forgojiberries.com

Apparently the very recent Goji harvest was poor due to global warming causing weather changes in the Himilayas.  It was wetter, which caused fewer berries to ripen.  This means we all are about to experience a serious Goji shortage, which will cause prices to rise everywhere.  The other Goji shortage factor is that Europe has now discoverred Goji and is demanding a large share of the crop.

We know lots of people in the Goji business and we picked our supplier because of his excellent reputation for truly caring that the quality of the berries is only the highest.

Our berries not only are certified organic, but they also never have harmful bacteria or mold.  They are carefully tested and scrutinized, as you can read on our website, www.forgojiberries.com.  Although we don’t mention it on the website, they are also certified Kosher.

It’s nice to know that others also care about the quality of products.  Our berries are grown high in the Chinese Himilayas, in the Ningxia Province, where the soil is especially mineral-rich due to the snowmelt from the highest Himilayan mountains which brings the ground-up rock down from the glaciers to the growing areas.

The lowlands of China are quite polluted, so nothing grown there could be considered pesticide-free.  But in the highlands, the air, water and soil are pure.

Our berries are Lycium Barbarum.

On my website, www.forgojiberries.com , I provide directions on how to make your own Goji juice from Goji berries.

What do you do with the pulp? Throw it out or feed it to the chipmunks.  However, if you want to try a fun experiment, put a layer of potting soil in a planting tray, spread all the pulp all over the soil, put another layer of soil on top, and keep it moist and warm. After about 2 weeks you’ll start to see lots of little sprouts coming up. Goji seems to be a slow growing plant, but soon you’ll have a thick, beautiful carpet of Goji sprouts. After they sprout, give them some sun.

You can clip them and eat them in salads or by the handful. They’re delicious! You can also separate some into pots and start to grow your own Goji plantation.

A customer asks:  “What is considered a serving size? Also, how many servings are recommended per day?”

A serving size according to our label is considered to be one ounce.  A lot of scientific research has been conducted on Goji using one ounce or the equivalent (if it’s juiced) per day.

We do not recommend any particular amount or number of servings per day, although some people do treat Goji berries that way.

Our Goji berries are a delicious, wonderful food, just as blueberries are.  Is there a particular “serving size” for blueberries?  Is there a recommended number of servings per day for blueberries?

I adore fresh blueberries.  In the summer, my personal number of servings per day for blueberries is about 10.  I have them for breakfast, I snack on them, I put them on ice cream, etc.  In the winter, it averages about zero servings per day.

Goji berries are dried, so my personal number of servings per day for Goji berries is one, and it never ends.  I start eating them in the morning and I stop at bedtime!  They are my snack food of choice!  I cook with them, too.

Today I received the following question from a customer:

“Just today I found Goji online. I spoke to one very nice lady who gave me a lot of info on the great health benifits, but her juice would cost us about $90.00+ a month, if we used the minimum 3 oz per day.

How do raw Goji berries work if I make a potent juice and take the correct amount for best results? aprox cost for two, per month? I’m a retired Police Officer and do ok, but with all other daily expenses, the almost $100.00 a month we don’t need. We are seniors and have health issues that could use some help.”

Here is my reply:

I can give you some good estimates. Possibly the person you spoke to sells the Free Life brand of Goji juice. Indeed, Free Life is quite expensive, since it’s a multi-level marketing company. Otherwise, possibly it was a Genesis company. Genesis is usually a good deal less expensive than Free Life.

I certainly think $100 per month is way too much to spend.

I’m guessing you want to take a “therapeutic” dose if you want to drink 3 oz. per day. There really is not any minimum or maximum. I always suggest that people listen to their bodies as to how much to take. If you have a specific medical condition, your body will often “crave” Goji juice until that condition is more in balance, and then the craving will taper off somewhat.

Goji does seem to perform wonders for many medical conditions, but it’s also a wonderful general tonic for the body, helping to keep everything tuned up and working right.

The highly potent juice that I describe how to make on my website is much more potent than any juice you would buy. You could each take 1/2 oz. per day. Because it is so potent, you would start slowly (with LESS then 1/2 oz.) to see how your digestive system handles it. This is because, like any fruit juice, it can give you looser stools. You wouldn’t want to overdo it! But you can work up to 1/2 oz. per day. Of course, you can take more than that if you so choose, if that’s what your body is telling you.

Taking that amount, for 2 people, that would require about 30 oz per month, which is about 2 pounds of dried Goji berries.

To get the best value if you decide to buy our berries, you could get 4 pounds ($59.88, or $14.97 per pound) because we offer free shipping with 4 pounds. If all this works out as I’ve outlined, that would bring your cost down to about $30 per month for 2 people.

Of course, we also offer 8 lbs for $13.97 per pound and the free shipping, so that would make it even less expensive. But I would suggest trying it first with the 4 pounds, or even 2 pounds (our 2 pound price is $15.97 per pound plus $7 shipping,) to see how it goes.

I know Whole Foods has started carrying the Genesis brand of Goji juice for $20 for 16 oz of pure juice, but that juice isn’t as highly concentrated and potent as what you would make from our berries, so you’d have to drink more to get the same result. But then you wouldn’t have to make it, either.

In any case, thanks for writing, and feel free to call any time with questions!

Sincerely,
Rachel Trueblood
303-642-0277

A customer writes:

I am 74 and have always been in excellent health, until now. I developed a virus autoimmune disease called ITP and from there I started having tremors which the doctor said may be early Parkinsons and I have macular degeneration.  My TCM doctor was going to give me some berries (which she did not say what kind but after reading this I assume it was Goji berries.)   But for some reason she has not yet explained she gave me some small reddish pills called Lycium.  Are these pills as potent as the berries or more so?  Do berries have Lycium?

My answer:

Does TCM doctor mean Traditional Chinese Medicine, as I think it does?  If
your doctor is giving you little reddish lycium pills, I’m sure they’re made
from”Goji” berries.  The Latin name for Goji berries is Lycium Barbarum;
that’s what we sell.  They’re also known as “Wolfberries;”  there’s
absolutely no difference.  They’re all Lycium Barbarum.

I obviously do not have any way of knowing whether the Chinese medicine
lycium pills are any more or less potent than the berries themselves.
However, I strongly recommend that you try eating the berries straight.
They’re very helpful for any kind of eye or vision problem.

I would be VERY interested to know if eating Goji berries would help with
the ITP.  Do you have purpura - bleeding under the skin?  Eating Goji
berries and drinking Goji juice seems to help with just about everything;
the results can be pretty amazing.

It’s best to give it a try and see how many berries per day your body
craves, or seems to want.  You can eat them by the handful like blueberries
or cherries.  They’re a lot like raisins, but not so sweet or sticky.  They
taste great, somewhere between cherries and plums, so it’s not hard to eat
them.

It certainly makes sense that your doctor is giving you lycium pills.  Goji
berries have been a major ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine and all
folk medicines for many centuries; probably for millenia.

I don’t know how much the lycium pills cost, but our Goji berries are quite
affordable, certainly less expensive than buying them in a store.

I hope I’ve answered your question!

Best regards,
Rachel Trueblood
303-642-0277
www.forgojiberries.com

I set out some Goji berries and Goji crystals to send to some of our wonderful customers at our mailbox last Saturday.  We just discovered that the mailman never picked them up and they disappeared.  We live high in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado at the end of dirt road.  Just this morning the emails started to fly amongst our neighbors about a large bear sighted today down by the bank of mailboxes and trash strewn throughout the woods.

The bears recently came out of hibernation and they’re hungry.  The yummy smelling packages (yummy smelling to a bear, anyway) were down there on top of the mailboxes waiting to be picked up.

So, we don’t think they’re ever going to turn up.  Looks like we’ll be driving our packages to the Post Office from now on!  This dastardly mammalian theft has made us realize that wildlife might have endangered our old shipping process.  You can see a bear from last summer on our deck helping itself to our hummingbird feeders at:

 We received the following question from Leslie in Chicago:

“I know your site says the goji berries you get from China are organic, hence free of chemicals, but do any of the risks identified in this article today about food products from China affect the berry products that you distribute?

Here is the link:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051901273.html?referrer=email

Our answer:

We have the test results on file here in our office that show no pesticide residues in our Goji berries.  It’s a very large PDF file.   Our supplier, Bruce, goes to China twice a year (at great personal risk of dysentery) to personally inspect the farms and the production facilities, the drying facilities, etc.  He also talks to the farmers.  He is fanatical about having farming and shipping techniques be pure, clean, state of the art, organic, etc.  This is why we have chosen him as our supplier; his standards are so very high and he insists on the best.  He has a very close relationship with the Chinese company and the growers.

A friend of mine, Patty, came by yesterday and showed me her 8 oz bag of Goji Berries that she had bought at a local health food store for $12.99 plus tax.

She said she liked those berries because they were moist. Now, to my value minded brain, this translates to “paying for extra water.”

But she explained that she could chew the moist berries more easily.

“Fine,” I thought, “I can make my berries moist as well.” I took a bowl of Goji berries to the sink, gave them a quick rinse, drained them and set them aside.

Then, we went on a walk on a beautiful Colorado afternoon.

By the time we got back, the berries had absorbed the extra water that had been on their skin an hour earlier.

Voila! Plump, moist berries.

A rapidly growing demand for the “Happy Fruit” combined with a poor harvest is resulting in a Goji Berry shortage. We’ve planned ahead and have ordered enough to get us through the expected “lean times” next month.

Leaving the house these days is always an adventure because you should only attempt our long driveway with a good 4WD with very good snow tires.

Then the adventure continues by a foray into Big Box consumerism. I’ve heard of people getting lost in Costco and coming out with a $2000 baby grand they didn’t know they were going to buy when they walked into the store.

But, I come prepared with a list.

Among other things, on that list is dried blueberries and dried mangoes. Yumm.

I head over to the dried fruit section and … what’s this? Dried Goji Berries? At Costco?

I check my list. Hmmm… no Goji berries.

But, what the heck, let’s live dangerously! I grab a bag of the berries and call it “market research.”

***

Later, back home…

I rip open the bag of Costo Goji Berries and give it the sniff test.

Strange. They don’t smell like goji berries. I check the ingredients. “Goji Berries, Sugar, Pomegranate and other Natural Berry Flavors.”

Ah-Ha. Pomegranate! That explains the smell.

Now. Be Bold. I pop some berries in my mouth.

Chew. Chew. Chew.

Sugar. Then some goji berry taste. Then… Yuck! They taste fermented!

Blech!

Hmmm… I wonder if I should just keep going and make some Goji wine out of them?

That’s it! I’ll turn them into wine!

Having found the silver lining in this “adventure,” I grab a handful of our REAL organic goji berries so that I can wash down the fermented taste.

Munch, munch, munch.

Ahhh. Better.

P.S. Don’t be fooled by the weight on the bag. Those Costco berries are weighted down with lots of sugar and water. I suspect that their 20 oz. has less nutritional value than 10 oz of our berries. The Costco berries are not organic either. Hardly a bargain, regradless of the price!

We put up this website about Goji berries because we want to share what we know and continue to discover about Goji berries.