Getting the health benefits you desire from acai berry is a lot trickier than it may seem. There are a lot of huge claims made by companies selling acai berry products, and not all of them are legitimate. Some of them are exaggerations, while others are just outright lies that are completely unverified by the scientific community. Even if you have very realistic expectations about what acai berry can do for you, there are still problems that you might run into.
The number one problem that most people searching for acai products have is finding a product that is processed in such a way that the acai berry doesn’t lose its health benefits. What most companies won’t tell you is that acai very quickly dies and loses its health benefits once it is plucked from its tree. There many processes used to turn the berry into acai berry powder, acai berry drinks, or other acai supplements – and most of them don’t do a good job of preserving the nutrients in the berry.
At first glance, acai berry powder seems like it has a lot of benefits. It doesn’t need to be refrigerated like other acai products, so it’s easy to take on trips or take to work with you every day. If you don’t like the strong taste of acai, then acai berry powder can be added to something you do like so you don’t have to taste it as much. You can mix it in with a tasty smoothie or even yogurt and get the health benefits without even noticing that you’re consuming acai.
While those benefits can be nice, it’s important to understand how the acai got into powder form. There are several different methods by which acai can be preserved, and not all of them actually maintain the high levels of antioxidants, fibers, and Omega fats that make acai as healthy as it is. For instance, some companies use methods such as spray drying and drum drying to preserve acai berries. These methods use heat to remove excess water from the berries, but end up destroying most of the nutrients in the process.
If you want to find the best quality acai berry powder products, then you need to look for products that are freeze dried. Unlike the other methods of preservation, freeze drying uses cold instead of heat. This method lets the berry keep most of its nutrients intact so that you get the full effect of the acai.
In addition to looking for products that are freeze dried, you should also seek out those with a high ORAC value. ORAC stands for oxygen radical absorbance capacity, and it is a measure of the amount and efficacy of antioxidants in a food. Antioxidants are one of the key health boosters founds in acai. A high value means that most of the antioxidants have been preserved, so that is the sort of acai berry powder that you want to buy. Keep these two important factors in mind and you’ll find the best acai products on the market.
