Jumping on the Acai Berry Bandwagon

March 18, 2008 by GiGi · 10 Comments

Welcome back!

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably at least heard of the Acai (pronounced AH-sci-EE)Berry. This little Brazilian berry has been on Oprah, all the major morning shows, magazines, etc.

Touted as the best of the Superfoods, apparently it’s nothing short of a miracle.

But it wasn’t until a friend of mine started taking MonaVie and told me how much he was paying for it that I decided to explore it further.

$39 a bottle ($25 with a bulk purchase) – and a bottle only lasts about a week! Good grief!

Not only that, MonaVie is basically an MLM (multi level marketing) product.

So the quest was on. Find out what I could about this “miracle antioxidant” and see if other quality products are available for less.

First, the basics:

What is the Acai Berry and What Are the Benefits?

The acai berry growns in the Amazon Rain Forest and tastes like a berry with a chocolate aftertaste. Sounds great! It’s one of the highest in antioxidant properties – even beats the blueberry. The list of benefits include:

Maintain the healthy function of bodily systems and organs
Increase energy, libido and stamina
Promote healthy, glowing skin and hair
Support immune system
Act as a powerful anti-inflammatory
Help rejuvenate your mind, body and spirit

What Are Some of the Different Acai Berry Products?

You can buy it in many different formats, but the main 3 types are in juices, powders, and freeze-dried capsules.

JUICE

MonaVie comes in juice format and has to be refrigerated. Their acai juice is actually a blend of 19 different fruits. There’s no way of knowing exactly how much acai berry is in their formula.

If you prefer the juice blend, I’ve found another product for about half the price. If you scroll down their sales page, you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of their ingredient labels. Total Health at least prints the amount of acai berry they have in their juice. I find it amusing that they also claim to have more acai in their juice than the MonaVie product – how is that possible when nobody knows how much acai is in the MonaVie product?

Try the Total Health Acai Berry Juice for less than half the MLM product.

POWDER

The powders sure ran the gambit, but most of them are not all that pure in their ingredients. Even Dr. Perricone’s powder (made from extract) had all kinds of other fruit extracts and ingredients. So you can get Dr. Perricone’s Super Berry Powder with Acai for $60 for a month’s supply:

Or for less than half the price, you can get Berry Splash. It looks like about the same ingredients – at least they provide some ORAC values (that’s a way of measuring the antioxidants).

Freeze Dried Capsules

In this process, the berries are freeze dried and then processed as a powder or capsule. Most of the acai powders you see on the market are not actually freeze dried. They are usually made from a extract (which does not use the whole berry) or spray dried.

I think for the money, Perfect Acai is perhaps the purest grade of Acai available in an easy-to-take capsule form. I’m ordering it myself and will let you know how what I think of it.