There’s been a lot of hype surrounding the Acai berry, an Amazonian fruit with alleged super-nutrients. While Acai isn’t a miracle weight-loss food (no such thing exists), it is a rich source of many of the nutrients you need, including vitamin A, minerals, potassium and iron.
Acai berries themselves are difficult to find whole, but many companies offer juices and extracts. Last night I tried out Amafruits’ Acai puree. The puree comes frozen in packs of four, with a choice of Acai Energy Mix with Guarana or Acai Pure & Unsweetened. A pack of either flavor counts as a serving of fruit. Many other Acai juices add a lot of sugar to compensate for the berry’s slightly bitter taste. The unsweetened fruit pulp is about as close to eating the berries as you can get: no pills, pyramid schemes or other fruit juices added for bulk.
Amafruits offers a number of recipes on their website. The frozen packets are ideal for smoothies, but I wanted to test their claim that you can drink the melted puree straight–like a juice. The Acai Energy Mix tastes pretty good on its own, the texture is on the grainy side. The taste is something like a blueberry crossed with a pomegranate. It has 100 calories per 100-gram pack, with nine grams of added sugar.
The pure Acai pulp was a little less tasty, but has no sugars. Yes, it’s a fruit juice with no sugar, naturally occurring or added. It has only 80 calories per 100-gram pack, plus two grams of protein, omega 3, omega 6 and omega 9. The texture is also grainy, and the taste is a little bitter. Not all super foods can be super delicious, right? I added some seltzer and a teaspoon of raw sugar to the pack and it tasted a lot better. I look forward to trying out some of the recipes on the Amafruits site.
Also Read:
Acai Berry: Hype or Real Super Food?