I’m not usually one for healthy food fads. I shunned Kombucha (who wants to drink something that has floating pieces of fungus and smells like rotten apples?), never jumped on the spirulina train, and think that echinacea probably is little more than a placebo. But one of the latest “superfoods,” açaí, has hooked me. It’s an antioxidant-rich dark purple berry from the Amazon, sold here in frozen packs of mashed-up pulp. You can find it in health food stores, in the frozen food aisle. People usually put it in smoothies or mix it with granola for breakfast. I can’t eat really cold stuff in the morning, so I nuke açaí and eat it as a sort of rich purple syrup on top of yogurt. It tastes delicious: like a combo of chocolate and flax seeds. I feel energetic and on-top-of-it afterward.
Sambazon Pure Açaí Smoothie Packs, $59.36 for 28 packs
To me acai tastes like prunes and it isn’t always pleasant. Well made, acai products can taste pleasant. Badly made ones taste gritty. An example is Hagan Daz acai ice cream. Safeway makes some pleasant acai yogurts. The cranberry/acai yogurt I liked the best.
Hot on the heels of acai is the next superfruit – cupuaçu
http://www.acai.vg/cupuacu1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupua%C3%A7u
Websites say it tastes like chocolate but the drink I had tasted more like a combination of pineapple, passionfruit and a hint of durian.
I never got the durian. To me, it tastes like a cross between berry and dark chocolate. Warning — I know a couple of people who took massive amounts of acai powder on a daily basis and reacted adversely to it in a few months. So too much of any good thing is a bad thing.
It is the cupuaçu that has the durian tastes. The acai tastes like prunes to me.
It is the cupuaçu that has the durian taste. The acai tastes like prunes to me.
I sell a liquid form of highly concentrated acai combined with other tasty berries it tastes like grape juice.
Acai juice is great. Always reminds me of cocoa dusted plums…
Farmer
http://www.farmerdeville.com
Acai juice is great. Always reminds me of cocoa dusted plums…
Farmer
Acai juice is great. Always reminds me of cocoa dusted plums…
Farmer
I have worked with both products (Durian and Acai) and find Acai to be tastier, however I question the quality of the acai. I’m not sure what there standards are or if qualty standards for acai exist, but I know for sure that the sambazon drinks, sorbets, etc. always contained high contaminant properties. Durian’s a lot cleaner but the taste is a bit chalky depending on what drink you prefer. Just be careful and consider that even after pasteurization (I’m referring to the sambazon smoothies here) the product does not come out clean.
we buy acai plup and make smoothies with them with strawberries, bananas, milk, and a little bit of sugar. you can also make it really thick and top it off with fruit, sweet condensed milk, and granola(with raisins). it is sooooooo delicious. these were the basic ways of eating acai while i was in rio and here in nj, where we have a large brazilian community in newark ironbound.
even most parts of brazil are consuming acai via the frozen plup instead of the fruit, which grows in the amazon. an acquaintance is an anthropologist working in the amazon and lives with the native indian population. she said that the indians eat it as fruit without adding anything to it and that the fruit itself doesn’t really have much sweetness or much of a taste. i guess they eat it because it is high in calories and has a good amount of nutritional value.
i’m not into the acai juice at all.