

I'm pretty sure saffron is far more expensive than truffles. Yes, saffron is technically a spice, but if you are quibbling over definitions, food is defined as "any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink, or that plants absorb, in order to maintain life and growth". Good saffron (from Kashmir) sells for $120 for 1/4 ounce. Which equals $7680 a pound, twice the price of stinking French mushrooms. Fortunately, you only need a tiny bit of saffron. Anyone who has ever smelled saffron's fragrance knows that it is certainly worth it.