When you search the internet, unusually cheap chaga products stand out. You check the details, wondering how the price can be so low. Usually there is plenty of explanation about chaga itself, but the description of the product itself tends to be lacking.
Most of these products are chaga grinding powder made by finely grinding chunks of chaga with a machine. Because the terminology is not standardized, they are also called chaga powder, chaga flour, chaga fine powder, chaga micro powder, and so on. They are completely different products from the chaga extract powder our company sells.
Chaga grinding powder is much cheaper than chaga extract powder. Chaga extract powder is a product made by extracting only the nutrients from chaga chunks or grinding powder and turning them into powder.
There are differences depending on the characteristics of the raw material or the production method, but usually, to produce 1 unit of chaga extract powder, 10 to 20 chaga chunks or grinding powder of the same weight are used. Even excluding production costs, it is normal for the raw material cost alone to differ by at least 10 to 20 times. The difference in efficacy is even greater than that.
Chaga grinding powder and chaga extract powder are products of completely different natures. Chaga grinding powder is made by grinding chaga chunks with a machine into powder. Therefore, only its appearance differs from a chaga chunk; all its properties are the same.
On the other hand, chaga extract powder is 100% the nutrients of chaga itself, so its appearance, as well as its properties, differ greatly from a chaga chunk.
The representative characteristics of chaga grinding powder are as follows.
First. Chaga grinding powder does not dissolve in water.
Chaga grinding powder does not dissolve in water. If you put chaga grinding powder in water, the small particles float in the water and then sink to the bottom over time. You can think of it as similar to very finely ground sawdust. On the other hand, chaga extract powder dissolves completely when put in water.
Second. Chaga grinding powder cannot be eaten directly.
Eating chaga grinding powder is similar to eating sawdust. It is like how we do not eat the contents of a tea bag directly when we drink tea using a tea bag. On the other hand, chaga extract powder is the nutrients themselves, so it can be eaten directly.
Third. The difference in efficacy is large.
Chaga extract powder is a product made by extracting nutrients from typically about 10 to 20 times the amount of chaga and turning them into powder. Therefore, theoretically, it contains about 10 to 20 times more nutrients than the same amount of chaga grinding powder. The difference in efficacy is even greater than that.
It has been more than 20 years since chaga was introduced in Korea, but chaga is still one of the products unfamiliar to consumers. Not many people know that there are two products of different natures under the name chaga powder.
As a result, many people mistakenly purchase chaga grinding powder thinking it is chaga extract powder. When you see an unusually cheap chaga powder product, you need to check first whether it is chaga grinding powder. Caution is needed.
- Kinam Oh, kinam_oh@hanmail.net
