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A Berry Old Man’s Secret
A 1933 issue of Time Magazine tells of a Chinese Methuselah, one Li Qing Yuan, who had recently expired at the unheard of age of 256. The report was verified by a professor at Chengdu University who had found a Qing Dynasty scroll congratulating Li on his one hundred and fiftieth birthday, back in 1827.
When pressed for the secret to his longevity, Master Li would respond with disconcerting obscurity, “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon, and sleep like a dog.” The admonition was no doubt what passed among Daoist adepts as a practical joke. Insiders, however, who knew the man’s daily habits, attributed his defiance of the Grim Reaper to diet, specifically to the handful of goji berries he consumed on a daily basis.
If you’ve been in China any length of time, you’ve seen them floating in murky vats of pao jiu on the front counters of family restaurants, or heaped in dried mounds at open air markets. Tiny, bright red, and shaped like deflated footballs, goji berries are an eminently accessible panacea.
Known as wolfberries in the West, they are perhaps the most nutritionally dense fruit on the planet, containing 18 amino acids, including all 8 essential ones. They also contain up to 21 trace minerals: zinc, copper, calcium, selenium, and phosphorus among them, and are the richest known source of carotenoids, including beta-carotene, of all known foods on earth, including carrots.
They boast 500 times the vitamin C of oranges, by weight, making them second only to the rare camu camu berry as the richest vitamin C source in the world. Goji berries are also packed with vitamins B1, B2, B6, and vitamin E.
The goji berry has been a staple food in Chinese culture and herbal medicine since the first century CE. Traditional Chinese herbalists have recommended it for: anemia, coughs, dizziness, inflammation, enhanced immunity, improved circulation and eyesight, and liver and kidney health – just for starters.
Of even more importance to the relatively healthy, goji berries have traditionally been regarded as a sexual potency aid of the highest order. Besides also being believed to lead to a long, vigorous and happy life, regular consumption of goji berries has long been used by martial artists and athletes for its potent energizing properties.
A good daily intake of Goji berries is 10-30 grams (a small handful). This is reputedly the sum total of old Li’s daily dietary intake from the age of 87 on. The less disciplined can snack on them as they are, or mixed into yogurt, smoothies, or tea. However, those truly dedicated to hitting the quarter-millennium mark are well advised to model other practices favored by Li Qing Yuan – wild herb ingestion, qi gong mastery, and total abstinence. But please don’t consult your physician before embarking on Master Li’s program, unless your ulterior motive is a prescription for thorazine.
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Wolfberries are the panacea the western doctors have been looking for over the centuries. I wonder if it can grow in temperate climates or if it has any European relatives.