Posts filed under 'Acai Berry Diets'
You’ve heard all there is to hear about the new ‘megaberry’. The acai, pronounced “ah-sigh-ee” is the great super food coming out of the deepest darkest Amazon basin in Brazil. You’ve seen it hyped on the Oprah Winfrey show as the richest natural source of antioxidants in the world. The New York Times will tell you that it is a little gem of a berry loaded with amino acids and all the right kinds of unsaturated fat. Everybody will tell you how great the acai berry is for your health and how if Dorian Grey had taken it daily he wouldn’t need that old junk portrait in the attic. However very few people are telling how to get hold of the acai berry.
You see the acai berry is 90% pip-stone (which is inedible) and the juicy pulp is up to half constituted of fat. Unfortunately this high fat content pulp means that it goes way off very quickly once ripe and picked. What they don’t tell you is that the very best way to consume this fruit is to go to Brazil for both of the harvest seasons and eat them direct from the tree. Acai berries decay in under 24hours after being picked. They’ll never tell you that you will see truck loads of acai berries bringing their cargoes of goodness to a store near you.
What we can tell you is that fresh acai berries are not a realistic option outside of Brazil but frozen acai pulp definitely is. There is a company called Sambazon, the first and still the best producers and distributors of acai have this excellent quick freeze method for preserving acai pulp straight from the plantations. So now we can also tell you that acai sorbet can be enjoyed in juices, smoothies and ice cream at an outlet near you.
So what can we tell you if you want a version of acai that isn’t frozen or in an ice cream? What if you want it in pill form so you can get the benefits while working out at the gym or sitting at your desk? We can tell you that Sambazon do this too. We can tell you that Sambazon call it a ‘freeze dried super food’ and it is nature made convenient for the modern World. In fact we can tell you in all honesty that acai powder is an improvement on nature because it is concentrated antioxidants and amino acids minus the water.
And here is the most telling statistic of all when it comes to getting into acai berries. For every 100 grams of fresh acai the ORAC score is 5,500 while for acai powder it is 50,000. Just in case you didn’t know let us tell you that the ORAC score stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, a scientific test that measures the antioxidant concentration in foodstuffs. What did we tell you? This acai stuff is great!
January 7th, 2009
The Brazilian people know a good thing when they see it. They use the acai berries, juice and pulp in many different dishes – from drinks and smoothies to their breakfast cereals and muesli bars. Brazilians also use acai as a flavoring for meat poultry and fish dishes. They top many of their dishes with the pasty, curd substance made from the fruit.
What they are really doing with all this acai additions is to get for themselves the amazing health benefits. Acai is a completely non-fattening source of energy and antioxidants. Antioxidants of course are the great anti-aging substance.
Only in the last few years have people in North America and the rest of the World become aware of how acai gives them a nutritional super boost. Some state of the art smoothie places may serve acai as one of the exotic flavorings available to you.
Not only are savvy health conscious consumers taking advantage of the benefits of acai, but scientists and the press are singing the praises of acai and have even found it capable of destroying cultured leukemia cells!
From the very real world of the Amazon rain forest to the virtual world of the Internet acai can be found in enormous symbolic quantities. It can be ordered and paid for by credit card in several forms, very different from the beautiful purplish berries of the ripe fruit. It comes as powder or capsule supplements or even frozen. From ancient plant magic to ultra modern technological nourishment in a pill acai today is like something out of Frank Herbert novel.
Acai is the most unbalanced part of your balanced healthy diet. It is unbalanced in the sense that there is nothing in it that isn’t good for you and it gives no adverse side effects whatsoever.
December 10th, 2008
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old duffer I want to say that I find all recipes suggestions on packets and in cook books and on those endless TV cooking programs simplistic and insulting. It is mildly interesting to know for instance how the Brazilian natives eat their acai berries but take a look at this smoothie recipe. They not only tell you the ingredients they tell you the exact quantities in both metric and imperial units.
7 Oz (200 grams Acai Juice)
½ Cup Soy Milk or Juice
Fruit (one banana, ½ half apple, or 1 cup of other fruit)
Directions:
Blend all ingredients together. Serve in a bowl and top with granola, sliced fruit or whipped cream.
Variants:
Add ½ cup yogurt or ½ cup ice. Also, frozen acai pulp may be used in place of the juice.
I showed this to my 17 year old daughter and she had two questions. Firstly what is acai juice and secondly what is an ‘oz’? Then I tried this recipe and ended up throwing half the concoction down the dispoal unit because it was too much for me alone. I loved the taste of the acai juice though. I certainly don’t need to be told that next come the directions and ‘oh by the way’ you can use this or that instead. And do they really think I’m going to lick it off the table top and my fingers?
What is it with people today that we need detailed instructions on how to feed ourselves? My mother was great cook and never looked at a recipe in her life. We don’t need to depend on others to find interesting ways to get the nourishment of the acai berry into us. We just need to follow our instincts and put together what appeals to us in the amounts that we need, The first Amazon tribesperson to eat the lovely purplish fruit has done all the dangerous work for us by not dropping dead with food poisoning. We have all got far too sophisticated and fancy when it comes food.
So here is the classic Brazilian way to get the tremendous nourishing effects of the amazing acai:Some acai roots blended with soy milk, yogurt, ice cream or juice and any other fruit you like but bananas are popular in Brazil.
November 25th, 2008