Acai Berry Origins

The Acai origins can be traced to around 8,000 years ago when people from an early civilization wandered through the Bering Strait in Alaska. They then decided to head south until they reached the Amazon rainforest where modern day Brazil is situated. At that time, the natives discovered that a palm tree with tiny, purple berries had tremendous medicinal properties and started consuming them to cure a variety of ailments. For centuries, the natives benefited from the berry which subsequently comprised roughly 40% of their daily diet. The palm turned out to be the Acai (ah-sigh-ee) palm which bears the now famous Acai berries. The Acai palm is a member of a variety of palm trees from the genus Euterpe and its name originated from the European adaptation of the Tupian word ïwasa’I, which means the ‘fruit that cries or expels water.’ Eight species of Acai palm are native to Central and South America, from Belize to Brazil and Peru. But the Acai berry can also be found throughout Colombia, Ecuador, the Guyanas and Venezuela.

Thriving mainly in floodplains and swamps, Acai palms are tall and can grow to 15–30 meters in height, with leaves up to three meters long. On the other hand, the Acai fruit is a small, round, deep-purple drupe about 1-inch in circumference, similar in appearance but a bit smaller than a grape. The berries are produced in branched panicles of 500 to 900 fruits and can be harvested year-round due to South America's warm climate. It has a single large inedible seed that makes up about 80 percent of the fruit. The berries have lesser pulp compared to a grape and the taste is superb, often described as a blend of mixed berries and dark chocolate.

Shuar Medicine People

The Amazon has the world's largest river basin and supplies one fifth of the world's freshwater. It is also the world’s largest rainforest and is home to one-third of all animal and plant species alive today.  The Acai berry is just one of the fruits that have been discovered in this vast region. One of the more prominent tribes in the region is called Shuar. The tribe’s healers, also known as Uwishin, worked with medicinal plants. They were highly regarded by the people and were believed to know all the secrets of the rainforest. The Uwishins gained a great deal of knowledge of medicinal plants through experimentation and research, as they attempt to find solutions and remedies to the natives’ diseases.

Fresh Acai Berry Juice

A talk about Acai origins wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Belém. With a population of about 1.3 million, it is the main city in the Amazon estuary and considered as the world center of Acai. It was estimated that over 200,000 liters of fresh Acai liquid is consumed each day, making the drink even more popular than milk. Since Acai is harvested and consumed within 24 hours, a massive facility was built in Belém that employs about 30,000 people, providing the population with fresh Acai on a daily basis, not to mention a source of income for the workers. The boom in Acai over the past decade has had more impact than merely changing the eating habits of health conscious people. Agronomists have also made headway in developing methods of cultivating Acai with high yields. Over the last five years, Acai production in the region has tripled and brought livelihood to impoverished rural areas. To date, Belem has at least 60 factories that export Acai.

Carlos Gracie

Moreover, the man responsible for pioneering the exodus of Acai from the Amazon, Carlos Gracie, had his roots in Belem. He was the great-grandson of Scottish immigrants from Dumfries, who was born in Belém in 1902. During his early teens, a chance encounter with a Japanese immigrant led to his obsession with the martial art known as jujitsu. In 1922 the Gracies decided to move to Rio and Carlos opened Brazil's first ever jujitsu academy. When a store near his Copacabana residence began to import frozen Acai berries, he started to incorporate the fruit into his diet and also to encourage his jujitsu students to drink it. His students were pin-ups with sculpted bodies and everyone in town wanted to know what 'miracle' potion they were drinking. Eventually, Rio's beach lovers became huge fans and the Acai drink became part of beach culture. By the early 1990s, all juice bars in Rio were selling it.

When Westerners rediscovered the Amazon in the 16th century, the Acai origins and its remarkable health properties were also revealed. However, the fruit is highly perishable and there was no way to preserve it and introduce it to the Western world. Later, when technology advanced and new preservation techniques were discovered, including freezing and freeze drying, the Acai berry was moved out from the Amazon and introduced to the rest of the world after a long period of isolation. In the 1900s, improved refrigeration techniques made it possible to ship fresh Acai to Brazil, particularly in Rio where it was made into some type of refreshment. The locals in Rio embraced Acai as a health food and it was during this era that the various uses for Acai were uncovered.

Over time, the benefits of the Acai berry started to spread like brush fire and there was no stopping it. The 1990s saw the rise of the Acai berry to stardom until it has been heralded as the latest super fruit to hit the market and the demand reached unprecedented levels. Recently, a number of new scientific and medical studies in the United States and across Europe have found even more astonishing health benefits of Acai.

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