Where do Acai Berries Come From?

Where do Acai Berries Come From?

Up until about ten years ago, no one had even heard of acai berries outside some of the more remote areas of the Amazon Rain forest in South America. In fact, the native peoples of the Amazon have been using the acai fruit for thousands of years to treat skin blemishes and digestive disorders, not to mention as a tasty addition to their everyday diet.

Eventually word got out to the local population of Brazil living outside the rainforest and spread to the Brazilian beaches through a boom in smoothie sales. That’s right, surfers figured out that those tasty little purple berries made for a perfect addition to their revitalizing smoothies and were perfect for regaining your strength through a long hard day of surfing. Soon these little smoothie stands turned into something of a big business for Brazilian beaches and the word spread.

From there research scientists got involved in an attempt to discover if the little purple berries were really all they were said to be. Their results are still rippling throughout the scientific community today. As it turns out, the benefits of acai berries were actually more than a little understated.

Acai is incredibly rich in antioxidants, a key ingredient in the fight against cancer and aging. They battle free radicals your body is exposed to through stress and exposure to pollution, and help revitalize your body?s systems. They are also chock full of vitamins and minerals and other nutrients, as well as having the same essential fatty acids as olives. This means they help boost your good cholesterol levels as much as the olive oil rich Mediterranean diet, and even has many of the same heart healthy benefits as red wine.

From there the word spread and acai berries could soon be found on health food store shelves across the world as people figured out how to increase their shelf life from the original 24 hours to an almost indefinite amount of time through the use of processing methods, preservatives and good storage practices. While the acai berry may have originally come from the Amazon rain forest and Brazil, they can now be found almost anywhere in the world in a wide variety of nutritious and tasty forms.