#10 Goji Berries

My brother swears by these little berries and, looking at the recent boom in their popularity on Whole Foods shelves and frozen yogurt chains, they seem to be taking over as the new organic/health food craze. It seems every nutrition guide, smoothie shop, and organic market is selling the idea that these berries can increase our life spans and prevent cancer with anti-aging properties and antioxidants. I wanted to get through the rhetoric around these little fruits, and see if their taste held up to their hype.

Goji berries are known as well as Wolfberries (a name given to them by British colonists) and are found in parts of Southern Europe and Asia. Discovered by the Himalayans, they passed on knowledge of its uses to travelling Chinese, Tibetans, and Indians. Inspired by Himalayan hype and folklore, all of these cultures incorporated the fruit into herbal medicines and attributed long life and health to its nutritional powers.

Today, nutritionists look in particular at the presence and balance of polysacharrides, polynutrient compounds in the berry, which act as good nutrients for various functions in the body, to the antioxidants in the body that work against cancer and the effects of aging, and to its ability to improve eyesight due to the presence of b-carotene. It is unclear the extent of these nutrients’ effects on the body and if they can even be evaluated; it seems, from looking at opinions online, that there may be some scientific evidence of these findings but that research does not have any current means to prove any of this satisfactorily.

As a preface, I love dried fruit: my parents' Christmas present this year was a selection of dried fruits and I make frequent trips to Whole Foods to steal from their bins. I like the sweet and tangy taste of dried fruit that stays true to the fruit but also adds bitterness common throughout different types. Nevertheless, goji berries kind of cloy to your palate with their sweetness: they taste old or stale (like raisins left out in the air too long) and leave a sugary strange after-taste that defeats any original impressions of the fruit. By itself, I could never munch on the bright red stucco-colored fruits as a snack; more than a few leave your mouth in serious want of a glass of water. I don’t think this is only me: the taste of these berries does not seem to me a likely grabber of the masses. Rather, people probably eat this food more out of the belief that each bite is touting powers that will counter aging and keep them from developing cancer, regardless of the legitimacy of the literature that states this.

Sources:

http://www.gojiberryblog.com/history-of-the-goji-berry/

http://www.health-report.co.uk/goji_berry.html

http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/goji-berry.htm