Acai Berry,What Is the Verdict!

Acai Berry; What is the verdict!!

Until recently nobody heard about Acai Berry. This berry has come to fame few years ago when one of very popular chat shows in America claimed that Acai berry can help in reducing weight.
This has led to enormous publicity for Acai Berry and suddenly this unknown berry cultivated in the swamps of Latin America is the most popular Berry in the word. One of it descriptions is the supper food.

So what is Acai Berry; it is small fruit, round, black-purple ,2.5cm in circumference, smaller than a grape .The exocarp which is the skin of the berry is a deep purple, or green in colour, depending on the kind of acai and its maturity. The middle layer is pulpy and thin, with a consistent thickness of 1 mm or less. It surrounds hard inner part, which contains a single large seed about 7–10 mm in diameter. The seed makes up make two third of the fruit.

For the local population in Brazilian jungle and Amazon delta Acai berry is a very useful fruit, it is major source of protein, a popular beverage can also made from it and is a good source of income for the local farmers.
Its large seed can be used for livestock food or as a component of organic soil for plants. Its leaves are used to make furniture, hats and mats.
So, it is a very useful fruit for the local population and an important part of their livelihood.

Strictly speaking, from nutritional point of view, this fruit is very interesting.
100 g of dry powder of acai berry has 535 calories, Carbohydrate is the biggest proportion followed by fat and then protein. The powder also contains the following vitamins and minerals :small amount of Vit C, calcium, iron, and Vit A.
The fat content of acai consists of mostly oleic acid(56.2% of total fats) and also palmitic acid (24.1%), and linoleic acid(12.5%).

Studies have shown that Acai Berry has high contents of antioxidants , it is also a source of plant sterols, essential fatty acids, dietary fibres, minerals and amino acids.
The antioxidants found in the fruit can help to get rid of damaging free radicals which have been linked to the growth of cancer and tumours as well as heart disease. Essential fatty acids, Omega 3, 6 and 9, help to slow the effects of aging .

There are many many reports worldwide that it helps to reduce weight but there are no well designed studies which can help to confirm or refute this believe.There are also suggestions that Acai berry helps to protect against aging, boost energy, improve sexual performance and protect against bowel cancer .The only way to prove all these is to do well organised epidemiological studies of the local population and see whether they have lower incidence of bowel cancers ,heart disease and other attributed benefits.
As we know there are thousands of people worldwide who started buying the Acai berry capsules as way of reducing weight. We can have an initial impression of the effectiveness of Acai berry by simply starting a global survey of all those who consumed it.

I will encourage all those who took Acai berry as part of diet formula to contact our website(www.passwin.org) and tell us their feed back.This is one quick way of knowing the truth about Acai berry.Going back to the question of the article, I think that the jury still out and we have to wait a little bit longer to get the truth.

Ali Nakash
www.passwin.org