GenInv – Health and Wellness

Super food may well be one of today’s buzz words but when all the hype has come and gone there is one super food that will remain. This Power food is called Maca or Lepidium Meyenii to give it its’ latin name and it has a long and checkered history.

Maca has been cultivated for around two and a half millennia- a long time before even the Inca’s discovered it. Even over such a long period of time Maca hasn’t moved far from home though. You will only find it growing in a small part

of the Peruvian altiplano called the Junin plateau. It is in this most particular rarified climate at over 13,000 feet above sea level (4000 metres) where the temperature range can be extreme and solar radiation intense that this small tuberous biennial shrub grows. The many attempts to grow it elsewhere have been a complete failure. It has to be these exacting growing conditions that give Maca its’ incredible properties.

When the Incas first reached the Altiplano they were expanding their em

pire North, South East and West and subjugating the different tribes bringing them under one rule. They were brutal with the people of the Junin plateau. Enslaving them, they put them to work in the fields on starvation diet. They were puzzled to find though that these hardy people refused to die. Eventually the Incas discovered the secret. The tribes people were grubbing up maca roots and eating them fresh from the ground.

From this point on the Incas began to hold maca in the reverence it de

serves. When the Spanish arrived the Incas gifted them huge quantities of gold as everyone knows. Little known however is the fact that they also gifted the same weight in Maca. A sure sign of the esteem with which it was held. Only now are we beginning to understand the true value of this superfood.

Roland Poitevin is a dedicated writer with a passion for business and environmental issues.

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