Acai Zone

Dieting to achieve weight loss is all good and well — in fact it is an essential part of the process — but a controlled and sensible diet without exercise is nowhere near as effective as diet combined with regular exercise. Besides the obvious aim of weight loss aerobic exercise is just a great way to maintain normal good health and muscular strength. Aerobic exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous, but it does have to be regular, and it does have to last a good few minutes before it starts to have a noticeable effect.

Continued aerobic activity burns fatty acids and glycogen. To get to the stage where glycogen stores are depleted, and just fatty acids are being used up, it is recommended that exercise continue for more than 20 minutes.

The actual fat burnt during exercise is not a lot in terms of physical weight, but it is in terms of the other benefits where the body really appreciates improvements. The basal metabolic rate is increased for some time after exercise which means more calories are burnt more efficiently.

Combining aerobic exercise with a good diet and a few carefully selected supplements like Acai berry really is the only way — and by far the best way — to get and stay fit, and will aid in weight loss.

The extraordinary acai berry is a fruit with a long history behind it starting many years back in the Amazon. The acai berry was used by the natives of the Amazon for many hundreds of years; it was used regularly for curing regular illnesses. It is this use which is starting to be recognized in the modern era.

The legend goes as such. There was a girl in the Amazon named Iaca, whom was the daughter of the chief of the Indian tribe. Since food was not available readily, her father continuously ordered that all newborns were to be sacrificed. So, when Iaca gave birth to her child, her father made sure the child was sacrificed.

Evidently, Iaca was very upset, until she heard a baby crying one night. When she walked out, she saw her child next to a large purple tree. The next morning, Iacas father found her next to this tree, dead, holding it. He decided to call the fruit on the tree acai berry, because it was his daughters name spelt backwards. From then on, the tribe used the tree and its fruit as a main source of their fruit. This is how the name acai berry was given to this nutritional fruit.

Bet you never knew that!?

The amino acid content of acai berry is perhaps the unsung hero of this popular little fruit. Much coverage is given and attention paid to the antioxidant properties of the acai berry but not a great deal to the other benefits that make it into one of the most potent super foods known to man. These other benefits include — but are most certainly not limited to — amino acids and essential omega fatty acids.

Amino acids are essential for human life: most importantly for us they play a number of roles in making our metabolism function better and more efficiently. Perhaps one of the most important roles that the amino acids play is in the fundamental building blocks of that most important of chemical substances: protein.

Whilst the acai berry is very strong in the area of antioxidants — an area that is very important to many aspects of our life — it is also extremely strong in these other areas, too, and it is this amalgam of benefits from nutritionally beneficial chemicals that make the wonderful little acai berry a super food in the truest sense of the word. No wonder it is so popular with so many people across the world.

We hear a lot of rhetoric about how super foods are really very good for us, that we should be eating as much of these foods as possible, and that super foods can help us combat disease and illness, as well as simply making us healthier. These are strong assertions, and ones that we would do well to heed. But what is so good about a super food? And what makes it so ’super’?

Well, put simply, a super food is one that contains more nutrients, minerals and ‘goodness’ than ‘normal’ foods per unit weight. Taking the acai berry as an example — and it is a good example, as we will see later — it has more amino acids, antioxidants and essential omega fatty acids per unit weight than most — if not all — comparable foods. This means that you can eat 10g of acai berry and it will do you as much good in these essential areas as would 500g or more as some other foods. The benefits of an acai diet are soon obvious.

Adding some acai berry to your diet isn’t the be all and end all of health and fitness, but it can certainly help make you fitter, stronger and happier in yourself. Not bad for a little acai berry!

The acai berry is a funny thing. It’s rarely seen outside of Brazil because of the rate at which it deteriorates after it is harvested, yet a lot of places in the world have seen an exponential rise in the requirement for acai diet foods. The only way to get acai berries to those interested in an acai diet is to make them into some kind of acai pulp or — as is becoming more popular day by day — make the berries into a delicious acai juice.

The acai diet is popular with good reason. The anti oxidants and anti inflammatories in the acai berry are not only great for keeping you fit and healthy, they can also reduce the signs of ageing and — perhaps most significantly — combat major diseases like cancer, diabetes and even Alzheimer’s.

Praise for the acai berry has been long and loud. From renowned industry specialists like Nicholas Perricone to Oprah, all have something good to say about the acai berry and about an acai diet. An acai diet may not be the be all and end all of staying fit and healthy, but surely it makes the whole process dramatically easier for those who chose the acai diet.

When three commercially available juice mixes containing unspecified percentages of açaí juice were compared for in vitro antioxidant capacity against red wine, tea, six types of pure fruit juice, and pomegranate juice with added antioxidants (provided by Pom Wonderful, the sponsor of the study), the average antioxidant capacity was ranked lower than that of the antioxidant enhanced pomegranate juice, Concord grape juice, blueberry juice, and red wine. The average was roughly equivalent to that of black cherry or cranberry juice, and was higher than that of orange juice, apple juice, and tea. [9][10]

Studies have demonstrated that blood antioxidant capacity increases within two hours of consuming a commercial açaí juice.[11]