Miracle Weight Loss: Acai?

Posted by Quinn in Diet, Weightloss

2 comments

Since the holidays, the buzz in the salon has been the same we hear every month of January: A miracle weight loss program or product.

We Americans love a hero, a happily ever after story, a miracle of sorts. Our media creates stories around them, our advertising ads satisfy our curiosity with information, and we place our trust in these venues, because we want to believe.

We Americans also love to adopt new and foreign buzzwords on our lips to make us look: In the know.

Acai. Now there’s a fancy new word! Maybe we should start by pronouncing it correctly: A-sigh-ee. Oh, you haven’t heard? It’s the miracle weight loss product of 2009! It comes from the mysterious Amazon and it releases millions of little Pac-men inside your body to eat up all your excess fat.

Pooh, pooh! My gosh! Lets get our story straight. Lets stop creating them on false information!

Acai is a yummy fruit that hangs in massive clusters from the tops of palm-type trees in the north of Brazil. These eggplant colored berries are rich in fiber, antioxidants, vitamin A, and CALORIES! Yes, that’s right: calories.

Brazilians also associate the acai fruit as a necessary contribution to healthy blood. It is enjoyed everyday, any time of day, throughout the country of Brazil in the form of a gelato/sorbet type product. Acai shops, local cafes, and most restaurants, proudly display their national fruit, in one form or another.

The entire berry is crushed into a thick liquid puree: skin, pulp, and seed. It is then frozen to preserve its nutritionally rich properties. It is very unlikely that the valuable properties of this gem of a berry, can be preserved for exporting, unless it is transported frozen, and kept frozen.

The more this fruit is processed, and the further away from the natural source it becomes, the less valuable its properties are: though not totally lost. But in Brazil, no one has ever claimed it to contribute to weight loss. In fact, in a conversation with a Brazilian friend of mine, I told him about the American claim of acai as a weight loss contributor. He laughed and laughed, and then when he finally came up for air he said: “Acai is so loaded with calories… how do you expect it to contribute to weight loss?”

In a conversation with another friend from the city of Belem in the state of Para, Brazil, (an acai rich state), he said this: “If I want to get rid of my pot belly I stop drinking beer or stop eating Acai. But I don’t stop either because they are good for me!” And then he laughed with joy.

I don’t know. Maybe in the production of acai weight-loss pills, a miracle wand is passed over the bottles during production, and it really works for weight loss. But knowing what I know first hand about acai… I seriously doubt it!

You decide.