General facts about Acai Berry

There has been recent stormy propaganda regarding Acai Berry and its potential benefits which have been so far assumingly (and rather unscientifically) extended to practically any kind of past known medical condition. In spite of its popularity, and of its many believed effects, experts advise against considering the Acai Berry as anything else than a truly out of the common fruit due to its particular biochemical composition.

The Acai Berry as referred to by the media and the general public consists of the fruit of the Acai Palm. The correct pronunciation is "ah-sigh-ee" since it originates from the Amazonian rainforest in Brazil and other parts of South America. The fruit is usually about one-inch in size, rounded, deep-purple or sometimes green depending on both the intimate type of Acai and its maturity. The tree producing the fruit is called the Acai Palm and is part of the eight-member family "Euterpe". The tree is rather high, varying between 15 and 30 meters in height, with pinnate leaves up to 3 meters in length and the fruit collection can be found at the top, as panicles of a few hundreds.

The Acai Berry has only recently been used mainly for its production of fruit since countries like the US turned the product into a myth. There are however many other traditional usages like for examples that of making hats, baskets or house-roofs from its leaves, using the wood for furniture or as part of construction material since it is highly pest-resistant. It can also be used for extracting the inner core (an inner cylinder) within the trunk of the tree, called the heart of the palm that is edible and part of a salad called "millionaire's salad" due to its incredibly laborious method of being obtained (which is resembled in the price). Unlike foraging for fruit, all its other main uses imply cutting down the tree, fact that has been widely speculated by authorities interested in harvesting the Berry in order to prohibit cutting down of the tree; in spite of it having a commercial character it seems rather rational to use the Acai Palm for fruit-harvesting since there are other potential essences that can supply the other industries. Recently, palm trees have even been domesticated in palm-farms, and bred in a special way to eliminate some of their natural characteristics - like thorns for example - so as to be more easily processed for millionaire's salad.

The tree itself is not very hard to grow, and special farms growing Acai Palms are quickly developing as a response to the increased demand of Acai-based derivatives. After the planting of the seed a few months should pass until the off-springs will arise. The true difficulty that exists within the industry of the berries is their highly perishable nature. Basically after the harvest a wide range of pre-processing and fast transportation facilities are needed in order to preserve the freshness of the fruit. Unless the fruit is processed within 24 hours there is a high chance that it will spoil.

The fruit of the palm tree consists mostly of the seed and only 10% of its weight is the part that the industry asks for, that is the skin and the juicy pulp. The seed as well however can be turned into profit either as food mass for livestock or due to its high amounts of fatty acids. The fatty acids within the seed are both saturated and unsaturated; the ones belonging to the unsaturated class, especially the polyunsaturared, seem to have a good omega-6 to omega-3 ration thus leading to the natural conclusion that they might improve the lipid profile of dyslipidemic patients. It seems that at least in part this property is also found within the pulp.

After a process of separating the pulp and skin from the seed, the mass that results can be further processed into a wide range of products. Fresh juice, puree, smoothies, preservers, energy drinks or powdered supplements have all been thought of by different suppliers, and the variety of commercial brands containing Acai Berry supplements is huge. In spite of the range of this phenomenon, it seems that virtually no distributer funded scientific studies or has undergone any procedure to obtain FDA labels certifying quality of their own product. Thus labeled texts like "The ONLY natural Acai Berry product scientifically proven ..." should not be given any credit. At the same time it seems that the absence of FDA licensing has little effect on the industry probably due to intense media promoting.

Regarding side-effects of Acai Berry consumption there are no scientific studies as well to prove that a certain quantity might induce secondary reactions. For example, as for any fruit a high amount is expected to induce at least a mild diarrhea because of the large quantity of fiber that either mechanically acts as an irritant on the intestine wall increasing the peristaltic waves or because of the extremely high sugars that act just as an osmotic laxative, sucking water inside the intestine and causing a leaky, fluid stool. The berries have however been traditionally employed in pre-competition training by judo fighters, a very loved sport throughout Brazil; they claim that due to the high amount of sugar and naturally occurring antioxidants they build up consistent stamina before the fight.

At their recommendation the quantity should be limited to a maximum of 4 ounces of puree or 12 ounces of juice per day. As a general recommendation, distributers of Acai derivatives have agreed on a daily dose of 1000-4000 mg. Another possible side-effect to the consumption of Acai based products might arise in case of pre-existing atopic dermatitis or other immune-related disorders, for example asthma, rashes, allergic conjunctivitis and others. The supposition is that just as others foods, Acai Berry is not spared from the phenomenon of food-induced allergies; the explanation of this phenomenon is the molecular similarity existent between antigens naturally occurring in foods and internal, self-antigens that occur in tissues throughout the body. In case that the foods (potentially Acai) trigger a food allergy, the antibodies built within the body will cross-react to self-antigens causing a wide variety of immune-related disorders including anaphylaxis.

Studies performed on the native population revealed that some make Acai a very important quantitative part of their diet, reaching up to 42% of the daily diet's mass; the lack of side effects is risky to be implied in other population since the natives have been introduced to the antigens of the Berry hundreds of years ago, and thus tolerance must have developed.

Many effects have been assumed in the name of the Acai Berry, again with no scientific certification or wide-range studies being performed to stand as testimony. The highest impact is that of the Acai Berry Weight loss diet, nothing out of the common given the high percentage of overweight population occurring in the US, as a result of the so-called western diet. Nevertheless, in recent years due to incisive national healthcare programs the public has become much more sensible to so-called hygiene-dietary measures which are modern means of treating diseases by preventing them and decreasing their chance of occurrence. Thus whenever a natural product, just like the Acai gets to be aired in prime-time on TV shows like Oprah, it's not hard to predict that the stock will be depleted the next few days.

Not only weight loss is associated with the name of Acai. Treating hypertension, fighting heart disease, diabetes mellitus and cancer because of the antioxidants, boosting the activity of the immune system, improving digestive transit, improving vision, decreasing the speed of the aging process or the increase in sexual drive are all currently linked to the consumption of the Acai Berry. However most if not all of the effects are pure assumptions that were mainly caused by the initial chemical chromatographic analyses performed on the derivatives. There is no doubt that potentially beneficial compounds do exist within the fruit, yet there is no proved linear relation between the existence of such compounds and the effects aforementioned. If we were to talk about antioxidants for example, the ORAC score assessment (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) yielded an astonishing 610 on the official Acai Berry site compared to other fruits, the next highest score being Cranberry - 94. The data seems contradictive with other articles that state an excellent antioxidant capacity against peroxyl and superoxide, moderate for peroxynitrite and very low against hydroxyl radicals. On the other hand if the Berries reduce the oxidative capacity, then they must produce immune suppression since oxidation via neutrophils and macrophages is an important mechanism of destroying germs (especially intracellular ones like Koch's bacillus that causes TB for example) and cancer cells.

The assumption that they fight heart diseases is probably generated by the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio which is indeed a favorable one, but the high amount of omega-3 fatty acids is within the seeds not within the pulp. And besides, a lot of highly concentrated pharmaceutical products can provide omega-3 in a higher dose, much more beneficial in case of atherosclerosis (not to mention that ocean fish is the richest food yet known when talking about omega-3 dietary oils). The digestive transit could really be improved, due to the fiber-content and the osmotic activity generated by the high-sugar in the berries, of course with the risk of diarrhea. Other effects previously stated have no scientific formality to stand upon and thus should be viewed upon at least with a circumspect gait. Perhaps that most of them have either been "concluded" due to chemical compounds occurring in the fruit, and their similarity to compounds employed in treating other conditions lead to this, or they could have been extracted from testimonies of patients quite content with the evolution of their own diseases in the presence of an Acai-based diet (placebo effect?).

Recent commercial expansion of the Acai legend has led to it being used in domains that none would have thought of. For example, in medicine milk has long been used as a contrast fluid when performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and now, some have thought of replacing milk with Acai Berry juice. At the same time, a mild inhibitory action on the body's cyclooxygenases, both COX-1 and COX-2 has been mentioned thus providing the Berry with anti-inflammatory properties. On the other hand laboratory tests showed some inhibition of HL-60 cell lines (human leukaemia immortal cells that are grown in the laboratory) when introduced to Acai Berry extracts, fact that yielded a huge response on the market when announced. The safest recommendation would be not to take isolated cases as a general rule, and to treat the Acai miracle with circumspection, at least until further experience is obtained by scientific means, and benefits of the truly remarkable fruit are proven via experimental assessment.

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