Goji Berries.Net

If you’re someone who keeps up with the latest research on nutrition, you’ve probably read or heard about, or even begun to incorporate into your diet, some derivative of Goji berries.

And the Goji berries you’ve been exposed to may have been advertised as Tibetan, or Himalayan, Goji berries of the species Lycium eleagnus, or elaganus.

Promoters of the Tibetan Goji berry credit it with being responsible for the life span of Chinese professor Li Chung Yun, who, according to the May 8, 1933 edition of the London Times, died at the age of 256 years. The Professor was also reported to have consumed, from the age of fifty, 15 grams, or about half-an-ounce, of Goji berries each day.

It’s a nice story, but the difficulty is that there is no such plant as a Lycium eleganus, or eleagnus. There is an orange-berry producing plant, the elaeagnus umbellata, native to the subtropical regions of Asia close to the Himalayas, but it would not do well in the climactic extremes of Himalayan mountain valleys.

And the one grower which claims to be the only source of true Tibetan Goji berries, the Tibetan Goji Berry Company, says its harvest, since 1974, has remained between 280 and 300 tons per year. Hardly enough to supply the exploding demand for Goji-based products.

So where does that leave us? Not as lost as you might think.

The story of Li Chung Yun’s long and happy Chinese life does point to a 21st century scientifically-supported truth about the remarkable nutritional value of the Chinese wolfberry, aka Lycium barbarum. The phrase “Tibetan Goji berry” may actually refer to a fruit no different, except for the exotic images it conjures of lush, remote valleys and sparkling mountain streams, from a Chinese wolfberry.

The Chinese characters for berry, by the way, when morphed to English, read “gouqi”, or “gou qi zi”, and could account for the name “Goji” berries.

The super-ingredients of wolf, or Goji, berries are its polysaccharides, called LBP, for Lycium Barbarum, polysaccharides.

Numerous Chinese research studies have linked intake of Goji berries’ LBP to increased pituitary gland production of human growth hormone. It’s been known for a while that our natural production of HGH steadily decreases as we get older, and that supplementing it can reverse the signs of aging.

LPB polysaccharides also give Goji berries their remarkable nutritional potency; they contain 21 vitamins, 19 trace minerals, and have more anti-oxidant Vitamin A than, and nearly as much anti-oxidant Vitamin C as, equivalent amounts of carrots and oranges.

Great sources of essential fatty acids, Goji berries are also a complete food group in themselves, with significant amounts of a whole protein, unsaturated fats, and carbohydrate.

There is, for good reason, a lot of hope behind the Goji-berry hype. But all Goji plants are only as nutritional as the water and soil that feed them. So it makes sense that the most nutrient-packed Goji berries would come from the most nutrient-dense soil.

And the most nutrient-dense soil on which the berries are grown is not that of the Tibetan uplands. It is the mineral-rich desert sand of China’s Loess Plateau which the Yellow River deposits as flood-water silt in the Goji berry plantations of China's Ningxia province.

Ningxia Goji berries are recognized throughout Asia for their remarkably high nutrient content, and are the only Goji berries given a “superior" grade from practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

The good news is that Loess-silt-nurtured Ningxia Goji berries account for the greater part of Chinese, and world, Goji berry production, so Goji berry products with at least some Ningxia Goji berry content are readily available. And that works for you!

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