Buying Acai berry products? Read here for some tips!

Acai berry (pronounced as ah-sigh-ee), is a deep purple coloured fruit that is not bigger than a size of the marble. It is originated from Brazilian Amazon and has been a traditional fruits for the native people in Amazon. Some people called Acai berry the "Super fruit/food" due to the amazing benefits it has on human health. For more details on the health benefits of Acai berry, you can refer to my hub:

You must have read about the amazing benefits of Acai berry, such as reducing risk of cancer, weight loss etc. Great! And you do a search on google, and advertisers smack their products right in your face. Not one, but hundreds of them! How am I going to know which one to pick from? Wow, there are even some companies willing to give you free bottle of Acai supplement to try out! Sounds good? Think again. If their product is really so amazing, why is it necessary for them to give out free bottles? I mean no one would mind paying for a quality product right? Your hard-earned money deserves quality, not inferior products.

If you have read my article on Acai berry benefits, there is only one product i recommend - Perfect Acai. You will understand why this is the best Acai product for you, so read on!

When dealing with perishable goods, transportation is always an issue. This is especially true for Acai berry which has a high fat content. According to wikipedia, every 100g of freeze-dried Acai fruit pulp and skin contains 32.5g of total fats. Don't worry, it is not going to make you fatter. It just means that the high fats content will cause the fruit to spoil faster. So manufacturers found out two main ways to preserve the fruit before transporting to other countries: Spray drying and freeze drying. You may think that both methods work fine since they enables the fruit to stay preserved, but it does make a huge difference to the nutritional content.

Let's start off with freeze drying. How freeze drying works is that it freeze the fruit followed by reducing the surrounding pressure. Subsequently, sufficient heat is added to allow the frozen water in the material to sublime directly from the solid phase to the gas phase. Sounds complicated? All you need to know is that freeze drying is the best way to preserve Acai berry as it does a good job retaining all the nutritional content.

So how about spray drying? Both freeze drying and spray drying are dehydration processes, but there are notable differences between the process. What spray dying does is that it exposes Acai berry to a hot gas to evaporate the liquid directly. After which the berry is sprayed with Maltodextrin - an artificial polysaccharide which is absorbed by the body as glucose. This means that consuming spray-dried Acai berry, you are effectively consuming more glucose and i am sure you would not want that.

Looking at the two methods, you would have guessed that freeze drying is the more expensive method to preserve Acai berry. If the company's intention is to provide quality product, they would not mind paying more to import freeze-dried Acai berry.

If you read the nutritional content in wikipedia, you would have realized that it is based on 100g of freeze-dried acai fruit pulp and skin. No seeds! So if you realize the Acai product you are currently consuming includes seeds, you have just been scammed by the company. Acai berry seeds can account up to 50% of the mass, so products which process the seeds is effectively offering you only half the health benefits for the same price you paid for!

If you really want a quality product, you will have to take note of all the minute details such as the composition of the capsules. Capsules are generally made from gelatin, plant-based gelling substances or modified starch and cellulose. There are many pharmaceutical capsules made from gelatin because it is cheaper to produce. Gelatin is derived mainly from pork skins, pork and cattle bones, or split cattle hides. So it causes quite a bit of problems concerning religious belief, vegans and vegetarians.

Vegetable capsules solved a lot of these problems but can be more expensive than gelatin capsules, which is why some companies use gelatin capsules to cut cost, compromising the quality of the product. So keep a look out for vegetable capsules if possible.

You pay nothing but shipping and handling fees, great right? Now look at their terms and conditions carefully. It is true that you get your first bottle for free but most of the companies which provide free-trial will start charging you when your free-trial period is over, and this is their trap! An effective one though simply because many users tend to forget to cancel their subscription when the free-trial period ends. By the time you realize that will be when you receive your next bottle of Acai supplement - along with a bill which can charged up to hundreds of dollar in some cases.

Besides that, you would have realize some of the ingredients used greatly reduced the nutrients of of Acai berry - sprayed-dried Acai which contains maltodextrin, Acai seeds etc.

I've mention this product several times and after reading through my article, you would have realize my criteria of choosing quality product.

These are the few reasons why Perfect Acai is a great, honest product:

• Freeze-dried Organic Acai
• Acai is frozen within 18 hours of being picked - ensures the highest quality
• Certified Organic Acai - just pulp and skin (NO SEEDS!)
• Vegetable capsules - no gelatin
• No maltodextrin
• No sugar, animal products, yeast, wheat, gluten, artificial coloring or artificial flavoring
• No fillers or flowing agents used. The only thing in the capsule is 100% Pure Freeze Dried Organic Acai

I hope you have gain a greater understanding of choosing quality Acai products which are value for your money. There are many companies who just want your money and with little concern for giving you products of the highest possible quality. Perfect Acai is definitely a safer and wiser choice if you like to consume Acai supplement. However, this does not mean that there are no other quality Acai products. You just have to identify them yourself based on the few criteria and who knows, you may even find a product which provides cheaper yet same quality as Perfect Acai!