A Wolfberry A Day

I am very excited to have started to receive emails from people in China. Some of the emails are from people asking me to partner with them in selling Goji, but I don't have any idea what that would entail.

I would love to be able to provide low cost, low shipping straight from a good source, but it's just not me.

But what I do have are pictures from the Ningxia province. I am putting them up on the front of the site and also including them here.

Just the pictures here, explanation on the main site.

I have been very busy with a new site that I have called www.greatabout.net.

Luckily, my continual use of wolfberries has kept my energy going so that I could roll the site out sooner than I thought!

Please take a moment and visit Great About!

A reader sent this:

This is a paragraph from MSN health "age erasers", originally printed in Fitness magazine in April.

Another promising anti-ager is the goji berry, a fruit native to Tibet that boasts 500 times more vitamin C by weight than an orange and is considered to be the most abundant source of carotenoids, a type of antioxidant, on earth. This little nutritional powerhouse -- which tastes like a denser, sweeter cranberry -- also contains more iron than spinach, 18 amino acids, calcium, magnesium, zinc, selenium, and vitamins B1, B2, B6 and E, according to Dr. Perricone. The goji berry stimulates the release of human growth hormone, a natural substance in the body that improves our ability to sleep, helps us look younger, reduces fat, improves memory, boosts libido, and enhances the immune system, he says.

There are a lot of other blogs out there about goji. I discovered this recently. Most of them seem to have something to do with Time magazine and wolfberries being the 'super fruit of the year.'

After finding the actual Time magazine article, I had to add a hype page to this fructus lycii site.

While shopping at the CAM Asia Market in a Cleveland Suburb, I couldn't find any fructus lycii. So I approached the information desk where a chinese lady was reading a newspaper.

"Do you have Goji?" I asked.

"Hmm. You mean wolfberries?" she replied.

"Yeah! Do you have them?"

"Yes," she said, "They are over by the ginseng and health."

So it was very interesting to me to have someone call them wolfberries while inside of a Chinese market. Additionally, Tink Holl, the other Chinese market, has the goji in the spices section, while CAM went ahead and put them in the health section. I think that the location of the markets is causing the suburban one to try to appeal to the fad of wolfberries/goji instead of the 2000 years of spice and health.

I have been adding the goji to my tea lately. It really is good and good for me. I am trying to figure out a way to politely post the difference I see in myself when I have lycii once a day. More to come!

My coworker Xinghua gave me this recipe for Goji Rice Soup. I haven't tried it yet. If you do, let me know the results.

From Xinghua:

I'm not sure you will like rice soup since they are not like those soup you eat usually (they are very light).

Here is the recipe:
1. one cup rice
2. one fifth cup Goji
3. a few dates, optional
4. some water, depend on density of rice soup you want, maybe around 15 cup water or even more, actually I never measure the water exactly since we cook those soup all the time, I can add the water to pot by experience.
5. after water is boiling using high temperature, cook 30-40 minutes using medium temperature, you need to pay attention to make sure that water won't come out after it's boiling (you can leave cover some open space to avoid this problem),

if you noticed that water is not enough, you can add more anytime.

Xinghua also recommends soaking the Goji for 3 to 4 hours before and then draining. She says that dried goji berries that are dark are better than light-colored ones because the light-colored ones have chemicals.

I found this study while searching out goji/wolfberry information.

The key line in the study is: "Serum levels and macular density of zeaxanthin was raised by feeding a carotenoid-containing fraction of F. lycii. Therefore, F. lycii is a good dietary source of zeaxanthin supplement."

I was not sure what zeaxanthin supplement meant, but wikipedia had the answer.

"Some studies support the view that supplemental lutein and/or zeaxanthin help protect against AMD.
There is also epidemiological evidence that increasing lutein and zeaxanthin intake lowers the risk of cataract development."

AMD is age-related macular degeneration.

Zeaxanthin is a common carotenoid alcohol in nature, found in corn and saffron, and according to the article, our beloved fructus lycii is a good supplement as well!

As you may have read on my other site, I have declared 2007 the year without a soda. I am going to try to go the whole year without drinking any Pepsi, Coke, whatever. That includes diet. Just no soda.

I am still drinking water with goji berries. I just drop the dried fructus lycii right in the bottle, add the water, drink the water, eat the berries. I am looking for someone to tell me of an online source of goji berries that they have had a good experience with. If I have a good experience with them, I would be happy to drop the google ads for direct links to good vendors.

Meanwhile, no soda, and just wolfberry.

I am going to write soon about the health benefits that I am feeling.

I am just finding out tonight about the 'Goji Juice Scam.' I hope that everyone understands that I am a real dude, that I don't sell this stuff personally, that I really do like the berries that I found at the chinese grocer, and that all of my sales are through Amazon. This site is not a scam site! I am not a Multi-Level Marketer and I do not sell anything out of my home.

Anyway, here is what I found out about the Goji Juice Scam. I got most of my information from the people at gojistop.com. They said that there were two layers to the scam. One layer is a Multi-Level Marketing deal (think Amway) and the other is inferior products.

I don't think the juice could be nearly as good as just eating the berries. Even if the juice was 100 percent goji juice, doesn't that mean it is just ground up berries? I want to grind up the berries with my teeth.

Lycium Barbarum is the LATIN name for Fructus Lycii, which is the medical name for Goji which is the asian name for Wolfberries.

Does that clear it up?