Acai Berry
Acai is a small purple rainforest berry, regarded widely as one of the Earth's most nutritious foods. It contains abundant antioxidants, healthy omega fats, amino acids and dietary fibre. It also has a rich, cocoa-and-fruit taste. Acai boosts energy and strengthens the immune system, which is why it has recently become a dietary sensation among world-class athletes. Adding Rainforest Foods Acai Berry to your food is rather like eating the fabled Mediterranean diet, in easily-managed form. Rainforest Foods sells the first Acai berry products to have met the stringent requirements of the Soil Association.
The fruit of the Acai palm, or Euterpe oleracea, Acai is a small purple berry. Originally a wild tree, it is produced by local farmers in the Brazilian Amazon region. Acai has been for centuries one of the staples of the local diet, and has only recently been introduced to an export market.
Rainforest Foods Acai Berry is sourced from one of the leading Acai producers in the world. Our producer’s founders discovered Acai during a Millennium-Eve surfing trip, and have since created a FairTrade-accredited supply chain that benefits thousands of local families while protecting the Amazon rainforest through sustainable agriculture. A portion of all profits made by our producer are returned to the Amazon to promote education, provide health care and to enable the protection of the rainforest. Our producer has won major awards for its approach.
Acai has a significant nutritional profile, providing calcium, iron, protein and dietary fibre. It is also a potent source of antioxidants. In fact, Rainforest Foods Acai has an amazing ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) score of 50,000 units per 100 grammes. To put this into perspective, red grapes score just 740 on the ORAC scale.
Health benefits of Acai berry
• Its immense antioxidant content helps maintain the body, protecting against heart disease, cancer, arthritis and premature ageing
• Its antioxidants promote recovery from serious disease
• Its fantastic combination of Omega fatty acids aid digestive and cardiovascular health
• Acai is an optimiser of the human system, which is why many of the world's greatest athletes now include it in the dietary element of their training regimes
• Its easily-absorbed proteins help build and maintain muscle, aiding muscle recovery and tissue repair during sports training. Protein has a part to play in our fundamental biological processes
• Its dietary fibre can help avoid cancer and other serious diseases, as well as regulating blood sugar and lowering cholesterol
Acai’s high fat content means that it tends to go off much quicker than most fruit, typically within 24 hours. As soon as it is picked it is rushed to processing plants. There are several ways to process Acai flesh, but by far the best is freeze-drying. This involves rapidly freezing berry pulp then warming and depressurising it to vaporise the frozen water content. The result is a powdered product that contains as much as possible of the fresh fruit’s nutrition, in a light and portable form that is perfect for global export. Rainforest Foods Acai is also incredibly concentrated, as over 20kg of berries is processed to produce 1kg of freeze-dried powder.
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