It is well known by now that the acai berry that grows in the Amazon river regions, give the purchaser some amazing health benefits. It can not be disputed that the acai berry is a great fruit to add to one’s diet on a regular basis. However, it can be confusing as to what to purchase and how to purchase it. Like most items of interest that become popular and have a spotlight shining on them, there are dishonest individuals ready to pounce on the unknowing. So it is your job as the consumer to become aware. And what do we need to be aware of when making an acai berry purchase? First place to start out would be to know a bit about the berry itself.

The acai berry deteriorates fast after harvesting, so unless you are in South America, you will not be able to locate a fresh berry. Instead the berries are freeze-dried or frozen as a pulp and then shipped out to different parts of the globe. Companies will then take these products and use them for their product. Acai products can come in many different ways, the more is better to appease the different palates that people have. Acai can be found for sale as a supplement, as a juice or part of a juice blend, soda, frozen pulp, smoothie, frozen desserts, snack or health bars, candy or in chocolate bars. There could be even more than that as well. A good place to purchase acai is through a reputable and knowledgeable health food store or grocery store or online website. Again, be sure who you are making a purchase from is reputable. There are many websites especially, that are only looking to make money off the popularity of acai. Some offer free trials and then turn into a nightmare as a person tries to break off sales with the company only to find out he or she was enrolled in some kind of plan, wracking up money on the credit card. Other companies may not try to trick you into making expensive purchases, but will sell an inferior product. Often in the case of supplements, without looking at the ingredients carefully a person could be buying a product that has only minimal acai, but lots of other things that may or may not help enhance a person.

The best way to try an acai product is to try your local health food store, if you have one, and try a product made with acai as an ingredient and go forward with that. Pure acai supplements and pure acai frozen pulp will obviously give you the most concentration of beneficial acai per dosage or serving, but acai has a very unique taste that often requires a taste for. So trying acai in small portions will help you as the consumer, in what is best to buy. Some do not care for the taste and decide that supplements are a better way and others will like the taste of acai and love to experiment with new recipes for it. Smoothies are a popular way to serve acai in, often mixed with yogurt and banana and strawberries. Keep a lookout on your purchases, including your purchase for acai so that you know what you are buying.

There has been much talk going on about the acai berry and how fantastic it is for our body, but who is it that is saying the acai berry is so great? If we start back where the acai berry originated from, we would see the benefits of the acai berry from those who first knew about it. The acai berry hails from the Amazon River regions of South America and the first individuals to make use of the acai berry were the native peoples of that area of course.

The tribes used the acai berries as a source of nutrition but also as a source for healing sicknesses and in topical applications as well. So these native peoples recognized long before science could prove it, that the acai berry was good for our bodies both on the inside and the outside. Although this was not discussed to the outside world until much, much later on – word spread among those who live in South America and then further to other areas. The people of Brazil, namely Rio de Janeiro, have been eating acai berries for many, many years and enjoy them as a breakfast food, as a soda and as a dessert most commonly. Eventually, as the world gets smaller with travel and technology more and more people outside of South America became aware of the acai berry and its reported benefits.

It was not until the 1950’s that medical doctors realized the potential benefits of the acai berry and only in the 1990’s when the ability to ship the frozen forms of the acai berry became available in other parts of the world. This led to testing and research being performed on the acai berry which continues on to current day. The acai berry was tested for its ORAC value and was found to be astonishing. The ORAC value is a measurement tool for determining a food product’s antioxidant quantity and the acai berry was found to have the highest of all edible plant samples. There are plants that contain a higher ORAC value, however they are inedible to a human since they are poisonous.

The higher the amount of antioxidants in a food will of course be all the better for a person, since it has been found that antioxidants work to increase the health of a person substantially. The acai berry has also been found to contain other beneficial compounds – all found through tests and research of the fruit by highly trained and knowledgeable individuals. The acai berry really took off in popularity when Dr. Perricone of the Oprah Winfrey Show fame, introduced Oprah and millions of viewers to the great abilities of the acai berry. Dr. Perricone is a well-established medical doctor and is well-known for his amazing research, scientific articles and much more. Many companies have jumped on this acai berry fame and they make many claims as fact. While many things are very true about the acai berry and what it can do for a body, some companies stretch the truth or state information as fact when the research has not been completed. Acai berry is proven to be very good for the body, but to what certifiable extent is yet to be determined. All will agree however, that the acai is good, very good for a person.

The Acai berry has been continuously getting attention for being a great nutritional food source. Where it comes from and what it is exactly is less commonly known or discussed. The acai berry could be considered to be a hidden gem found along the Amazon River regions. The native peoples of these areas have used the acai berry for centuries as a source of nutrition. It is the outside world from these Amazon regions that is just recently beginning to understand and accept the acai berry. Mispronounced by many, acai should be correctly pronounced as “AH-SIGH-EE”. The acai berry grows in resemblance to grapes, clusters of purple-ish berries held together by stems high up in very tall acai palm trees.

The acai berries are harvested by hand, requiring the harvester to climb the tall palm to reach the berries which grow at nearly the top of the tree. The berries are used in a few different ways by the native peoples including eating the berry fresh, which is a treat that those outside of the Amazonian regions can not enjoy. Why? Unless a person is in the Amazon river areas to acquire the acai berries fresh, a person will have to be satisfied with a freeze-dried or frozen acai product. This is due to the fast deterioration of the berry once it has been harvested from the tree – it begins to break down within twenty-four hours and starts to lose its nutritional values.

Since the nutritional value is what makes the acai berry so wonderful and amazing, it must be eaten or captured in a frozen state before the nutritional loss. The most common forms to find the acai berry is as a freeze-dried powder or as a frozen pulp. Only a reported ten percent of the acai berry is edible since the berry is mostly, or ninety percent, part seed or pit. In quality products, only the acai berry pulp should be used for nutrition since the ground seed or pit is more of a filler to an acai product than a benefit. The acai freeze-dried powder is mostly used for supplements or for adding solely the nutritional content to another product such as using it in a juice product. The frozen pulp version of the acai berries are intended for food preparation such as breakfast meals, smoothies, desserts, etc. While there is debate among knowledgeable persons as to which form gives a person the most benefits, it is well agreed upon that the acai berry holds much nutritional value to the point of being considered a “superfood”. What is a “superfood” exactly? A “superfood” is considered to be plant-derived compounds that promote or provide a large degree of health benefits to an individual.

The acai berry would definitely be considered one of these, not only for its very high levels of antioxidants, but also it other nutritional values as well. The acai berry comes from the regions of the Amazon to your home to give you a healthier body in supplement form or as in acai products to be consumed. The acai berry taste is one that some either love or do not, which may make your decision easier when deciding which berry form to ingest.