*

*

Well, when it comes to backstory, there’s a lot of it. Pistachios are one of the oldest flowering nut trees, and are one of the only two nuts mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 43:11). Humans have eaten pistachio nuts for at least 9,000 years. The modern pistachio nut P. vera was first cultivated in Western Asia, where it has long been an important crop in cooler parts of Iran. According to legend, pistachios were featured in the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built about 700 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar for his wife Amytis. The Queen of Sheba also loved pistachios. In fact, she demanded that the entire region’s pistachio harvest be set aside for her. (Greedy Sheeby!)

*

*

A seed rather than a true nut, almost 90% of the fat found in pistachios is the healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats. Pistachios are a good source of fiber providing 3 grams per serving, that’s more than many types of whole fruit–you would have to eat three plums to get the same amount of fiber found in one serving of pistachios. Just one serving of pistachios has 32% of magnesium, 34% of iron, 65% of a daily serving of B1, 69% of phosphorous, and a whopping 98% of B6.We’re proud to offer local pistachios in our cereals. A desert plant, the pistachio loves our California sunshine. The state produces upwards 300 million pounds of pistachios, about 98 percent of the domestic crop. Pretty impressive, when you consider that there was virtually no pistachio production in the state until the 1970’s!

*

*

Getting Help

*

Pistachio Addicts Anonymous holds regular meetings in most major civic centers and many churches across North America. Don’t want help? Then try a helping (or two!) on your Mojamix. (Also, listen to this song while you do it.) Indulge the decadence!

A staple starch in many tropical locales, bananas are an especially resistant starch, which means that they fill you up and keep you full for a particularly long time.

Vitamins and minerals are abundant in the banana, with especially high levels of vitamin A, a full range of B vitamins, thiamine, potassium, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid, calcium, iron, and magnesium. Their high level of potassium, combined with an extremely low level of sodium, make an excellent food for people with high blood pressure—so much so that the United States Food and Drug Administration recently gave permission to the banana industry to make the official claim that bananas can reduce the risk of high blood pressure and stroke. Bananas are also excellent for treating constipation, hangovers, and morning sickness.

Enjoy your Mojamix with our own, intensely-flavored dried banana chips or top your morning bowl with a fresh, sliced banana. Or to take your enjoyment one step further, broil banana slices sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon until they begin to brown and sizzle. Yum!

The Prophet Muhammad said, “If I had to mention a fruit that descended from paradise, I would say this is it…eat from these fruits for they prevent hemorrhoids, prevent piles, and help gout.”  Okay, possibly more than you wanted to know from a religious leader, but true!   What’s more, the word “sycophant” comes from the Greek word sykophantes, meaning”one who shows the fig”.  Three guesses what that means!

Unlike most fruits, figs aren’t acidic, making them a great choice for people with sensitive digestion or ulcers.  They have a mild but rich taste, described by some as being halfway between a pear and an apple, but with the texture of a prune.  Figs are a powerful source of fiber, copper, thiamine, riboflavin, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and B vitamins.  Toss a few in your next order of Mojamix—your mouth (and the rest of your body) will thank you!

People from many diverse cultures, languages, religions, and races scattered around the globe have revered the coconut as a valuable source of both food and medicine. Wherever the coconut palm grows the people have learned of its importance as an effective medicine. For thousands of years coconut products have held a respected and valuable place in local folkways.

In traditional medicine around the world coconut is used to treat a wide variety of health problems including abscesses, asthma, baldness, bronchitis, bruises, burns, colds, constipation, cough, dropsy, dysentery, earache, fever, flu, gingivitis, gonorrhea, irregular or painful menstruation, jaundice, kidney stones, lice, malnutrition, nausea, rash, scabies, scurvy, skin infections, sore throat, swelling, syphilis, toothache, tuberculosis, tumors, typhoid, ulcers, upset stomach, weakness, and wounds. Talk about a cure-all! The coconut palm is so highly valued by them as both a source of food and medicine that it is called “The Tree of Life.”

And that’s not even all: In tantric practices, coconuts are sometimes used as substitutes for human skulls.  So just think of that the next time you eat your Mojamix. 

More than just a kid’s rhyme, mulberries have been famous since ancient times when they braved the long trek across the Silk Road.  These sweet berries will not only make your taste buds happy, but they also pack an amazing nutritional punch.  They’re loaded with iron, vitamin C, and reservatrol, a powerful antioxidant for heart health and combating cancer.  

An important folk remedy in Chinese medicine, mulberries are reputed to have a wide variety of health benefits. It should be noted that many of these benefits have not been scientifically verified but are traditionalremedies that have developed in countries where mulberries have been eaten for centuries.

Life Extension
Because of their resveratrol content, mulberries may be a tool in one’s life extension arsenal, as resveratrol has shown in several studies to extend the life of mice.

Blood Tonic
In Chinese medicine, mulberries are considered a blood tonic, meaning that they cleanse the blood and increase its production, strengthening the entire system.

Kidney Strengthener
In Chinese medicine, mulberries are believed to strengthen the kidneys.

Liver Cleanser
In Chinese medicine, mulberries are believed to be effective in cleansing the liver.

Better Hearing and Vision
In China, tea made with mulberry paste is believed to strengthen one’s hearing and vision.

Anemia Treatment
Because they are quite high in iron, mulberries are a great food to use in the treatment of anemia.

Cold and Flu Treatment
In Turkey, mulberry molasses is used as a treatment for colds and flu. Their effectiveness in this way may be due to their high vitamin C content.

Premature Gray Hair Remedy
In several countries, mulberries are considered an effective remedy for prematurely gray hair.

Proof enough for ya?  Toss a few mulberries in your next batch of Mojamix and see if you don’t agree–their taste is just as impressive as their health benefits!

We’re particularly proud to offer cranberries among our many cereal ingredients here at Mojamix.  After all, we’re a unique American company, and the cranberry, as one of only three popular fruits with origins solely in North America, is a unique American food!

The North American cranberry has a long and distinguished history.  Native peoples used cranberries as food, in ceremonies, and medicinally. They were used especially for pemmican, wound medicine, and dye. Yukon River residents recommend eating cranberries and drinking cranberry juice for colds and for bleeding gums.

Revolutionary War veteran Henry Hall planted the first commercial cranberry beds in Dennis, Massachusetts in 1816. The name cranberry is probably derived from “craneberry”—early European settlers thought that the plant’s long, trailing stem and nodding-head berry and flower resembled the neck and head of a crane.Today cranberries are farmed on approximately 40,000 acres across the northern United States and Canada.

Nutritionally the cranberry has great street cred.  It is a top food on the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity scale with moderate levels of Vitamin C, dietary fiber, Vitamin K, and manganese.  Cranberries are also rich in both antioxidants and fiber.  Oh, and taste–did we mention taste?  There’s a reason the cranberry has been consistently popular for, well, centuries.  But maybe you’d just better try them in your next batch of Mojamix–it’s easier to show you than tell you.

Here at Mojamix, we pride ourselves on the high quality and purity of our ingredients and cereal-making processes.  Unfortunately, not everyone who manufactures cereal can say the same.  The industrial processes used to make most supermarket shelf cereals destroy the nutritional content of the grains, which are then replaced with artificially manufactured nutrients.  We’d like to say that works… but the proof is in the pudding.  Or in this case, the rats.

Let’s look at a couple studies about run-of-the-mill breakfast cereals that will send your running.  The first study worth noting contained four sets of rats:

Let’s look at another example.  This fascinating (and terrifying!) study split rats into 3 groups:

• The first group ate rat chow.  They were all healthy at the end of the experiment.
• The second group ate corn flakes.  They all… died.
• The third group ate the cardboard box the cornflakes came in.  They all died too… after the rats that ate the corn flakes.

So there you have it.  Eating absolutely nothing is healthier than eating run-of-the-mill processed cereal.  Eating the box that cereal comes in—also healthier than eating the cereal inside. 

Long story short?  If you don’t have Mojamix, you’re better off going without.

Despite having a name that sounds, well, an awful lot like wheat, buckwheat doesn’t have much in common with it.  The name ‘buckwheat’ or ‘beech wheat’ comes from its triangular seeds, which look like the much larger seeds of the beech tree, and the fact that it is used like wheat. It’s neither a grass nor a grain. Instead, the part we eat is  the fruit of a shrub related to rhubarb and sorrel.  It has made its way into the diets of some of the major cultures on earth, from Romania to Brittany to Japan, since at least 4000 BCE. 

Buckwheat is a terrifically healthy food. It’s an excellent plant source of easily digestive protein and contains all eight essential amino acids. Buckwheat is also high in fiber (a big bonus for celiacs), B vitamins and, according to a USDA study, keeps glucose levels in check better than other carbohydrates — which is great news for celiacs who also have diabetes.

In traditional farming, buckwheat has held the important role of a rotational crop—planting buckwheat in the spring enriched the nutrients in the soil, preparing it to grow summer corn or fall wheat. The shrub grows quickly, creating a ground canopy that chokes out weeds. Today buckwheat is making a comeback on the land and on the public’s palate, as more farmers switch from chemical fertilizers back to natural methods of enriching the land.   We at Mojamix say, “Three cheers for buckwheat!”   Because we’re big fans of doing it Mother Earth-style.

But that’s just the beginning of the story on millet. A small-seeded grass that grows well in environments that are, er, challenging, millet can survive drought better than rice or wheat.  So it’s not too surprising that millet was an essential part of prehistoric diets in China, Northern India, and Korea up to 10,000 years ago.  Millet travelled from there to the Middle East and Northern Africa, where it became a staple. It grew in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and even got a mention in the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament).    

Through trading with Eritrea and Somalia circa 3000 BCE, the early Egyptians learned from the Africans how to cultivate millet,  The Moors and Europeans followed suit, making millet one of the most popular plants to ever spread across the globe.  So there you have it: A teeny tiny grain with a huge history.  Talk about a heritage food!

What can we say?  We’re crazy for ancient grains—the older the better. For all you millet lovers and millet-curious out there, we now offer a choice between millet rice flakes and millet puffs for your Mojamix.  Try it in your next mix, then hollaback!  We bet you love it as much as we do.

from Pen T’sao Kang Mu

Yeah, we know.  Hemp.  Trendy, trippy—but also, as it turns out, tasty, timeless, and terrifically nutritious.  Apart from the other oh-so-fabulous benefits people receive from hemp plants, the seeds have been an ancient and nutritionally complete part of human diets for at least four millennia in China, Egypt, Persia, and elsewhere.

There’s not enough THC in hempseeds to get you high—just enough nutrition to keep you healthy.  With a pleasant, nutty taste similar to sunflower seeds, hemp seeds contain all the essential amino acids and the essential fatty acids that humans need to survive and thrive.  Along with a sky-high level of protein and fiber, hemp seed is rich in antioxidants, such as vitamin E, and minerals, including magnesium, iron and zinc.

Load up your mix with 2-3 portions of hemp seeds to intensify your daily nutrition, and enjoy!