Oprah’s Miracle Fruit? The Truth About The Latest Super Supplement.
June 18, 2009 by JD
Filed under Health, Information, Supplements
Lose weight with Dr. Oz’s miracle fruit! Hollywood stars regain youth with acai! Nature’s miracle in a bottle!
Okay, first, I love fresh acai fruit. I can’t find fresh acai berries anywhere here in Dallas, but it’s a staple at most of the smoothie/juice shops in Australia. Great morning pick-me-up snack. And really healthy. But miracle cure?
Remember how popular pomegranate juice was 2-3 years ago? How it was chockfull of healthy antioxidants and other anti-aging substances? Well, the pomegranate has been replaced as the latest super fruit of choice by the Brazilian fruit, the acai berry.
And it’s pronounced “Ah-Sigh-EE”.
These days you see ads for acai berry supplements all over the Internet. Free trial offers. Lose weight with acai! Grow younger with acai! Cleanse your colon with acai! Even Oprah has supposedly hawked the benefits of the acai berry.
Let’s get down to facts.
The acai berry is a very healthy fruit. It is high in antioxidants and cholesterol lowering omega 3 and omega 9 fatty acids. It is also high in fiber and has a low glycemic index, which means it doesn’t play havoc with your blood sugar, but rather supplies a steady source of raw energy. All good stuff from one of nature’s healthiest fruits.
Bring on the hype.
So, as with any newly discovered “super” food, what is the first thing the nutritional supplement makers do? They set up what are often questionable manufacturing processes to extract and bottle acai berries in juice, pill, and powder forms. They slap some colorful labels on these bottles with names like AcaiBurn, The Brazilian Miracle, and Acai Essence Deluxe. And then they embark on a massive marketing campaign that revolves around hyped testimonials, exaggerated science, and suck-you-in free trial offers designed to prey upon our miracle cure mentality.
All of a sudden you saw ads on Facebook, Google, and all the major news media web sites advertising product web sites called Oprah-best-acai.com , OprahsAmazingDiet.com, DrOzMiracle.com, rachaelray.drozdiet-acaiberry.com and others with totally misleading names.
Yep, anyone can buy an Internet domain with someone else’s name in it.
The typical pitch is, we’ll send you a free month’s supply. You just give us your credit card number to pay for shipping and handling. But if you look at the really small print, you’ll see you’re signing up for an never-ending supply of the supplement, which they will bill you for every one or three months. They keep shipping, you keep paying.
And apparently, it’s been very difficult to get them to stop shipping. There have been thousands of complaints against these companies, many of which operate overseas in such hotbeds of corporate activity as Tunisia, Vietnam, and Majorca. Even when you try to cancel, they keep shipping and you keep paying.
Many people have had to cancel their credit card just to halt the billings.
You can find out more about the CSPI warning here.
Look, acai is just the latest super food fad. Acai is a great tasting and very healthy fruit, but let’s put things in perspective.
Acai juice does contain healthy levels of antioxidants. But, recent studies show that, even in juice form, it contains lower levels of healthy antioxidants than Concord grape juice, blueberry juice, and black cherry juice. It does contain higher levels of antioxidants than apple, orange, or cranberry juices. And the fatty berry that is the acai does also contain healthy levels of omega fatty acids.
So, again, acai is a healthy fruit. It tastes great, especially when mixed with nuts. Trick is, due to it’s native Brazilian rain forest growing environment and challenges in packaging, it’s hard to find acai berries in raw fruit form here in the States.
You can find juices and juice concentrates, which are the next best thing. But you do still lose some of the benefits in the juice extraction process.
Then you have the pills and powders. I have yet to find a food of any type that can be packaged in pill or powder form and retain any significant percentage of its nutritional content. So, take that under consideration the next time you see one of those blinking “Oprah Lost 50lbs With Acai In A Bottle!” ads.
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