The KaiKai Book

At $25 per pound, macadamia nuts are the world's most expensive nuts.The nuts keep breaking price records every year. Macadamia trees take 7 to 10 years to begin producing nuts, and the nuts can only be harvested a few times a year. Although the demand for the nuts has largely outpaced the supply, exporters worry that a bubble in the global macadamia industry is about to burst. Following is a transcript of the video:

Even in the expensive world of spices, saffron stands out. Real saffron can cost you over $10,000 per kilogram. No machine can do the delicate work required to harvest these thin threads. It can take 40 hours of hard manual labor to produce just 1 kilogram of high-quality saffron.

You’ve probably heard of fugu, the deadly puffer fish delicacy served across Japan. The Japanese eat 10,000 tons of the fish each year, but in high season, it could cost you $265 per kilogram. So what makes this dish so expensive?

While ordinary vegetable cucumbers cost $3 per kilo, sea cucumbers can cost over $3,000 per kilo. These animals are prized as a delicacy in Asia, and are used by pharmaceutical companies to treat diseases like cancer. Unfortunately, over-harvesting now threatens many sea cucumber populations.