Maca root (Lepidium Meyenii) grows high in the Andes of Peru, as high as 11,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the oldest and most resilient plants on the planet. It grows in places where no other plants survive, because of extreme climatic conditions in high altitudes. For centuries, Maca was a regular part of the Peruvian diet, believed to bring strength, resilience, stamina, and immunity.

Today, Martin interviews Jorge Ureña, founder of the company UHTCO, producer and manufacturer of the highest quality maca on the market! Learn about different colors of maca root, their benefits and nutritional value, and how UHTCO products are different from the rest of the market. Jorge shares all the fascinating details about their manufacturing processes, and also explains why maca imported from China is not the same quality as the one properly grown in high altitudes of Peru!

Podcast 384 about Maca with Jorge Ureña

Martin: Hello everyone! This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast, coming to you over the internet, radio, the galactic waves! Today we have with us George Urena, or in his original name Jorge Ureña…

Jorge: That is a good Spanish!

Martin: Okay. George comes to us from Canada, but is originally from Peru. I would like to highlight the fact that immigrants are a bonus for this country. They bring with them their culture, enrich us. I’m one of those too, just so that’s “not biased”. But anyway! George, I would like to speak to you about the product that we’re bringing into Life Enthusiast:  Maca. And I know you’re the expert in this. You grew up with it. Can you tell our viewers why they should know about Maca? What’s so wonderful about it?

Jorge: All right, so let’s begin explaining what Maca is. Maca is a root that grows in Peru in about a 14,000 feet altitude. That’s about maybe 4,000 meters above the sea level, it is quite high, and in this particular area where Maca grows, there’s nothing else. Barely you can find any other crop growing like potatoes or Yucca root or maybe corn, there’s nothing like that at this altitude. Maca learned how to grow in this harsh environment for a long time. And at the beginning, I’m talking about probably back in the 1940s, 1950s, the maca root was a wild crop. So something that was just growing in the mountains, it wasn’t really a farming operation, as it is now. Just to mention about the maca root, it wasn’t really a staple food down there. It was just one of the crops that the Incas used to have, here and there. It wasn’t really a staple food people were eating on a regular basis, it was just something that was added to meals.

Martin: So it’s not like a potato you would eat for energy. It’s more like a mushroom that you eat for nutrients or for the adaptogenic function, right?

Jorge: Correct. So when we started the growing operation, obviously we started doing some investigation,  research, and teaching people about it, and they started growing it in different places in Junin. Now, Junin is the actual plateau, it is a region in Peru, where the maca grows, and it just adapted so well in this area that nowadays we have huge extent of land planted with this crop. Now, we realize that maca comes in different colors, and that’s something very unique.

We have black maca, purple maca (or red maca) and we have yellow maca. Now, what’s the main difference between yellow, black, and purple? Yellow Maca being the most common variety, it’s very sweet, it does not offer too much of a benefit, meaning in terms of energy or hormonal balance, it is just a very nutrient dense root, not bad, it’s good, it will give you some energy,