Acai (Açaí)

All about Acai: The rest of the story

Many people searching for Acai products might not know much about the Acai berry itself, other than the most hyped nutritional properties of the fruit. This section of the site pays homage to acai berries, with all the information about Acai, how it’s grown, where it comes from, it’s history, research done on Acai, and we’ll even throw in some recipes for good measure. 

Acai: What is it?

The Acai Berry is a dark purple fruit, approximately 1 inch in diameter that has little edible pulp on it because of the large seed in the center. Technically, the Acai berry is a “drupe” because it grows in large, stringy bunches, called ‘panicles’ on palm trees, but the terms fruit, berry, and drupe can all be used to describe the edible part of this plant.  

The Acai Palm tree itself, Euterpe Oleracea, grows nowhere else on Earth other than in Amazonia, the rainforest-covered region in Northern Brazil. Natives of that region have been eating Acai for a very long time, and little else in their natural diets… With amazingly healthy results.

How to Pronounce Acai

The word Acai is really just an ‘Americanization’ of the Brazilian word: Açaí, which is pronounced: Ah-sigh-ee. (Emphasis on the middle syllable.)

The Problem with Acai

In a word: Spoilage. It is extremely difficult to get fresh Acai pulp out of Amazonia. Even in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Acai pulp is consumed at an unprecedented rate every day, they cannot get the Acai berry fresh enough to retain all of its’ natural antioxidants before they start to rapidly decline.

Their solution to this problem is to freeze-dry Acai berries within hours of being picked, while still in the rainforest, and keeping it frozen until consumption far away. This does not retain all of the nutritional benefits of the Acai fruit, but it does retain enough that the world market has become interested in this ultra-healthy food source too, despite its’ fragile nature. 

The History of Acai

Most of the world has only heard of Acai since a few businesses started to export the freeze-dried pulp in the year 2000. Before then, frozen Acai was popular throughout Brazil by 1980, and even noted in medical research as far back as 1950.

However the Amazonian natives have eaten Acai since long before they developed a writing system. There it is known as the “fruit that cries” because of a beautiful story they tell about Acai history and origin.

Acai Research

Acai is famous in the health products and even scientific communities because of the extremely high Antioxidant and other nutritional content found in the fresh Acai pulp. Not only does Acai berry pulp contain a larger number of different TYPES of antioxidants, but it has gone on record as containing the largest AMOUNTS of some types of antioxidants! It is clearly a very beneficial fruit that should be studied on a much larger scale.

Since Acai Antioxidants are well known for their powers to fight the aging process, many in the scientific community is especially interested in researching Acai and has already done a number of experiments and written a few official papers on Acai despite the short amount of time since it’s worldwide discovery.

Probably the most famous Research on Acai’s benefits was done by Professor Steven Talcott at the University of Florida in January 2006. According to studies in his lab, the Acai berry “triggered a self-destruct response in up to 86 percent of leukemia cells tested.”

His was not the first official Acai Research to be published, but it is the one with the most hope for Cancer victims.

Acai Recipes

All you really need to enjoy Acai the way that the Brazilians do is to grab a pack or two of frozen Acai pulp, a banana, any other fruit of your choice and blend it all together. There are few things on this planet yummier!

However, for those who would like to try some of the more traditional Acai Recipes, we’ve put together a few of those for you too.