Fruits : Standard groups

 

Noni

 

Botanical name: Morinda citrifolia

 

 

Nonis are the fruit of the Indian mulberry tree, which is native to Southeast Asia. Settlers brought the plant from there to Polynesia, where it still grows wild. Today, the mulberry tree, also called the noni tree, is also common in Central America, western India and Madagascar.

 

Availability

Only noni juices and juice concentrates are available on the German market. The fruit itself and all other noni products are not permitted and may not be sold. Among these products are teas, capsules and sweets.

 

Appearance, taste, characteristics

The noni tree is an evergreen with round to oval, dark-green leaves. The five-leaf blossoms are white and shaped like a star.

The noni fruits themselves are pale green. They are aggregates of drupes, i.e. they consist of many small stone fruits, each containing one seed, that adhere to one another and form a large fruit. Raspberries and blackberries also belong to this type of fruit.

The scent and flavour of the fruits resemble those of aged cheese, which is why the noni is also called 'cheese fruit' in Australia. For this reason, noni juice is usually mixed with the juice of other fruits.

 

Ingredients

The fruits are a good supplier of vitamin C and potassium. However, persons with kidney damage are advised to avoid noni fruit because of the high potassium content.

 

Harmful substances

There has been speculation that noni juice may cause liver damage. According to the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), however, this is an unsupported assertion.

 

Presumed effect on health

In Polynesian folk medicine, various effects are attributed to the noni tree. The roots are supposed to relieve pain, and the leaves are said to promote wound healing and to alleviate the pain of insect bites.

 

Noni juice is frequently extolled as a miracle cure and is supposed to relieve nearly all ailments. Skin problems, gastrointestinal and menstrual discomfort, migraine, arthritis, high blood pressure, etc. are all said to be controllable with the consumption of noni juice. This assertion is also not confirmed by the BfR. No health-promoting effects of the juice have yet been proven. Rather, it is in the same class as other juices.

 

Miscellaneous

In the EU, noni juice is considered a novel food that must be approved before it can be sold. The sale of noni juice has been allowed since 2003, but other noni products remain prohibited.

Although it is against the law, the health-promoting effect of the juice continues to be propagated in the Internet and private sales pitches. As already mentioned, none of these effects has yet been proven. If they were, then noni juice would no longer be allowed to be sold as a food but would count as a medicinal product. Apart from its very high price (about 25 euros per liter), however, the juice has nothing in common with a medicinal product.

 

 

_________________________

 

  This article was written by

         

 


 

  With the website www.the-green-pantry.com the Fritz Terfloth Foundation of Münster offers consumers independent and competent information about plant foods and their health effects. All texts are subject to German copyright law. Information about the conditions for use of the texts by third parties can be found here.