Step 1
Seed the Exotic
Backstory
In 2010, a Peace Corps volunteer named Lisa
Curtis was living in Niger and subsisting on
a diet of rice and millet. After a few months,
she began to feel weak. That’s when a group
of villagers told her about a local plant
that natives of the Sudan called shagarat
al rauwãq: “the clarifier tree”. Every part
of the plant was edible, they explained.
Its leaves were high in vitamins and
minerals, making it a valuable commodity
in areas with limited food. It was even
drought-resistant, and so a reliable source
of calories in times of crisis. This moringa
plant, they said, was a miracle.
Within days of adding moringa to her
diet, Curtis says, she felt her lethargy
lift, and she grew fascinated by the
plant’s potential to reinvigorate. Curtis
returned to the US in 2011 and launched
an Indiegogo campaign alongside three
business partners to crowd-fund a
company called Kuli Kuli. Stocking three
moringa snack-bar products, she and her
co-founders touted their possible uses
via listicles with titles like “10 Reasons to
Eat Moringa Every Day”, which suggested
benefits such as preventing and managing
diabetes, supporting cardiovascular
health and treating asthma symptoms.
(To their credit, they also offered thestandard superfood equivocations:
has the “potential” to treat, “has been
recognised” as beneficial, and so on.)
Curtis had the good luck to launch
Kuli Kuli at a time of explosive growth in
the superfood business. In recent years,
the number of vitamin and supplement
companies has been rising steadily, and
the value of the global supplements
market is projected to hit £156bn by 2025.
An ageing (and solvent) baby-boomer
generation, determined to preserve its
good health, may explain why. Even
the prefix “super-” has become more
widespread. In 2015 alone, the number
of new food and drink products labelled
as superfoods, superfruits or supergrains
increased by 36% globally.
The origin and promises of moringa
have put it on many of the same shelves
as açaí berries from Central and South
America, goji berries from China and
maca from Peru. “Superfood implies
something exotic,” says Paul Zullo, the
managing director at Silver Creative, a
branding company that works frequently
with food, beverage and nutrition
products. “It’s probably something
from Egypt or South America, grown
somewhere unusual.” You don’t get
superfoods from Croydon. They all make
use of the same formula: an ingredient
from a foreign land that helps natives
achieve miraculous health and may well
do the same for you.Step 2
Add a Pinch
Of Magic
It’s easy to see the marketing appeal of
a “miracle tree”. But no one shopping
for moringa powder in the UK is likely
to use it in the same way as the Sudanese
locals who gave the plant its nickname.
That’s because they weren’t sprinkling
its leaves on their porridge. They had
a more urgent concern: drinking water.
Powdered moringa seeds, not leaves,
can effectively purify H 2 O, but not so
much the human body. Nevertheless,
many manufacturers push moringa
supplements as a way to help you “detox”.
If you didn’t have your own miracle organ
capable of handling toxins, moringa’s
purification properties might be more
useful. But you do: your liver.
Ask Curtis about the powers of moringa
and she’ll direct you to research on the
company’s website: “There are three main
reasons that people become excited about
moringa: nutrient density, plant protein
and anti-inflammatory benefits.”
Dr Kevin Klatt, a biochemist at Cornell
University in New York, has conducted
a nutrient analysis of moringa to assess
its potential to help malnourished
people. Klatt also reviewed the Kuli
Kuli website and its “10 Reasons” article.
He concluded that most of those reasons
were speculative and often based on small
studies. What’s more, many of moringa’sGREEN PEACE: ALTRUISM
MAKES SUPERFOODS
MORE PALATABLE