What this farmer in Hawaii is talking about is not a vegetable it’s a tree and while Vickie Domingo says it has an unusual flavor there’s more to this tree than meets the tastebuds you keep on eating and eating and you can feel your body is more energetic healthier and you can see the difference, you’re not dropping you know you keep on you know just so active. Domingo says she has grown this tree on her farm for more than 25 years she harvests Moringa twice a week all year round every week Domingo sends a thousand pounds of Moringa to the mainland the rest of it ends up here at a Honolulu farmers market where most of our customers have eaten it their entire lives well in the Philippine is a third country in other words not a rich country we cannot afford to go to the doctor for medicinal purposes so we use.

more energy more vitamins to supplement our daily nutrition in our body the tree is called Moringa or as the Filipinos call it maroon gai an awful lot of cultures have one or more plants that are kind of markers that the people think of themselves when they think of that plant doctor will McClatchy is an Fno botanist at the University of Hawaii he studies the ways that humans interact with plants if you drive around Honolulu here you’ll see a lot of houses have at least one modern guy in the yard maybe a.

pretty good indicator that there’s a Filipino family there jokingly we say it our Filipino banner which is our Filipino flag once you see this that means all Filipino stays there Domingo says there are many nutritional and medicinal uses for Moringa all parts of the tree are usable from the roots today stem to the leaves to the flowers and to the pod this the roots you canuse that as a tea and then the trunk you can scrape it squeeze it get the juice put in your cut skin and your skin will.

some cultures have used Moringa as a medicinal plant for thousands of years mcclatchy says Moringa is worthy of its reputation as a tree with unusual nutritional properties thank you Maria is one of these trees that is a multi-purpose plant that fullfills such a high percentage of kind of basic needs that when people get used to using itthey really can’t see what it’s like to live without it and many cultures don’t today Moringa is used as a remedy and in essence a multivitamin in many of the.

widely in Africa and South Asia and it’s been introduced into South America and Central America where it’s also being used so you know this is not just a plant of a single community we’re just talking this morning with one of the owners of this plantation and he was saying just telling me how he did lasttime he was here he had a handful of Moringa leaves and that he worked all morning on it felt great dr. mark Olson is a botanist and a leading expert on Moringa he teaches at instituto de.

de Mexico in Mexico City here he isvisiting a new Moringa farm about twohours outside the city limits so they’vejust planted these here and soon they’llbe nice and big Olson says that whileMoringa can grow in places like Mexicoor Hawaii the tree is native to aridsubtropical regions places like Africaand southern India hot places whereMoringa has proven its persistence thisis a plant that really does doextraordinarily well in some of the mostdifficult areas and areas that are very.

where other things are very difficult tocultivate a little a little tuber thereand there’s this is one of the reasonsit survives so well in dry areas alsothere’s storing lots of water in thewood so that that’s one of the reasonsthis is a remarkable tree they theydon’t have particularly deep roots thatsort of a myth about Moore Angus thatthey survived me because I have deeproots no they’re storing water in theirroots in their truck but Moringa saysOlson does a lot more than just survive.

appearance I don’t think they’reactually the most attractive treesthey’re more a tree that you look at andyou sort of love the way you lovethat’s gruffy friend or scruffy diamondbecause the the branch is sort of splayhere and there and they get burdeneddown with huge quantities of fruits onthem and that’s actually what makes thetree so remarkable is that it’s such agenerous tree and that’s because peoplehave found multiple uses for so much ofthe tree including its seeds the full of.

wonderful aromatic oil comes losing outwhich you can use for cooking you canuse for cosmetics or lubrication orwhatever uh and the cake the pressedcake this the the stuff that’s left overafter pressing the seed that is what’sused for water purification waterpurification Olson says is especiallyuseful in developing countries whereclean water is hard to come by but thebenefits don’t stop there some of thethings I think are most exciting aboutMoringa for example high vitamin content.

and worldwide that’s a problem a lot ofpeople have problems in development oftheir eyes because they don’t haveenough vitamin A Moringa is vitamin Acontent and it’s content of vitamins ingeneral has caught the attention ofscientists around the world I started toread about Maureen and I was absolutelyamazed about the richness richness andnutrients in many antioxidant compoundsand vitamins dr. Monica Marku is apharmacologist who has studied manyplants she has done extensive research.

nutritional potency this subject is oneof the topics of a recently publishedbook miracle treeto me it was just a natural pathway frommy scientific background and my lavatrees to writing this exciting book onone of the most exciting andextraordinary trees of our worldmarkku spends much of her time lookingat trees and plants both as apharmacologist and as an artist whileMarkku the nature photographer isgrabbing shots of plants markku the.

concern we are having an epidemics ofcancer and cardiovascular diseases andmany other chronic diseases it’s justit’s because we basically do not eatwell what we are supposed to eat most ofthe plants are famous for a particulartype of nutrient like for instanceyou’re injured the lemon is famous forhigh content of vitamin C the spinachfor instance on the other hand is famousfor its iron content Moringa is veryunusual because this single plantcontains a wide variety of nutrients but.

says this concentration of nutrientscombined with low calories and lowsodium content makes Moringa an idealenergy food or supplement that can helpoffset the typically unhealthy Westerndiet many of the Westerners are alsodeficient in antioxidant and anti-agingsubstances that are mostly found inplants antioxidants according to theNational Institutes of Health protectthe body cells and may prevent cancerand Marku says Moringa is a treasuretrove of antioxidants that happen to.

and antioxidant vitamins work togetherin the body for instance is known thatselenium works better in the presidentvitamin E Moringa has high amounts ofselenium and has also vitamin E whilemany plants contain antioxidants dr.McClatchy says that Moringa is also highin the nutrients we usually associatewith meat Moringa is well known forbeing a good source of leafy greenvegetable protein and you don’t get alot of protein out of many vegetablefoods other than like beans and things.

leaves is really a big deal and whilethere are a few other plants like soythat are protein rich Olsen says Moringais special I have a lot of foodallergies I’m allergic to wheat allergicto eggs soy tends to be a fairly highlyallergenic food causes allergens easilyand many people we think that this isbecause of the form that some of theproteins are in in soy they’reapparently in a form that’s very simpleand fairly easy for the body toassimilate in Moringa according to the.

Moringa contains 18 of the 20 aminoacids building blocks of proteins thatare found in the human body as saysMarco Moringa is one of the few plantsthat contains all of the essential aminoacids Moringa contains all the 9essential amino acids that actually wecannot produce their presence but alsotheir ratio is very beneficial and it isestimated that this ratio is very goodfor absorption and folding by availableto all bodies further research is neededto establish the bioavailability of all.

placesscientific studies may be too long apursuit and take a backseat to a harshreality in most of sub-saharan Africaany baby as 20% chance of dying beforehe reaches his age of five in somecountries up to 40% and even those whosurvive past the age of five up to halfor more will suffer from malnourishedphysical and mental developmentso their lives under one ruthless theseare lesions caused by malnutritionaround the neck and around the waist.

permanent scars as the former regionalrepresentative for Church World Servicein Senegal for 16 years it was low a fewGlee’s mission to help local clinicsdevelop ways to save children at risk tomalnutrition having been born myselfinto a middle-class American family Ithought it just by chance that I wasborn in these conditions and not in thecondition of a poor African family inthe of Africa and living amalnourished life and so I have acertain obligation to share what I.

malnutrition fuglie came across Moringain the late 1990s it contains morevitamins and minerals in variouscombinations than you find in any otherpossible vegetable and I thought tomyself if this source of nutrition couldbe made available at the village levelthen this could be a very effective toolin preventing malnutritionwhat fuelie says he didn’t know at thetime was that the senegalese people werealready familiar with Moringa it wasonly through a Peace Corps volunteer.

Omer Inc is already growing in Senegalnot only was it growing the people hadbeen using it for generations only theydidn’t refer to it as Moringa theycalled it neva die which few Leasuspects comes from the English wordsnever die after the trees resilience Iasked any Senegalese do you know thenever die tree oh yes my mother makes asauce from this lead of this tree wecall it him boom every Senegalese knewthis tree the problem says bewdley wasthat it was prepared and used in ways.

contents they boil the leaves too longthey throw out the water has boiled inand where the many the vitamins are arelocated and so they lose a lot of thebenefits that the leaves could provideso fewwe went to work both planting Moringatrees and more importantly educatinghealth care workers on how Moringa canhelp stave off malnutrition three lemonuno Moringa I was trained in 1998 andright away we saw the virtues of usingMoringa because of its very high.

so we began using it right away on anexperimental basis a bellyful of OsceolaMoringa health care workers learn togrow the Roma ringa trees try the leavesand pound them into powder maintainingall the nutrients nursing mothers weretaught to add a spoonful of Moringa totheir food morning day and night toincrease their milk production they werealso told to add Moringa to all of theirfamilies meals when we introduced thistree in Senegal or uses of the tree anddifferent ways of using it the reactions.

is our tree you know you’re just addingon what we know already as people changetheir habits Hughley says the resultswere clear especially among childrenthey look happier if I have more energyhe’ll smile where they came to theclinic limp eyes drooping no energy andwithin three weeks you see them biggerhealthier and smiling a lot of chaos ora victim or Inga a table we observedthat it was much much more effectivethan the classic system we had beenusing which was based on imported and.

sugar and vegetable oil with Moringapeople can go into town and find itthemselvesmedicine Zuzu ringa is still being usedit’s still being promoted still beingvery valued even without our input fromthe outsideMoringa it doesn’t die it can continueon its ownso you have to eat the moronga in adaily basis and they’re all thatgrandkids are eating it every now andthen even my own children and they are.

home and eat it and while Moringa ismostly considered an ethnic food thetrend says McClatchy is that morenutritious plants like Moringa arefinding their way into the mainstreamour diets are pretty bad although theyare improving but one of the reasonsthey’re proving is because we’restarting to adopt more and more of thesekinds of plants I’ve been in villageswhere the only trees that survive andgrow well are more Angola affero whichis really amazing when you consider how.

Moringa has it comes very close to beinga perfect source of nutrients in termsof variety and concentration so that isI think very unique about this milenatree