A green frog juice ...?

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If we look at Google the words "green smoothie" find a lot of recipes for a perfect and healthy green juice. We may have to do a more thorough search if we find a popular elixir in Peru and Bolivia that does not use green leafy vegetables, but aquatic frog endangered Titicaca.

While in the United States it is said that the green juice is the "fastest to consume vegetables" form, its Andean counterpart is famous for curing a variety of conditions, such as anemia, fever, tuberculosis, typhoid and even female infertility .

Today, Peruvians and Bolivians of all ages often go to the fair, a market weekend, to drink this liquid, which is prepared in a jiffy. According to Arturo Muñoz, project coordinator Bolivia Amphibian Initiative, we can also find this drink in shops in Lima and Arequipa, the largest cities of Peru, almost every day of the week.

If you prefer to prepare this drink at home, this is the recipe:

1. Go to Lake Titicaca and catch a frog.

2. Cut off the head, remove the skin and take the body of the frog in the blender (the less daring can boil it first).

3. Add brown sugar, honey and carrots to taste.

4. If you want to hide the main ingredient a bit more, try some quinoa, which will make the mix color change from clear to green coffee.

5. And if you need an aphrodisiac adds maca root.

Peru and Bolivia passed laws prohibiting this process, because the frog is a seriously endangered species. Defenders of animal rights have also questioned whether the frog liquefied cure aches and above conditions (there seems no evidence of this).

However, Ben Orlove, an anthropologist at Columbia University who has spent much of his career studying the lake Titicaca, says "there are many cases where local wisdom eventually work." He adds: "The development projects misinformed upstream" are a far greater threat to frogs liquefied fashion.

Munoz, who monitors the population of frogs, said that, in fact, when explored an area of ​​258 square kilometers of the lake in January, did not find a single frog.