I’m always on the look out for folk-remedies, but I think I might have a few qualms about this new…er…pee-ple’s drink in North India:

“If you pick up a labeled “health drink” in India you might find some unusual ingredients. The Indian reverence for cows, which gives religious significance to the bovine, has produced a good-for-you beverage made from cow urine.

The cow is considered by Hindus as symbolic of life-giving deities. The fundamentalist Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) launched Gauloka Peya, or “drink from the land of cow,” earlier this year.

Purushottam Toshniwal, a member of the cow protection unit of the RSS and the man who concocted the drink, says the group has already sold around 700 bottles to distributors.

RSS already sells soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and skin-care creams made from cow urine and dung.

“Many were hesitant to try it in the beginning,” Mr. Toshniwal says. “However, once they tasted it, they liked it. You cannot taste the cow urine as it is mixed with other ingredients.” He also believes the drink will cure diseases.

The cow urine is distilled before it is mixed with traditional Indian herbs and medicinal plants such as Brahmi and basil and water in a 1-to-7 ratio. Gauloka Peya comes in four flavors – orange, khus(a fragrant Asian grass), rose, and lemon. A bottle costs about $3.

“It is like any regular sweet drink, without the harmful side effects,” Toshniwal says.”

Can’t be any worse than snails, crete d’ coque (cockscomb), bishop’s nose (chicken’s behind), prairie oysters (bulls’ testicles), Norman cheeses aged under cow-dung, chocolate-covered grasshoppers, slugs, and all the other less-than-savory savories that garnish the global plate.

The Indian cow is a one-critter industrial plant – providing its milk for drink, its hide for leather, its horn for vessels, its dung for fuel and medicinal products, and now its urine for medicinal drinks, shampoos, and soaps. (Still, I’m happy the ratio is 1 in 7 parts, not the other way round).

More here on the curious practice of curing your body with the fluids from your body:

“Through the ages there have been literally thousands of champions of this curious practice: In the early 1800s, a book titled One Thousand Notable Things describes the use of urine to cure scurvy, relieve skin itching, cleanse wounds, and many other treatments. An 18th century French dentist praised urine as a valuable mouthwash. In England during the 1860-70s, the drinking of one’s own urine was a common cure for jaundice. In more modern times, the Alaskan Eskimos have used urine as an antiseptic to treat wounds……..

…While many people are aware that Gandhi drank his urine, few know that leather-clad rocker Jim Morrison (who, like Gandhi, had an unwatchable movie made of his life) began the practice of drinking his urine while on an LSD-induced spiritual quest in the Mojave Desert. And like Gandhi, Morrison is now dead. As is John Lennon, another reputed fan of urine therapy. In fact, an entire legion of herion-addicted, long-haired rock and rollers are said to have tried Urine Therapy in the early 1970s following Keith Richards (unsuccessful) experimentations with the cure. One of the more famous modern day cases involves movie star Steve McQueen, who, it is said, in the last stages of cancer, survived solely on a diet of urine and boiled alligator skin prescribed by his Mexican doctors.”

And big pharma is not about to be left out of things:

“This summer, Enzymes of America plans to market its first major urine product called urokinase, an enzyme that dissolves blood clots and is used to treat victims of heart attacks. The company has contracts to supply the urine enzyme to Sandoz, Merrell Dow and other major pharmaceutical companies. Ironically, this enterprise evolved from Porta-John’s attempt to get rid of urine proteins-a major source of odour in portable toilets.”