Chinese people still consider goji berries as tonics such as goji berry tea, wine or soup, but foreigners have already turned them into star foods. Foreigners have various ways to eat goji berries like making salads, cakes or fried rice. The Guardian from Britain recently made a special report for goji berry, and said that, as a traditional Chinese medicine, goji berry was praised by many western gourmets.
“The red fruit tasted like cranberry comes from china.” Early in 2012, the American media introduced goji berry with a cookbook. The author mentioned that goji berry is rich in vitamin C, vitamin E, which can accelerate metabolism. Therefore, goji berry has become fashionable and healthy in a wink, and it has been added into fruit salad and summer drinks. Many foreigners also take goji berries as tonics, British Internet users create goji berry masks because they deem that it can detoxify and moisturize the skin.
Unlike foreigner’s fanatical love, as for Chinese people, goji berry is just a common food. Few people realize that goji berry has a long history of medicinal herbs since ancient times. Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic, the Chinese medical texts, mentioned that the major functions of goji berry are cleaning up pathogenic factors in the body and stimulating metabolism, taking goji berries for a long time can help people to improve fitness, prevent aging, resist cold and heat. The book, Explaining Abstruseness of The Canon of Materia Medica, from the Ming dynasty mentioned that goji berries can nourish the kidney and strengthen the essence, improve fitness, quench thirst, and can cure the blurred vision and the knee pain. Li Guohui, a director of pharmacy from Tumor Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said that the most popular kind of goji berry in the world is that of chinese Pharmacopoeia, goji berry is dried ripe fruit of nightshade in Ningxia, it has the functions of nourishing the kidney, strengthening the essence and improving eyesight, it has been used for more than 2000 years in our country, and it is known as the genuine medicinal materials. Goji berry is not only a herb, but also a popular food to the world.
Wang Yu, the director of nutrition and health research center from Lanzhou University provides a set of data which shows that our Chinese goji berries (including dried goji berries, fresh goji berries and goji berry powder) has been exported 9 million 790 thousand kilograms in 2015, and the amount is 107 million dollars, the price is 10.98 dollars per kilogram on average. The largest export areas are Holland, the United States, and Hongkong. Due to the strong ability to adapt to the environment, goji berries are widely distributed in china, especially in Ningxia and in Northwest china. There are about 80 kinds of goji berries in America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, southern Africa and the Pacific islands, and most kinds of goji berries are in South America, which are more than 30 species.
In the end, experts remind that people should be careful to identify the real high-quality goji berries. Generally, the skins of high-quality goji berries are dry with full of flesh, the fruits are moist and red or dark red, rather than bright red. People should not choose the abnormal goji berries with sour or pungent odor after smelling. Ningxia goji berries are genuine medicinal materials with the highest medicinal value. There are some small white hollow spots on the tips, and it will float on tea or soup.
