If you're a regular health food store shopper, or someone working in the health food industry, you're probably already familiar with the goji berry. It was a little over a year ago, when I began a new job at a health food store, that I first encountered the little bright red raison looking berries myself. I can remember clearly my bikey vegan health nut friend telling me in no uncertain terms that goji is one of the healthiest foods in the world bar none. I didn't give it much thought at the time, considering it another flash in the pan fad. Then in the last year, the shelves have been exploding with more goji related product than you can shake a stick at. Going over a mental inventory right now I can count no less than ten different products we sell that include goji berries or goji juice as a main ingredient, three or four different brands of pure goji berries in a package, and who knows how many supplements contain or are solely composed of goji. With this kind of interest building and more and more goji products hitting the shelves each month, its easy to see why its expected to be an important part of a multi-billion dollar super-fruits market by 2011.
A staple in Traditional Chinese Medicine its no wonder that its caught on in the west, where anything with a long winding mountain path on the box, or an ancient buddhist temple hidden amidst the fog, is enough to ensure its place in the immortality regime of todays 'alternate health practitioners'. It plays a central role in some of the super-longevity myths so often quoted by eastern inspired longevity herbalists. However the stories of taoist masters and moutain mystics living well into their two hundreds and beyond is far from substantiated to say the least.
Goji, or Wolf Berry is the name given to the berry harvested from either the Lycium Barbarum or the Lycium Chinense shrub, both of which are members of the Solanacae or Nightshade family. The benefits attributed to Goji include everything from strengthening the immune system, to gaining more sexual vitality, to healthy skin, hair, and teeth, you name it and TCM believes goji will enhance it. While the research may likely show that goji berries do have some beneficial properties, the over-zealous and infomercialesque market campaigns behind alot of the products are worth raising a real skeptical brow over:
While reading some of the material on the web about goji, 95% of which seems to be put there by people involved in MLM or other kinds of gimmicky marketing ploys to sell the goji juice itself, I happened upon a piece of writing by Dr. Ralph Moss called "A Friendly Skeptic Looks at Goji Juice". In the article Dr. Moss uses the PubMed open database to check out the peer reviewed information and research surrounding Goji. After finding a single clinical trial study the Doctor highlights the fact that, though the findings are positive, some key questions about the study's methodology are left out of the abstract. He rightly concludes that it may very well be an important finding but with such little evidence to go on it seems a bit hasty to start making the kinds of ultra-bold claims of the goji peddlers:
Dr. Moss article seemed sensible and well written, he backed up his points with foot-notes and generally remained 'friendly' as he said he would. The fact that he acknowledges that there may very well be benefits is a very important point to make. Seperate from whether or not Goji does have such amazing benefits, the problem is not whether it works or not but the kind of claims being made about it well overstating any kind of evidence we have at this point. Returning to the google search page I clicked the link just beneath it entitled
'Letter to All the Goji Juice GoChi Skeptics Out There!' from an anonymous author and website selling... thats right you guessed it, himalayan goji juice.
Suffice it to say the writer disagrees with Dr. Moss and makes his case, conveniently ignoring all the information brought to the table in the first article. But it is statements like this:
First let me say this and I'm not necessarily trying to lump this friendly goji skeptic in with these people, however I just wanted to bring to light some additional insight about skeptics in general.
That immediately set off huckster alarms right off the bat. I believe there are two kinds of skeptics, those who see skepticism as a type of world view, a priori dictating what is and isn't bullshit, and those who use skepticism as a method of inquiry. An intellectual strategy starting with the almost universally recognized fact that humans are best at fooling themselves. Because of our predisposition to believing what we want, as opposed to what the evidence tells us, we use the scientific method as the closest possible way to make meaningful objective functional statements about reality. Any time I see someone playing up the importance of personal anecdotes and subjective experience in place of peer-reviewed research, I assume they want the issue to remain muddy. Its this type of response to critical thinking that needs to be addressed no just in the goji berry marketing, but in health-food and supplement marketing in general.
I want to repeat that this isn't to say I think the goji berry is 'unhealthy' . I think its highly likely we will find that its a great addition to a healthy diverse diet. At this point, its too early to tell if its really the fountain of youth its been billed as. I happen to eat them simply because I enjoy their flavor, mixed with mulberries, golden raisons, nuts and raw cacao, its called the 'go take a hike' mix, and its significantly less expensive than the supplement/juice so my wallet isn't hurting. This post isn't to bash the noble goji berry, oh no, merely to highlight the marketing that happens to come along with the product, and how that marketing plays into the already confusing, dishonest and unverified health claims spread so casually in the health food industry today.
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