How To Select The Best Acai Berry Products
Acai berry is not available for purchase as a whole fruit in a grocery store or even in a health food store. The fruit from this special berry is most often purchased as a powder, capsule or juice.
The fruit from the acai berry is highly perishable and it must be properly processed within 24 hours in order for the fruit to maintain its nutritional value.
Within 24 hours of picking the fruit, the acai skin and pulp can be freeze dried into a powder or the pulp can be frozen. When done properly the freeze dried acai powder retains all of nutrients of the fresh acai. This freeze-dried powder can then be sold as a powder or it can be put into capsules.
The best way to make acai powder is to freeze dry the skin and the pulp. There are other methods of making powder such as spray drying but we feel those other methods are inferior to freeze drying. The pulp from the fruit can also be frozen and shipped.
The company that is the currently the leading processor of freeze dried acai is Sambazon. They freeze dry their acai in a process that uses low heat, introduces no carry agents and retains all the nutrients of the Acai berry.
Sambazon supplies other producers of acai berry products such as the Power Supplements product, The 100% Pure Perfect Acai, which uses the freeze dried Sambazon® Organic Acai powder.
The 100% Pure Perfect Acai is our #1 recommendation. Just go to Best Acai Berry Products and look for "100% Pure Perfect Acai" for more information or to order this product.
There are companies that process acai using a technique that results in a product referred to as "spray dried". This involves heating the acai to a very high temperature to remove the water and then spraying the acai with carrier agents such as maltodextrin. Many believe the high temperature greatly reduces many of the nutrients in acai. This also results in an additional substance like maltodextrin becoming a large part of the acai powder. Many believe products that use spray dried acai are significantly inferior products. (Note: you won't see maltodextrin on the product labels because it is technically not an added ingredient so the best bet is to know about the company you are buying from, and their production process so that you can avoid acai products that use acai powder from the sprayed dried process).
In our view, the best acai berry products are made with freeze dried acai powder from a highly reliable source such as 100% Pure Perfect Acai or frozen acai pulp from a reliable source like Sambazon, a world leader in the production of quality acai. This is one of the most important criteria for products that we recommend.
