You might think that truffles ranging in price from about $700-$4000/kg would make it ripe for an industry to farm it effectively to capture the marginal cost of production, but truffles require such a complex environment in nature to produce that nobody has managed to successfully create an artificial truffle farm--it requires soil balance and a symbiotic relationship with specific trees (oak, hazel, birch or fir).
oh, also, truffle oil is mostly a myth--it's mostly made from petroleum byproduct because squeezing the oil from truffles would be entirely too expensive and it turns out that petroleum byproducts produce 2,4-Dithiapentane and there's no regulatory requirement that it's pulled from truffles to be called truffle oil.
So next time you order truffle fries, something to think about...
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