If you’ve read anything at all about Acai, you’ve seen references to Oprah proclaiming the virtues of the Acai Berry. But it is actually pretty difficult to find any quotes or video of what she says. That’s because the scammers have been making all kinds of outrageous claims about Acai being some kind of miracle diet pill, and using Oprah’s name to try and lend credibility to these claims. So, Oprah’s lawyers have been VERY busing getting videos pulled from youtube. Above is a little bit of Oprah with Dr Perricone introducing the Acai Berry juice to her audience. Pretty skimpy stuff.

But there is a lot of buzz about Oprah shedding some light on the Acai scene on her “best life week” special runs Jan 5. The quote below is from her website talking about her struggles, and a little about the special. For the full hour by hour schedule of events for this week visit www.oprah.com

Oprah Winfrey opens up about her recent 40-pound weight gain and reveals intimate details about her struggle to stay in shape after being diagnosed with a thyroid problem in the January issue of O, The Oprah Magazine and in a special episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show airing Monday, January 5, 2009. Both kick off Oprah’s “Best Life Week” a multiplatform, company-wide event designed to help readers, viewers, listeners and online users confront the issues in their own lives and make a commitment to wake up and unlock their own personal happiness in 2009.

The benefits of acai berry supplements are quickly gaining a foothold in many households where people want the benefits of acai without the hassle of having to integrate acai purees or acai preserves into their diets. Maybe people don’t like the taste of acai but still want the benefits: this is where acai berry supplements play their role, too.

The acai is a wonderful little fruit — often referred to as a berry but actually a drupe — that grows on the top of the acai palm in the Brazilian rain forest The acai grows in large bunches of between 900 and 700 berries, and is harvested by the local population. The local population know the value of acai and eat tremendous amounts of it: up to 42% of their total food intake by weight consists of acai.

Acai has a high fat content — that’s mono unsaturated fat: ‘good fat’ — and this means that it degrades very quickly one it has been picked. Getting an acai berry out of Brazil intact is a challenge in itself. To counter this problem distributors make great products like acai berry supplements. Acai supplements have the benefits, and are not only easy to transport across the world, but are also incredibly convenient for those using them once they get there.

One of the easiest ways to get acai goodness into the daily routine of a busy family is through the introduction of acai supplements. One of the benefits of acai berry supplements is that they contain all the nutrients and valuable antioxidants that you would find in the raw berry itself. Unfortunately you are unlikely ever to be able to make that comparison, since you are unlikely to ever see a ‘real’ acai berry before it has degraded beyond recognition: the fruit degrades extremely quickly in even the most favorable circumstances.

The fruit of the acai palm is not, in fact, a berry. It is a drupe. The drupe is about 25mm in diameter with a seed inside that takes up around 80% of the fruit’s volume. It looks a lot like a grape but, by virtue of the much larger seed, has a good deal less flesh on the fruit. The similarities with grapes continue: acai berries grow in large bunches of between 700 and 900 on the acai palm.

Acai berries have a high fat content and it is because of this that the berry doesn’t last long away from the tree. Acai Supplements, juices and preserves are the only way to allow the goodness of the acai to travel properly; of these, the benefits of acai berry supplements are perhaps the most convenient.

Central Coast Nutraceuticals, a company specializing in Acai berry and other health products, has been forced to reach a settlement with the Atty Gen of Arizona. The terms of the settlement include a $1,375,000 payment to cover civil penalties, the state’s cost in bringing the action, and customer restitution, along with a promise to eliminate shady practices in their on line advertising and selling.

The main problem with the CCN business model was that it was based on fraud and deception. Customers were loaded with a low-cost acai pills “free trial offer” before being signed up – without their knowing – an ongoing subscription to expensive health goods, many of which they had no interest in purchasing in the first place.

Once caught in the CCN trap, customers found it difficult to change or cancel their acai order. E-mails were ignored completely, and phone calls put on hold for well over an hour. This behavior lead to hundreds of complaints being directed to the Arizona attorney general’s office, and Terry Goddard eventually decided to push ahead and bring a case against CCN.

CCN settlement can only be seen as an admission of guilt of the part they played in this tragedy.

What a settlement will do to the acai diet industry as a whole time will only tell, but it is likely that customer confidence in on line purchase of health products – already at an all-time low – will drop still further. The long-term good of the settlement – and the action brought it about – cannot be denied, but in the short term expect to see innocent and legitimate businesses suffer as a result.

My wife and I have been watching with pride how our son is making plans for his future. We must have done something right, but he has an abundance of talent within himself. He is strong and knows exactly what he wants. He has completed his high school requirements and plans to enter Stanford University in the fall. He is going to earn a microbiology degree and has hopes of earning a PhD as well. He found a person that has achieved in her career what he hopes to achieve. I hope that someday he gets to meet Tammy Doukas since she has really inspired him.

There is a lot of talk about super foods, and many people are recommending a lot of different products and foods as being ’super’. What exactly is this ’super’ suffix, though? What makes a particular food ’super’? Quickly put, a super food is one that covers many of your mineral and nutrient requirements as possible.

The acai berry has become popular as a super food of late. It has become very popular with good reason, as really it offers benefits in terms of instant delivery of amino acids and antioxidants that beat its nearest super food rivals by an order of magnitude. The acai berry is the super super food, if you like.

While there could conceivably be some danger in consuming a lot of one particular foodstuff, this level is likely to be basically unachievable with something natural like the acai berry. The locals that harvest the acai berry in the Amazon rain forest in Brazil (where it grows on tall trees) eat a lot of acai berry. The actual figure of acai berry consumed is not known but some early reports suggest that as much as 42% of their food intake consists of raw acai berries. How is that for a very impressive figure?

The acai berry has absolutely stormed into popular dieting culture over the past few years. And rightly it should, too: this is truly a wonder food of the highest order. People with huge influence like Oprah Winfrey are recommending acai juice to her watchers and listeners; Dr. Nicholas Perricone has put the acai fruit at the top of his highly respected list of super foods. Even the New York Times has run articles extolling the virtues of acai juice.
You might think that there must be something in these stories if they are so frequently seen and heard. And you would be right. Its powerful mix of anti-oxidants and amino acids help the body combat again and even improve defenses against critical diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Acai appears most commonly as acai juice: this is the most convenient to the end consumer and it helps the distributors retain much of the natural feeling about acai berry whilst allowing it to travel much better. Certainly when you compare acai juice to its distant relatives like acai powder and acai pills, you can see why so many people plump for the acai juice version.

If you’ve not tried acai juice before then now is a great chance. You won’t regret it!

I’ve used Ares Galaxy for many years now. I love to share music, I admit that’s a large part of what goes on; I have hugely eclectic tastes in music and in order to keep my catalog fresh, I need downloads on a regular basis. Ares Galaxy does everything I need to.

Or at least it did. Because recently I’ve had real trouble trying to get connected to the network with it. No connection means no file sharing. Essentially, 50% of the time Ares Galaxy is useless. A friend suggested that I try Ares Ultimate, and while it connects a little better – and it looks and operates much better than the original Ares Galaxy – it still isn’t perfect, I’m still looking at a 10 to 20 minute wait before I can successfully connect. This kind waiting is good for my stress levels!

I did a little more searching, and I discovered that Google is absolutely full of people searching for the phrase “Ares Connecting”. To my joy I saw that a lot of the results gave a solution! The solution was a little app called Ares Connect.

Ares Connect was designed by people who were just as frustrated as I am in trying to make Ares connect. The application works alongside your existing Ares client, and requires no uninstallation of programs you are used to using. Download and installation are both easy processes, and I literally have had no connection problems since I installed. Well done those boys across at Ares Connect.