Goji Research
July 21st, 2009
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US $.69
No fruit has ever been the subject of as much scientific speculation as the Goji Berry has. From analyzing its' extremely high levels of antioxidants to simple nutritional profiling, goji has had more papers written about its unusually high health properties than any other fruit or berry.
This is because records of goji berries go back five thousand years in China! Naturally, Chinese doctors have been able to shed some light on this berry as long as there have been 'scientific papers.'
Official lab work has been done on Goji samples from various places, time and time again. The overall findings in each case were exciting, but none so as impressive as grade A Ningxia goji. In nearly every possible way, from it's nutritional content to it's ORAC (antioxidant capacity) score, Ningxia goji berries are at the top of the list when compared to just about anything else on earth.
Goji Antioxidant Research
Brunswick Labs, based in Wareham MA, have performed many ORAC and S-ORAC tests on both fresh and freeze-dried goji samples. Brunswick Labs is internationally recognized as the premier ORAC testing lab, and the US government uses them constantly in conjunction with the US department of agriculture.
Various Goji Berry product manufacturers have independently submitted their samples of Goji to Brunswick Labs and most returned promising results. However, none to date have surpassed a sample of freeze-dried Ningxia, grade-A goji, at 303 umTE per gram!
Keep in mind that while freeze-drying does allow one to concentrate the number of antioxidants in a gram of any sample, the process does remove some of the other nutrients, such as those that give goji it's high Protein content.
Unlike other berries though, a Ningxia Wolfberry does not lose the vast majority of it's freeze-dried ORAC score when tested as fresh berries.
When tested as a fresh berry, per gram, a grade A Ningxia Goji Berry still scores a very respectable 95 umTE.
To put that in perspective, the next fruit down on the list is a prune, at 57 umTE/g, and then a blackberry, at 51 umTE/g.
Admittedly, three other fruits, in their fresh form, score higher on the ORAC assay than goji does. Acai, (184 umTE/g) Black Raspberry, (164 umTE/g) and Pomegranate. (105 umTE/g)
However, none of those offer the vast wealth of other nutritional benefits like Goji does.
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