Hey folks… I get asked all the time about healthy juices and everyone wants to know about Acai. Well here is the lowdown; Acai (ah-sigh-ee) is basically a purple berry that grows on palm trees in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil. It’s been around for hundreds of years, and really didn’t gain popularity in the United States until 2004. This berry packs a lot of goodies, including two important amino acids called lysine, and methionine. Lysine has an important role in its production of enzymes, and antibodies, and methionine is great in the reduction of liver fat, and helps with detoxifying metals from the body. A study at The University of Florida discovered that Acai berries caused human cancer cells to self destruct 86% of the time in a culture. While this research has only been shown in a cell culture model, it is likely that it will have the same effect on human beings (Walters, 2009).
I have been to Brazil a few times and Acai is sold everywhere, on the beautiful beaches and literally in every juice bar in Rio de Janerio. I believe one of the reasons why Brazilians have beautiful glowing skin is because of their intake of Acai and coconut water!
So you may be asking where can I get this stuff? Well, the brands that I like are as follows:
http://www.acairoots.com/ (my first choice and I highly recommend, this stuff is the real deal)
http://www.sambazon.com/
http://zolaacai.com/
You can either order these products directly from their sites, zola and sambazon I believe you can also order via amazon.com or get it at Wholefoods.
In my opinion the only downside with the bottle drinks is that they pack a lot of sugar up to 22 grams in every 12fl oz bottle! So drink moderately. So if you are looking to get away from the Redbull and go more nature this is a good transition for the busy person.
I personally like to drink Acai if I am rushing in the morning and I am not able to make a raw juice. It really gives me the energy, and mental alertness for driving into Washington D.C (LOL).
If you are looking to get educated about superfoods, David Wolfe has a fantastic book called Superfoods (see link below) that I would highly recommend you pick up.
I plan in the next few days to put a video blog in both English and Spanish of some of the smoothie drinks I make with Acai. If you have any comments or questions, please hit me up on twitter.
Cheers
Dion
NovaYogaDude.com
Works Cited
Walters, S. (2009, January 23). Natural News . Retrieved October 08, 2011, from Studies Shows Acai Berry May Kill Cancer : http://www.naturalnews.com/025403_acai_cancer_berries.html