If you are lucky enough to be a member of one of the reclusive Caboclo populations that live near the acai palms in the Brazilian rain forest, it is more than likely that you know the acai berry very, very well. You probably farm them all day, in fact, and when you are not farming them you will be most likely eating them, since the acai berry makes up 42% of your diet, by weight.

Unfortunately it isn’t so easy for those of us that don’t live in Brazil to get our hands on acai berries of any kind, such is the nature of their startlingly rapid degradation after harvesting. Fortunately we do have alternatives and some, like Pure Acai, are probably better than the original.

The reason that Pure Acai is so good is simply that it is concentrated, freeze dried acai extract. This is a no nonsense product that does what it says on the tin: Pure Acai provides an extremely convenient source of all the goodness and nutrients that acai offers, only in a far more convenient form. Pure Acai means that you don’t have to cook or bake all day with acai purees or preserves in order to get the goodness into your diet and, consequently, into your body. A good alternative, and probably the best option.

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 very 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?

If you want real acai berries then you will have to go to the Brazilian rain forest. Seriously. Once harvested the fruit degrades so quickly that distributors cannot get it out of Brazil without some pre-processing (or freezing) which turns it into a different product. If you’re really interested in getting as much acai as possible then you should move to the areas where they harvest the acai fruit: these people take in acai fruit comprising around 42% of their food by weight. Wow.

One of the better ways to get the acai to your grocery bag is with acai preserves. Acai preserves really are just what they sound like, and you would make them in same way that you would make strawberry or raspberry jam. And like with strawberries and raspberries, the more the better; so it is with acai preserves which contain up to 99% of their volume as acai fruit.

Pretty impressive by any standard, but phenomenal when you compare it to the alternatives which can be pills and powders said to contain acai. I would much rather have the real thing in front of me.

The good thing about the very simple way in which acai preserves are made is that the minimal processing means maximum retention of all the goodness and nutrients in the acai.