What Everybody Ought to Know About Acai Berry Juice
For quite some time I have been hearing about Acai berry juice, and how it can help you lose weight and provide other health-related benefits.
First, let me give you a little background information. I am a fairly fit guy with an athletic build. I try to take care of my body and mind. I eat a somewhat healthy diet and workout pretty routinely, though I can drop the ball on that sometimes. So thank goodness for good genes.
Over the years, I have taken quite a number of different supplements in an effort to maintain good general health - even if it didn't meet FDA approval. And for the record, I never took them expecting any miracles or anything like that. I say all of this to let you know that I have an open mind and not opposed to using supplements to improve my health. Of course I wouldn't take anything that I felt could be detrimental to my health and well-being.
In the years I have been taking supplements, I have seen "the latest and greatest" supplements come and go - Chromium, Chitosan, Pyruvate, CLA, HCA, Hoodia, Grapeseed extract, Blue-green algae and many more. And so here we are with acai berry juice.
Admittedly, I have very little knowledge about it. But with all the hype surrounding the product, I decided to do some investigation and fact finding. After all, if it was as good as what was being touted, I definitely wanted to get in on it. Now, I have to qualify this by saying that my research is not exhaustive. And to be honest, it was relegated to just an extensive search on the internet. I had to wade through a ton of sites promoting acai berry products, and it took some time to find unbiased authority sites about the product. But here are the results of my informal research.
The Claims
Companies sell acai berry products in the form of tablets, capsules, juice, pulp, smoothies, instant drink powders, and whole fruit. Marketers of acai berry juice say that it is a "superfood" and make claims involving weight loss and anti-aging properties among other things.
The Research
With all of the hype surrounding acai berry juice, you would think that there is a mountain of scientific evidence backing up the claims. But I have to tell you that I was shocked there was such little evidence, especially research conducted in humans.
I assume they are out there, but I could not find any studies on acai and weight loss. What I did find was that the only real research the majority of the sites promoting acai berry products were using were two university studies. But these two studies primarily dealt with the antioxidant activity in humans, and said nothing about promoting weight loss or if the product has any effect for treating or preventing disease.
Some researchers state that the acai fruit pulp has a very high antioxidant capacity with even more antioxidant content than cranberry, raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, or blueberry. But so far, acai berries have no known health benefit that is any different than that of other similar fruits.
The Bottom Line
Trust me when I tell you that I would like nothing more than for this product to be as good as the hype. Regardless of what the FDA had to say about it, if there was enough research out there, I would give it a shot. But it is just not there.
I am sure that there are people who will swear by acai berry juice and have had great results with great things to say about them. But I think that could be the case with just about any weight loss product. So for me personally, I can wait until there is a greater body of evidence that catches up to the bold claims.
I was curious as to how all of the hype started and discovered that Dr. Oz mentioned acai, but not as this new super product, on an episode of Oprah and it was also mentioned on Rachel Ray and marketers have pounced on that and run with it.
On a side note, I also discovered that people signing up on some sites for a free trial are having their credit cards charged with recurrent charges by unscrupulous companies. So please beware, because when it comes to the weight loss and diet industry, there are all kinds of ruthless companies that will steal your money in a heartbeat.
Posted in: on Monday, August 9, 2010 at at 11:35 PM
