What Can Noni be Used For?

The noni tree originates in the south pacific, most likely Hawaii, growing in the back lava soil left behind by the Island’s many volcanoes. It can grow up to 30 feet tall, and is related to the coffee tree, being in the Rubiaceae family. It will also grow in shady forests, sandy and rocky shores, saline soils, secondary soils, and limestone outcrops. It is however more common and grows better in the lava soil beds. Today it grows in Tahiti, French Polynesia, Southeast Asia, all of the Pacific Islands, and even in the Dominican Republic.

Although it has been a staple food for some small countries, it is mostly called the starvation or famine fruit simply because it tastes quite bad in it’s raw, fruit form. The outside resembles that of a large mottled white potato with buds on it similar to the knobs on pineapples. It has a sour smell when ripening, much like that of cheese when it is curing and so has been given the nickname of the ‘cheese fruit.’ Its other names include the scientific name of Morinda Citrifolia, and general names like Great Morinda, Indian Mulberry, Mengkudi, Beach Mulberry, and Tahitian Noni usually according to where it has been found to grow.

The main use of the fruit is the juice and ground powder. The powder itself is loaded with Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Calcium with trace amounts of sodium. It is also a good source of dietary fiber and carbohydrates. Noni is said to have boosting power for your metabolism. This fruit also contains a sufficient amount of essential fatty acids, flavanoids, polysaccharides, indoids and phytoestrogens.

Noni has a trace element called beta-sitosterol, an anti-cholesterol ingredient. Many health food stores carry other parts of the plant in ground form for the making of natural herbal medicines and remedies. Some countries, like China and Japan use the flowers, fruit, bark, leaves and roots, which is basically the whole plant in their home made remedies. They say it is good for fever, eye irritations, throat and gum infections, bowel, intestine and general stomach problems and lung problems.

The leaves of the noni tree are used in Malaysia as a poultice on the chest to relieve coughs, nausea and colic. The fruit is used in Indochina for lumbago, asthma, and dysentery. It is also made into a poultice an applied to broken bones to help relieve pain.

This Queen Fruit or Canoe Fruit as it was named by early Polynesian tribes, traveled with them wherever they went. Because of its healing and health benefits it was one of the things the tribe would consider essential to travel or take with them. They would eat the fruit, drink the juice, use it for medical purposes and save the seeds to plant.

Health Benefits of Noni Juice

There is a tree in Hawaii that grows to about 20 feet. It actually lives and thrives in the black lava soil left by volcanoes among most tropical islands. The fruit of this tree is known simply as Noni. Although the tree has been cultivated and transplanted in other tropical areas, it thrives best in these volcanic soils near the ocean, producing a crop of fruit all year round. The transplanted and newly cultivated crops in other areas only grow in a shrub like form and do not produce as much as the native plant does.

There is not one part of this tree that cannot be used. The fruit is good for you in many ways, both cooked or raw. The seeds are good for replanting and roasting and the tree bark and leaves are crushed and used in herbal and natural remedies.

Noni juice is sold under many different brand names, but it is usually always mixed with other fruit juices to make the taste acceptable. Noni juice contains 17 of the 20 known amino acids… This includes the 9 amino acids that are essential to a healthy system. Noni Juice also contains mostly all essential fatty acids that are beneficial to healthy skin, healthy nerve cells. These fatty acids also help in keeping the heart and blood vessels healthy.

Glycosides are important in the destruction of free radicals and cancer cell prevention. Limonene is another trace mineral that is found in citrus juices like orange and grapefruit, and also is essential in fighting cancer. Both of these essentials are found in healthy and acceptable amounts in Noni Juice.

Nitric Oxide is also contained in Noni Juice, and it is well proven to assist many different parts of our bodies including normal brain functions, blood cell health, the entire immune system, our lungs and airways, and even healthy heart functioning. In fact, Nitric Oxide is considered to be one of the most important substances that the body needs to heal itself and function correctly… And noni provides a more concentrated source of nitric oxide than most other food sources known.

Phytonutrients and Polysaccharides have reversing effects on pollution. They also have anti-aging effects on your skin and cells. These nutrients are also important in generating nourishment to our cells, organs and tissue. They fight free radicals and help in fighting off cancerous cells. Selenium is a trace element that is found in Noni Juice that effects the elasticity of our skin, and helps reverse the aging process by keeping oxygen flowing through our blood and preventing clotting and hypertension. Selenium amounts in our soil have been depleted in most of the civilized world, but noni juice has excellent amounts of this important mineral.

Medical researchers have come to the conclusion that the body needs extra amounts of Xeronine on a daily basis. The body is not able to absorb and store enough of this trace element to keep us functioning healthy. Noni Juice, which is the world’s best source of Xeronine, has enough of this element to replenish what the body needs and loses day by day.

Goji is Anything But a Fad

Tibetan Goji and Himalayans Goji are the most popular types of the goji berry found in health food stores. They come from the little red berry known to scientists as Lycium barbarum, and are also known as wolfberries, Chinese wolfberries, barbary matrimony vines, bocksdorns, Duke of Argyll’s tea trees, murali, red medlar, and matrimony vines. These plants are related to the family of Solinaceae which includes potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, eggplant and tobacco. This berry is found mostly in China, but can be grown anywhere the climate isn’t too cold.

The small, lavender goji flower will appear as one to three flowers on each stem. It has long stamen in the center, and the oblong leaves are nothing out of the ordinary to look at, however, the berry is a bright red square looking oblong shape. The main area that you find these plants is in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Ningxia province in the west of china and the north central areas of China, respectively.

Our western-world health food industries advertises two main types of Goji berry. Tibetan goji and Himalayan goji, both types being very common in our health-food stores and of course online. However this berry does not grow in either one of these regions! The Himalayan mountains are simply too cold to grow Goji trees in today. Once upon a time they were said to be the birthplace of all goji, but today the frost will simply wipe these fragile trees out.

The United Kingdom has become a curiously common place to find goji plants. They grow in hedge rows in the areas of Hadley, Ipswich, Suffolk Sandlings, Bawdsey and Walberswick. They were introduced to this area in the early 1700’s, which explains why one of the names for this plant is the Duke of Argyll’s tea tree.

Goji berries are usually exported in the dried form, very similar to dried raisins because they cannot be shipped fresh. There is just no way to ship them from China to the west in their fresh form, as they would rot too easily. The Chinese use their fresh berries in a large variety of main dishes, mixed with rice, other Chinese vegetables and fish, chicken or beef, and they make healthy any meal. They are also use goji in a variety of teas and drinks there.

If you want a tasty goji treat, you could try the ale made from these berries at the New Belgium Brewery, or at least get your hands on some ‘Wolf Berry Beer.’ The Chinese have made a flavored brand of coffee from them too, which isn’t any surprise since they also use the leaves for nearly infinite medicinal uses already.

The Best Way How to Eat a Pomegranate

A pomegranate, one of the true superfruits, needs warmer climates with cooler but not icy cold winters. You will find them in some of the warmer US states, although these are only introduced in recent history… The pomegranate is native to the area of East Africa and India, and even more common in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey.

The flower and the fruit of a pomegranate develop beautiful bright red colors. With tons of essential minerals and vitamins, and only 100 calories per cup of the fruit, poms are perfect to eat if you are trying to control your weight or lose some calories. It is healthy and tasty.

Simply strain it from that point, then you can start to eat it. You can eat the seeds as well as the fruit surrounding it, (the entire arils) but most people just eat the fruit off the seeds.

How you eat a pomegranate entirely up to you. The seeds are even edible so you can just pop the whole fruit into your mouth and chew. However, many people choose to just eat the fruit around the seeds and discard the seeds, which once dried can be ground up as seasoning for a large variety of dishes. Some countries actually use them in soups and stews. They are also quite delicious if you simply top them onto plain or vanilla yogurt.

Another way to eat a pomegranate is to cut the fruit in half vertically. Holding the cut side up, cut 4 more segment cuts about an inch deep and an inch long. Turn the pomegranate over and pull the fruit open. Now take a heavy wooden spoon or other equally weighted kitchen utensil and whack the back of the fruit. The arils should fall right out easily.

Historically, people used to just pull them off the tree, poke holes in the rind, peel it back and tear large pieces of the fruit apart. Once they had a big enough chunk, they would just pull the seeds out with their fingers and eat them. You can use this method in your kitchen too, and even scoop the seeds out with a spoon for more ease. Be warned though, the juice is a very dark pigment and can stain anything that it touches, including your skin and clothes!

How to Eat a Pomegranate; Three Different Ways

A pomegranate is a fruit grown mostly in warmer climates. You will find it growing naturally around the East Indies, the Himalayas, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Africa and some of the warmer states like Florida, California and Arizona. These red fruits are chocked full of vitamins and minerals, including potassium, Vitamin C, Calcium and Phosphorous. They are also very sweet tasting and are a low calorie snack.

The flower and the fruit of a pomegranate develop beautiful bright red colors. With tons of essential minerals and vitamins, and only 100 calories per cup of the fruit, poms are perfect to eat if you are trying to control your weight or lose some calories. It is healthy and tasty.

The outside of the fruit is not edible and tends to be quite hard. To get at it effectively, cut the top off and section it in several sections from top to bottom without cutting all the way through it. Now you can place it into a deep bowl of water and let it soak for about 10 minutes. After those 10 minutes, tear the fruit apart, still in the water. The heavier seeds and fruit will drop to the bottom and the white pulp and rind will float to the top.

Throw away the white pulp and rind. Strain and rinse the fruit and put in a bowl. Now you are ready to eat it. You can eat the seeds with the red fruit. If you just eat the fruit and leave the seeds, (which is very slow-going) you have the bonus of being able to lay them out to dry. Once they are dried you can ground them up to season foods, or you can use them whole in a variety of dishes, including hot main meal dishes and your favorite cool desserts.

If you don’t like the first method of how to eat a pomegranate, you can use the fan method instead. In this method the fruit is divided into halves. The halves are sectioned, but not all the way through. Turning the halves upside down over a bowl, you can push the back of the fruit and pull on the sides dropping the seeds into the bowl underneath, or you can simply tap on the back (top) with a kitchen utensil and the fruit should just fall out. Discard the rind and white parts again, and you are ready to eat.

Historically, people used to just pull them off the tree, poke holes in the rind, peel it back and tear large pieces of the fruit apart. Once they had a big enough chunk, they would just pull the seeds out with their fingers and eat them. You can use this method in your kitchen too, and even scoop the seeds out with a spoon for more ease. Be warned though, the juice is a very dark pigment and can stain anything that it touches, including your skin and clothes!

What is a Mangosteen Good for?

There is a tropical evergreen tree that grows throughout southeast Asia commonly now, but is believed to have originated in the Sundra Islands and the Moluccas of Indonesia. This tree grows as tall as 80 feet and produces a purple fruit that is famously edible. Some compare the taste that of a sweet peach mixed with apricot. Depending on the crop and the area it is found in it can have a tangy or a very sweet taste. This purple fruit, called a mangosteen, is supposed to have some of the world’s most impressive healing properties.

There are many ’superfruits’ being talked about today. Mangosteen is at the top of the list, however the nutritional value of this fruit doesn’t at first appear to match up to what some health officials determine to be a superfruit. It contains 18 grams of carbohydrates, 1.8 grams of diet fiber, .6 grams of fat, .4 grams of protein and 81 grams of water.

So if nothing else, it is very low in calories and would be perfect for those on a diet or trying to just control their weight. However research does show that it might have some of the world’s best antioxidant properties for any fruit. It is supposed to contain at least 40 different Xanthones, which are a powerful form of antioxidants. There are currently 200 Xanthones identified, all beneficial to humans.

Xanthones travel through our system and mop up free radicals that can cause disease and malfunctions in many of our organs. Mangosteen contains the Xanthones alpha-mangostin, gama-mangostin garcinone, beta-mangostin, garcinone-a, garcinone-d, garcinone-c, gartanin and mangostanol. All of these Xanthones and the all the other antioxidants contained in this fruit have anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsive, anti-tumor, anti-allergic, and platelet-aiding properties.

However, take care when drinking the Mangosteen juice. There have been a few cases of acidosis reported by individuals who consumed too much of it. Drinking smaller quantities should solve this issue entirely though, since the acidosis only appeared when people drank rather large quantities of its juice.

Mangosteen is available in western countries in juice, frozen, and sometimes canned varieties. There has been a long-standing ban on importation of this fruit in it’s whole form to the United States, but Canada has been importing mangosteen since 2007. Although the fruit is not easy to find here, farmers in Puerto Rico have started to send us a few mangosteen, especially to the more wealthy hotels and restaurants on the east coast.

The Proper Way to Preserve Acai Berries

Most fruits are best eaten fresh but it is not an option for some fruits such as acai berries. The short shelf live for the great little acai berry makes it hard for people to eat them fresh or drink them as a fresh juice. Once acai berries are picked from the acai palm trees, they can deteriorate within hours. If you refrigerate them, their nutrients can last as long as 24 hours but usually less.

The fast deterioration of acai berries makes it hard to transport them to countries where demand is. This is why it is necessary to find the most efficient way to process and preserve acai berries so that they can be sold once they reach their destinations. If they are not processed or preserved, they may not even make it across Brazil, the country where mostly all acai palm trees grow.

Many people have heard of acai berries but they are not aware of the challenges acai product manufacturers face when they try to preserve the fruits and to process them. If acai berries are not processed or preserved immediately after picked, it will perish and there can even be a risk of microbial contamination.

To avoid acai berries going bad is not the only problem that manufacturers of acai products face. People are so interested in acai berries because of their amazing nutritional profile. That means the manufacturers much choose a processing method that will preserve the most nutrients in the acai berries or no one will pay them for the product. It is much easier to buy local fruits that are also healthy.

Some companies freeze the acai berries before they are transported. However, this is also challenging because the second the temperature fluctuates, there is a risk that the acai berries will be spoiled immediately. Manufacturers have to spend more money to ensure that the shipping environment is constant. This makes shipping frozen acai berries rather expensive.

Some companies have developed powder-based acai capsules and tablets, therefore making the acai berries’ nutrients last longer. However, there are concerns that the nutritional content of these derivative acai berry products may not contain many nutrients at all. The quality of the products is likely to be very low. Taking acai pills and tablets cannot compare to eating fresh acai berries or drinking most of the acai berry juices around.

There are more complicated ways to preserve and process the acai berries such as the freeze drying process that is supposed to be the best. The freeze drying process is done in a vacuum which is beneficial for limiting the activity of enzymes that would otherwise make the acai berries go bad quickly.

Different companies choose different methods to preserve and process acai berries according to their resources and budget. Some ways are more expensive and harder to do than others. Sometimes, you will buy a product that has almost 100% acai berry content in it but the process they used to make that product has already destroyed all of the good nutrients so that product is pretty much worthless for your health.

The Next Superfruit: The Pomegranate

The Pomegranate is a native fruit tree that grows in Iran all the way to the Himalayas. It only grows to be about five to eight meters high. It has been naturalized in the whole Mediterranean area. You can find it in Iraq, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, India, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, South East Asia, Peninsular Malaysia, the East Indies and Africa. You can also find it growing in parts of Arizona, Florida and California too.

The pomegranate flourishes well in climates that have very hot summers and cool but not icy winters such as found in Florida, California, Arizona, Iraq, Turkey and Africa. In fact the crops seem to do extremely well if the area they are grown in has had a cooler winter than usual.

The leaves of the Pomegranate are a narrow, oblong shape, darker green and glossy looking. The flowers and the fruit are a bright red color. The fruit can grow anywhere from the size of a lemon to the size of a grapefruit and is hexagonal in shape. The seeds and pulp inside can range in colors of white, red and even purple.

There are many pests that can infect your pomegranate crop if you don’t watch out for them and catch them right away. The worst is the pomegranate butterfly whose larva hatch and infest the inside of the fruit, consuming it before it is noticed. Whitflies, scale insects, thrips and termites can all infest the tree or shrub quickly without warning. By wrapping the fruit once it appears with plastic or paper you can help ward of infestations of these destructive creatures. Examine your fruit as it is growing to watch for signs of these pests.

Pomegranate are a very healthy fruit. They contain an abundance of vitamins, probably more than any other fruit or vegetable. You will find acceptable amounts of zinc, phosphorus, niacin, potassium , and Vitamin C, just to name a few in this fruit.

Inside a pomegranate is a white pulp surrounding the red or purple fruit covered seeds. The seeds are edible but most people eat just the fruit around them. Some areas use the whole fruit in their dishes. They pulverize the seeds for seasoning, or use the seeds, fruit and juice in their main meal dishes or soups. The pomegranate has such a unique flavor.

Ever since farmers and cultivators found out about the pomegranate and how to grow it, just as with any other crop they have cross pollinated and cultivated it until there are several different varieties available. Green Globe, Wonderful, Home. Early Wonderful are just a few at the top of the list.

What Makes the Acai Berry So Special?

If you are looking for something healthy to eat, then the acai berry may have something wonderful to interest you. Over the past years, the acai berry has gone from pretty much unknown to very popular within a very short period of time. People are already taking vitamins and food supplements and they welcome a natural alternative that may do the job as well or even better.

Nowadays, most people are aware of antioxidants and why it is important to fight free radicals. The acai berry is one of the fruits with the highest amount of potent antioxidants known. There may be other fruits that have even more antioxidants than the acai berry but the jury is still out of which fruit has the highest amount of antioxidants.

You may have heard the term anthocyanins. The acai berry has a large amount of anthocyanins in it. The main anthocyanins in the acai berry are cyanidin-3-glucoside or C-3-G and cyanidin-3-rutinoside. These are just two potent antioxidants in the acai berry. There are more antioxidants present which makes the acai berry a good source for fighting again many types of free radicals.

A diet is not complete without essential fatty acids and the acai berry has plenty of fatty acids that your body needs to be healthy. In fact, the little acai berry contains more fat in it than other things. By measuring the dry weight of the acai berry, you will find that 50 percent of more of the berry weight is fat, mostly monounsaturated fats but there are some polyunsaturated fats. The fatty acids in the acai berry is similar to that of olive oil.

Not all fruits have protein content but the acai berry is a great source of protein. Research has shown that the protein profile of some acai berries is similar to that of an egg. This makes the acai berry high in protein. However, not all acai berries are high in protein. Different palm trees are found in conditions that result in acai berries with higher protein content than others.

Vitamins are also largely present in the acai berry. An acai juice is usually a good source of vitamin E. Most of the vitamins are found in the pulp of the acai berry. Vitamin E work with other antioxidants to combat free radicals and keep the body healthy. There are other vitamins in the acai berry beside vitamin E such as vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, and C.

With all of the vitamins and minerals in the acai berry, anyone eating the acai berry or drinking good brands of acai berry juices find themselves full of energy and healthy. There are many other nutrients that have not been mentioned such as fiber in the acai berry. Also the acai berry is very low in sugar making it good for anyone on a low sugar diet.