The Gojiberry

The healthy Gojiberry

The gojiberry, also known by the names “gogi berry” and “wolfberry,” is a small fruit indigenous to Asia and Eastern Europe. The berry is oval-shaped, similar to some peppers, and is bright red in color with deep green leaves.

While most every part of the plant is used for medicinal, health, and healing purposes, the berry itself is recognized as the most potent part of the plant and has a very wide geographic area of use.

Although found in many different areas and in different climates, it is only raised for commercial production in China. The primary regions for wild growth are China and Mongolia, with the Ningxia area in China having one of the highest rates of production. Indeed, in eastern Asia goji berries from this region are considered to be among the most pristine.

In eastern cultures the gojiberry has a long and significant history as an incredible source of nutrition, happiness, and long life.

It has held a crucial place in traditional Chinese medicine, with use for medicinal purposes extending as far back as 4000 years to the legendary First Emperor of China, as well as being found in one of the earliest known medical texts. People in these regions hold the fruit in high regards, claiming that it provides them with many different benefits ranging from small to life-changing. Interestingly enough, of all of the cultures in the world who hold the longest average life spans, most of them have plentiful access to the goji berry as a source of food.

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If you are keen to try growing goji berries yourself, and why not?....

The following website provides gojiberry seed to the UK, as well as a useful page of growing instructions: Gojiberry Growing

and for lots of different berries online try these sites:

Crocus UK:

"Autumn Fruiting Raspberry"
Berries in the UK Type 'raspberries' (without the quotes) in the search box on their homepage.

Amazon are a good place to start for US deliveries - this sunshine blueberry bush is one of many products:

Low Chill Sunshine Blueberry Potted Two Gallon Plant

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In recent times knowledge of the goji berry has spread to other places around the world, most importantly to the west, which has traditionally shunned alternative medicines and holistic products. The goji berry has been received well, however, probably partly due to its reputation as being a scientifically validated product. The attention that the goji berry has managed to gain from the scientific community is impressive, as it is featured in several different journals and also has a record-setting 84+ entries logged in at PubMed.gov, the government-sponsored web database of scientific research.

These entries explore the significance of the goji berry, as well as lend scientific credit to many of the health benefits claimed by eastern cultures. This scientific validation has been furthered by several recent clinical trials performed on Freelife International’s GoChi Juice, which proved that those consumed the goji product for 14 days showed significant improvements in 13 different areas of their health.

In commercial marketing the goji berry is most commonly sold as a juice. This is because this form leaves the contents of the berry most intact, especially the many unique polysaccharides found in the goji berry which are credited with giving the fruit its powerful nutrition and health benefits. These molecules are not found in any other food, and have the unique ability to promote communication between cells throughout the body. Proper cell communication is key to achieving good health and wellness, and the breakdown of cellular communication can contribute towards many different illnesses and diseases. Cellular communication is believed to be incredibly poor in the average person today, due mostly to unbalanced diets, excessive intake of fatty oils and sugars, and under-consumption of water.

The consistently positive reaction towards the goji berry in western cultures has created a very large business of marketing goji juices, and as such the product has become the largest-selling product in the lineup of functional foods. This is the fastest growing market in the natural health industry today, and is expected to become a multi-billion dollar business within the next few years.

Many Thanks to Grace for providing this article

Happy Gardening!

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