Acai Pulp - Are You Getting The Real Stuff?

The acai pulp, made from the skin of the acai plant, and fruit has many documented vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. It also contains a good percentage of the healthy omega 6 and omega 9 "good" fats as well. And like many fruits, the acai pulp and skin is the part of the fruit with the highest concentration of nutrients. In short, th acai berry benefits are many.

One reason that the acai fruit is so expensive is that the pulp and juice together constitutes a very small percentage of the acai fruit. Over 80% of the plant is the seed which means, from a nutritional standpoint, there is a lot of waste. You have to collect a great deal of fruit to obtain enough real edible produce.

Because of the high cost of obtaining and processing acai, some companies in order to save costs, include part of the seed in the powders and capsules that they put on the market. In effect, this dilutes the end product. Since the seed itself contains very little of the nutrients, products made with seed are overpriced and worthless.

To determine if seed has been used in your favorite acai product, look for the term "acai extract" on the label. This is simply a way of saying that the ingredient could be from "any" part of the acai fruit. You can easily interpret this to be the seed because if it were any other part of the plant, you can be sure that the marketers would have highlighted it in bold letters on the package.

If you want a snack with lots of antioxidants, you can do a lot worse than having a smoothie made of acai pulp. Both the juice and pulp from the acai berry are used in many commercial juices as well as in the  juices, smoothies, teas, and other beverages from juice bars.

The best acai berry products are made from the entire fruit (skin plus pulp), not just the juice. The value of eating acai pulp, or course, is that when you do so you can be sure that you're getting the entire nutritional value of the fruit. Nearly all other sources of acai juice have diluted the actual acai juice with the juice of other fruits, water, and probably sugar.

However, finding acai pulp in its natural form is very difficult. You'd most likely have to look for something frozen. Acai is too fragile in its native form to survive for too long. That's why, typically, Acai is brought into the U.S. in pulp form or freeze dried powder form. However, if you're ok with tablets, a product called "Perfect Acai" contains capsules made from freeze dried acai pulp. Mona Vie also has a large inventory of acai berries and acai berry juice products.

In producing the many acia berry related products on the market, pretty much all of the acai berry is used. The juice is used in acai drinks. The acai pulp is used in the making of dried acai powder, acai flavored baked goods, acai flavored yogurt, acai frozen desserts, and many other products. In its native Brazil, the acai pulp is one of the most common ways of eating the fruit.