Few foods have been sold to us harder than the acai berry. In the space of about a decade, it went from an Amazonian staple almost nobody outside Brazil had heard of, to a miracle cure plastered across the internet.
Somewhere in all that noise, the actual facts and benefits around the fruit got lost.
There are some good reasons to be interested in acai. The fruit contains fibre, naturally occurring fats and a range of polyphenols, including anthocyanins. Researchers have also started exploring how consuming acai could influence cholesterol, blood sugar, oxidative stress and inflammation in humans.
With this in mind, our blog will provide research-backed answers on what acai berries actually are, their potential health benefits and how can you realistically include them in your diet?
Let’s get into it.
What are acai berries?
Acai berries are the fruit of the acai palm, Euterpe oleracea, which grows in the floodplains of the Amazon basin. The fruit is small, round and deep purple, roughly 1 to 2cm across, and it grows in heavy drooping clusters that can hold hundreds of individual fruits. Traditionally it is eaten unsweetened and often savoury, served alongside fish or cassava.
The name itself is a bit of a misnomer as acai it is not really a berry at all. It is a drupe, the same type of fruit as an olive or a cherry, with a fleshy outer layer surrounding a hard stone. The edible part is a thin layer of pulp around the seed, often no more than a millimetre or two thick. Get through a kilo of acai fruit and you are left with a fairly modest amount of anything you can actually eat.
How we consume acai outside the Amazon is largely dictated by its short shelf life.
Acai spoils within about a day of harvest, so it essentially never travels fresh. Everything sold outside the Amazon has been either:
- Pulped and frozen
- Freeze-dried into powder
- Pressed into juice
- Or turned into the sweetened sorbet that forms the base of most acai bowls.
Which form you buy makes an enormous difference to the nutritional value you get from the fruit
Acai berry nutrition
Acai has a genuinely unusual nutritional profile compared to other berries and fruits.
While most fruit is mainly water and sugar acai is the opposite.
It contains very little sugar, a notable amount of fat and a decent quantity of fibre. The fibre contributes to healthy digestion, while much of the fat is unsaturated, with oleic acid making up a particularly large proportion. Oleic acid is the same monounsaturated fat that dominates olive oil and can form part of a heart-healthy dietary pattern.
The purple colour comes from anthocyanins, a group of plant pigments found across dark fruits, with cyanidin-3-glucoside and cyanidin-3-rutinoside making up much of the acai profile. Acai also supplies smaller amounts of calcium, potassium and vitamin A, nutrients involved in areas including normal muscle function, bone health and vision.
Below is a table comparing the nutritional characteristics of acai with other berries:
|
|
Acai |
Blueberry |
Bilberry |
Blackcurrant |
|
Sugar content |
Very low |
Moderate |
Moderate |
Moderate |
|
Fat content |
Relatively high |
Negligible |
Negligible |
Negligible |
|
Anthocyanins |
High |
Moderate |
Very high |
Very high |
|
Usual form sold |
Frozen pulp, powder, sorbet |
Fresh, frozen |
Extract, supplement |
Fresh, juice, extract |
|
Taste |
Earthy, low sweetness, faint cocoa |
Sweet |
Tart |
Sharp, tart |
*Anthocyanin concentrations vary by variety, growing conditions and processing method, so these comparisons are indicative rather than like-for-like measurements.
The superfood label and where it came from
Few foods are as closely associated with the word “superfood” as acai. Its Amazonian origins, deep purple appearance and high polyphenol content made it particularly attractive to the wellness industry.
The acai boom was built on ORAC scores. ORAC, or Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity, was a laboratory measure of how well a substance mopped up free radicals in a test tube. Acai scored well, and marketers ran with it. The trouble is that a test tube is not a person. The USDA withdrew its ORAC database in 2012, explicitly because the values had been misused in marketing and did not translate into anything meaningful about health once a food was eaten and digested.
That doesn't mean there is nothing interesting behind the label.
Acai contains a collection of bioactive compounds that have attracted genuine scientific attention, particularly in relation to antioxidant defence and metabolic health. The important part is separating that research from some of the much broader claims made around the fruit.
- Frozen acai pulp: useful for smoothies and acai bowls and one of the closest formats to the traditionally processed fruit. Look for unsweetened versions if you want more control over the final recipe.
- Acai powder: a convenient, shelf-stable option that can be added to smoothies, porridge or yoghurt. Check the serving size rather than assuming every powder contains the same amount.
- Acai juice: easy to consume, but worth checking whether acai is the main ingredient or one part of a wider fruit juice blend. Added sugars can also vary considerably.
- Acai berry supplements: available as powders, capsules or as one ingredient within a wider formulation. Look beyond the front of the pack at the actual quantity provided and the other ingredients included.
Are acai berries worth adding to your routine?
Acai has probably been both overhyped and underestimated as a nutritional fruit.
It isn't the miracle food its superfood reputation sometimes suggests, but that doesn't make it nutritionally uninteresting. Acai contains anthocyanins and other polyphenols alongside fibre and naturally occurring fats, while human studies provide some encouraging evidence around antioxidant defence and oxidative stress. It's better to think of acai as one useful ingredient within a varied diet rather than expecting one berry to transform your health.
We take a similar approach with The Health Protein. Each serving contains 250mg of acai berries alongside 250mg of bilberries, 250mg of camu camu and a blend of shiitake, maitake, reishi and cordyceps mushrooms. The formula also provides 31g of pea and brown rice protein per serving.
Acai isn't there to carry the entire formulation. It forms one part of a wider blend designed to support everyday nutrition alongside repair and recovery — the same reason it's worth looking at acai within the context of your diet as a whole.
So, are acai berries worth eating?
If you enjoy them, absolutely. Add them to a smoothie, rotate them alongside other berries or choose a formulation that includes them.
References
Laurindo, L.F., Barbalho, S.M., Araújo, A.C., Guiguer, E.L., Mondal, A., Bachtel, G., Bishayee, A. (2023). Açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) in health and disease: A critical review. Nutrients. 15(4). Click here.
Matta, F.V., Xiong, J., Lila, M.A., Ward, N.I., Felipe-Sotelo, M., Esposito, D. (2020). Chemical composition and bioactive properties of commercial and non-commercial purple and white açaí berries. Foods. 9(10). Click here.
Harnly, J. (2016). Importance of accurate measurements in nutrition research: Dietary flavonoids as a case study. Adv Nutr. 7(2). Click here.
Pala, D., Barbosa, P.O., Silva, C.T., de Souza, M.O., Freitas, F.R., Volp, A.C.P., Maranhão, R.C., de Freitas, R.N. (2018). Açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) dietary intake affects plasma lipids, apolipoproteins, cholesteryl ester transfer to high-density lipoprotein and redox metabolism: A prospective study in women. Clin Nutr. 37(2). Click here.
Kim, H., Simbo, S.Y., Fang, C., McAlister, L., Roque, A., Banerjee, N., Talcott, S.T., Zhao, H., Kreider, R.B., Mertens-Talcott, S.U. (2018). Açaí (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) beverage consumption improves biomarkers for inflammation but not glucose- or lipid-metabolism in individuals with metabolic syndrome in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Food Funct. 9. Click here.
