Acai (ah-sigh-ee) grows wild on palm trees that are native to the rainforests of Brazil and the Amazon basin. Each of the Acai palm trees is able to produce around 20 kilograms of fruit annually. Acai’s dark purple color comes from polyphenolic compounds present in the fruit.

Historically, Brazilians have used Acai berries to treat digestive disorders and skin conditions.

The antioxidant benefits of the Acai berry, combined with the fatty acids it contains, make this one of the most important superfoods. The Acai berry is thought to have 10 times more antioxidants than red grapes, 10 to 30 times the anthocyanins of red wine and twice as much as that found in blueberries. The Acai berry is widely acknowledged to have the highest nutritional value of any fruit in the world, and this has earned the Acai berry the title of superfood.

Acai berry flavonoids known as Anthocyanins also found in red wine are believed to contribute towards the “French Paradox”. The French drink large amounts of red wine and have one of the lowest number of people suffering from heart problems even though many of them are smokers and their diets are very high in saturated fat and cholesterol.

In studies carried out in the USA it has been found that the juice of the Acai berry could destroy up to 4/5ths of all cancer cells in the body because of the antioxidant properties contained within it. It is said that Acai berry has twice as many cancer beating antioxidants in it compared to blueberries. A study done by the University of Florida and published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in January of 2006 did research that showed that the antioxidants in the Acai berry trigger a self-destruct response in 86% of the cultured Leukaemia cancer cells tested.

Posted: 02|15|08 at 7:05 pm. Filed under: News.