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Goji berries: A health trend with deep roots (DEVRA FIRST, 2/03/09, THE BOSTON GLOBE)

Peruse the shelves of a grocery store and you will find cereal that contains goji berries, energy drinks made from goji berries, goji berry supplements and straight-up bags of goji berries. Shriveled and small, the pink of pencil erasers, goji has been anointed a "superfood," one in a line of fruits touted for their health-boosting powers: the acai berry, the pomegranate, the mangosteen, Tahitian noni. It has a sweet-tart flavor, like a golden raisin crossed with a rosehip and steeped in hibiscus tea. Goji berries can be eaten out of hand like hard, leathery raisins or used in baking, as you would dried cranberries.

Google "goji" and you'll find the fruit praised, often by people who are selling it, as a weight-loss aid, cancer fighter and "the most nutritionally dense food on the planet." Dr. Mehmet Oz recommended the berries as a good source of antioxidants to Ben Gordon of the Chicago Bulls on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "They're the most potent antioxidant fruit that we know," he said. Quick to see marketing opportunities, companies from Bear Naked to Anheuser-Busch to Smashbox Cosmetics have included them in their products.

Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio has a good riff where he says that if yoga had been invented in Cincinnati we'd call it stretching and no one would do it. If Goji sounds like fake Eastern hooha, think of it by its other name: wolfberry.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2009 7:16 AM