Bencao House
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Food as medicine

Goji berry

枸杞子Gǒu Qǐ Zǐ

四气 Nature
Neutral · 平
五味 Flavour
Sweet
归经 Channels
Liver · Kidney · Lung
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 枸杞子

Goji berries are neutral and sweet, and belong to the Liver and Kidney channels. Chinese medicine reads the eyes as the outward opening of the Liver, which is why goji is the berry reached for after long reading. The Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, lists it in the upper class, and Chinese kitchens use it daily rather than occasionally.

A small heap of dried red goji berries, glossy and translucent, photographed on warm plaster.
Lycium barbarum · Ripe dried fruit

Lycium barbarum

四气 · Nature

  1. cold
  2. cool
  3. neutral
  4. warm
  5. hot
Leans neither way

五味 · Flavour

sour
Gathers and holdsLiver
bitter
Drains and driesHeart
sweet
Fills, slows, harmonisesSpleen
pungent
Disperses and movesLung
salty
Softens and sends downKidney
归经 Channels
Liver · Kidney · Lung
Part used
Ripe dried fruit
Shared-origin list
2002 catalogue · 枸杞子

In the canon

What the texts say

To understand why a Chinese office worker keeps a jar of goji on the desk, you have to start with a sentence from the Huangdi Neijing, c. 200 BCE. The Neijing maps each organ network to an opening on the surface of the body: the Kidney opens into the ears, the Spleen into the mouth, the Liver into the eyes. Eyes that ache, blur or feel gritty are therefore not read as an eye problem in this tradition. They are read as a Liver problem, and goji is the plainest Liver food there is.

Huangdi Neijing SuwenBasic Questions of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canonc. 200 BCE

The liver opens into the eyes. When liver blood is sufficient, the eyes can see.

Suwen, chapter 4

The Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, puts goji in the upper class of its 365 entries — the class meant for long, ordinary use — and describes it in the flattest possible terms: sweet, neutral, taken over time. Nothing dramatic is claimed for it anywhere in the classical record, which is unusual, and which is probably why it survived into daily life while more exciting items stayed on the shelf.

Li Shizhen’s entry in the Bencao Gangmu, 1596, is the one worth reading. He points out that the plant yields four separate items across the year and that the herbals had been confusing them: the young leaves in spring, the flowers in summer, the red berries in autumn — 枸杞子 — and the root bark in winter, 地骨皮, which is cold where the berry is neutral and is a different item entirely. Twenty-seven years of that kind of correction is what the Bencao Gangmu’s 1,892 entries are made of.

Nearly all Chinese goji now comes from Ningxia in the north-west, and Zhongning county in particular; the berries there carry a protected origin mark in the same way a French cheese does. A good berry is dull red rather than glossy, gives slightly when pressed, and does not stain your fingers.

In a kitchen

How it is actually used

Goji is eaten more often than it is steeped. Ten or twelve berries go into congee, into a soup, into steamed egg, into rice as it finishes — added at the very end, because more than a few minutes of heat turns them to sour paste. The most useful thing in a Western kitchen is a morning congee, which takes one pot and no attention.

Millet congee with goji

Two bowls35 minutes

100 g · ½ cup
Millet, rinsed until the water runs clear
1.2 L · 5 cups
Cold water
10 g · 1 tbsp
Goji berries, added at the end
2 whole
Split red jujubes, optional
  1. Rinse the millet in a bowl of cold water three times, pouring the cloudy water off each time. This is the difference between congee and porridge.
  2. Bring the millet and the water to a boil in a heavy pot, then turn it to the lowest heat your stove will hold. Leave the lid ajar or it will climb out.
  3. Cook thirty minutes without stirring for the first twenty, until the grain has broken and a pale skin has formed on top. That skin is the part Chinese cooks are after.
  4. Turn off the heat, scatter the goji across the surface, put the lid on, and wait five minutes before serving. They should be plump, not dissolved.

Millet, 小米, is the northern Chinese convalescent grain — the thing sent to a house where somebody has just had a baby. Rice works, and takes about fifteen minutes longer. Do not add sugar; the goji is enough.

The office version is simpler still: a tablespoon of berries in a glass, water poured off the boil and left to stand a minute, ten minutes with something over the top. Drink it and then eat the berries out of the bottom of the glass. Leaving them is the mistake almost every Western drinker makes.

Who it is for

Who it suits, and who it does not

Goji is neutral, which is why it appears in so many mixtures: it does not push the temperature of a pot in either direction. What it is not is weightless. It is a sweet, moistening, filling sort of food, and a body that is already damp and heavy does not want more of that.

Tends to suit

  • Eyes that are dry, gritty or blurred at the end of a screen day.
  • Long reading, night driving, close work under artificial light.
  • A dry mouth in the evening and skin that has gone papery.
  • Dizziness on standing, and hair that has thinned without an obvious reason.
  • Anyone who wants one thing to add and will actually keep doing it.

Tends not to suit

  • A cold coming on, with a fever or a sore throat — wait until it has gone.
  • Loose stools, a swollen tongue with tooth marks, a heavy head.
  • Constant bloating, especially after sweet food.
  • Anyone on warfarin, until they have had the conversation below.

Honestly

What to know before you start

The reading

Goji berry suits some people and not others

This page describes a food. It cannot tell you whether it belongs in your week, because it knows nothing about how you sleep, eat or feel the cold. A reading does: thirty questions, one photograph of your tongue, and a document written in English by a physician licensed in China for US $39, sent within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report