Açai - What Keeps Brazil's Bodies Beautiful !

People call it the youth-berry or Botox in a bottle. Either way, it's important you learn how to pronounce Açai (ah-sigh-eee), because it looks like it's going to be big this year. So what exactly is it? Well, the Açai is a small, purple, grape-sized fruit that grows on palm trees in the swamps and flood plains of the Amazon, and its juice is said to be what keeps Brazilian bodies beautiful. It's what the bronzed young beachgoers of Ipanema order at the Bibi juice bar, in Rio de Janeiro, and it's what the people of northern Brazil have traditionally eaten in pulp form, mixed with either flour, yogurt or dried cassava powder. It has rejuvenating and detoxifying properties: it's packed with cholesterol-lowering Omega 3, 6 and 9, and it's ten times richer than red wine in anthocyanins, the substances thought to be responsible for France's low rate of heart disease. A scientific report from the University of Florida reports that, in test-tube experiments, Açai triggered a self-destruct mechanism in up to 86 per cent of leukaemia cells, and that the antioxidants in Açai "mop up" the unstable molecules known as "free radicals". These chaps, caused by pollutants such as cigarette smoke, can not only be harmful, but speed up the ageing process. Eaten, Açai is actually rather an acquired taste, drunk on its own, it has a fruity, blackberry feel with a little unsweetened chocolate aftertaste. An Açai berry is 90% stone and 10% fruit. Credit for exporting the berry from rural northern Brazil to the urban south goes to a jiu-jitsu trainer by the name of Carlos Gracie, the great-grandson of Scottish immigrants from Dumfries, who brought the Açai-consuming habit with him when he moved from Belem to set up a training academy in Rio early last century. For the past decade, Açai has been the fashionable beachfront drink in Rio, usually taken with a dash of guarana, another herbal stimulant from the rainforest. Now, the little superberry has made the long journey up north. 2007 will be the year that Açai berries will explode in the US and in Europe!