Ginseng sells billions of dollars a year despite no proven health benefit
Its Chinese name means 'person root', after the forked, body-like shape of the plant. Ginseng has been prized in Korean and Chinese tradition for centuries and topped $2 billion in global sales in 2013. Yet clinical research has found no good evidence that it improves health or prevents any disease.
True ginseng comes only from the genus Panax, whose species include Korean, American, Japanese and South China ginseng. Most grow in cool regions such as the Korean Peninsula, northeast China, the Russian Far East, Canada and the United States, though Vietnamese ginseng is the southernmost known. The English word comes from Teochew Chinese, combining characters for person and forked root. Many other plants borrow the name, from Siberian ginseng, which has a woody root and different active compounds, to Indian ginseng, better known as ashwagandha.
Wild ginseng is gathered by hand in Korean mountains by collectors called simmani. Soaring demand means plants are dug up faster than they can mature, leaving wild ginseng almost extinct in China and endangered globally. Native Americans used wild American ginseng as medicine, and it has been exported since the mid-1700s. Growing it is slow: seeds usually do not sprout until the second spring after harvest, and only after a long warm and cold treatment. Processing yields white ginseng, peeled and dried unheated, or red ginseng, steamed at 100 degrees Celsius, which resists decay better.
Production is highly concentrated. In the early twenty-first century, 99 percent of the world's 80,000 tons came from four countries, led by China and South Korea, then Canada and the United States. South Korea supplied half of 2013's sales by value. In Korean cooking ginseng goes into soups, side dishes, tea and liquor. Northeastern Chinese folk tales tell of ginseng spirits appearing as children with braids; tie a red ribbon to one and it vanishes, leaving a root to dig up beneath a blade of grass.
Tradition was more modest than modern marketing. The Shen Nong Pharmacopoeia of 196 AD and Li Shizhen's 1596 compendium treated it as a tonic for the chronically ill and convalescent, not a cure-all. Today studies show no confirmed effect on memory, fatigue or menopause symptoms. The US Food and Drug Administration has not approved it for any health purpose, and regulators have sent warning letters over false claims.
Source: Ginseng
