Choosing the Best Sources for Acai Berry supplements

The only way to enjoy the true flavour and goodness of fresh Acai fruit is to live in the Amazon. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

You see when a fruit has fat content, it goes off quicker than other fruit with less fat. As the Acai fruit has 30% to 50% average fat content, Acai fruit starts to decay within a day of being picked. This makes it impossible to export fresh.

So, all the Acai fruit products that you will find use some kind of processed Acai fruit.

Sounds simple ... but it's not. Some processing is kinder to the Acai fruit than others, which can mean your Acai product can have much less goodness than you'd be paying for.

The different ways Acai can be processed in to supplements

Spray Dried Acai Fruit - Okay

Some companies choose to use 'Spray-dried Acai fruit powder'. By heating the Acai fruit to a high temperature, all the water content is evaporated. Then, the dried Acai fruit residue is sprayed with a commonly used food additive such as maltodextrin (a starch derived from either rice, potato or wheat).

The main problem here is that the heating process destroys many of the nutrients that we actually want the Acai fruit for! A secondary worry involves the maltodextrin when it is wheat based, with reports of coeliac reaction from the United States.

Usually, a spray dried Acai supplement claiming to contain 500mg of Acai per capsule typically delivers only 300mg of actual Acai. Not particularly satisfactory.

Acai Fruit Extracts - Okay

The challenge with Acai fruit extracts is what is missing. As you've already read in some of the previous articles, it is the skin and pulp of the Acai fruit together that hold the nutrients we are after.

Now within the catch-all term 'extract', there are two main types: Botanical Extracts; Standardized Extracts.

The noteworthy point here is that though the term 'extract' sounds reassuring, it still means that the Acai fruit has undergone some kind of processing and alteration. Some part of the fruit has been selected, some parts left out. In fact, many extracts are derived from spray-dried Acai fruit ... which is a kind of double whammy.

In most cases, Acai fruit extract would be a 'Botanical Extract':

"Botanical Extracts are created by removing the non-beneficial parts of the plant in the laboratory, then continually processing to reach the desired ratio of the quantity of actual plant processed vs. the actual quantity of the finished product.

For example, 4:1 Acai means that four kilos of Acai fruit were processed to produce one kilo of finished Acai powdered extract.

Simply, the assumption is that 4:1 Acai is four times stronger than unprocessed Acai fruit."

This sounds great ... but what exactly has been 'left out' in the extraction process, and remember that this is derived from spray-dried Acai which has already been heat treated killing off even more nutrients.

Frozen Acai Fruit Pulp - Freeze-drying - The Best

Frozen Acai fruit pulp to date is the best way to process Acai fruit. The fruit is harvested, the skin and pulp removed and then "flash frozen" within hours of picking. This process allows the full synergy of antioxidants, essential and healthy fats, fibres and proteins found in Acai.

Freezing the Acai berry pulp is one of the best ways to transport the fruit to countries around the World. Once at their destination, the frozen Acai pulp is non-thermally dried (freeze dried), to be made in to supplements etc.

Something to note is that freeze dried products have a higher concentration of nutrients than other processes. This is because as the water content is removed, a rich pulp is made which has a higher nutrient concentration than the raw fruit itself.

While 100 grams of fresh fruit has an ORAC score of 5,500, the same weight of freeze dried Acai has an ORAC score of 34,000.