Truffles are known as a fancy and delicious delicacy. And get this, truffles can sell for as much as $3,600 a pound. Just a couple tiny shavings of black truffles from France can cost hundreds of dollars, while in Italy the cost can be three times as much! Click below to read more.
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. One two-pound truffle recently sold for more than $300,000. All of which has brought organized crime into the truffle trade, creating a black market and leading to theft of both truffles as well as the highly valued truffle-sniffing dogs. Add to that the influx of the inferior Chinese truffles — masquerading as their European cousins — and you’ve got trouble with truffles. Lesley Stahl reports.
Truffles are a fancy, delicious delicacy — some say an aphrodisiac — and, as we first reported in January, they’re ounce for ounce the most expensive food in the world. If you go to France and Italy, as we did, you learn quickly that truffles are under siege because they’re becoming scarce. They’re being trafficked like drugs, stolen by thugs and threatened by inferior imports from China.
