Amazon Acai Berry Story

The acai fruit grows on palm trees in the Amazon and looks like a like a grape. Acai has a delicious sweet tropical flavor almost resembling chocolate and provides exceptional nutrition and is healthy for you. Acai contains high levels of key antioxidants along with omega 3 fatty acid, iron, amino acids, fiber, and countless other vitamins and minerals. People living in the Amazon region in the northern end of Brazil, have been consuming and praising the Acai fruit for hundreds of years and it's health properties are very well known throughout the Amazon river basin. The history, and story of the acai berry from the Amazon River basin that is changing the very idea of healthy food thanks to a thousand years of evolution.

Acai is a palm tree that grows in the northern part of Brazil and is known by the natives as "içá-çai", which means in their native tongue the "fruit that cries". For hundreds of years the acai has been a traditional and healthy food of the native people of the Amazon River and high part of the culture. Acai has found its way into countless stories and legends and has been consumed by the Amazon people for many decades. Speaking of the legend, here is a story that many people have heard over and over again while researching the health property of the acai berry. The story begins with an Amazon Indian girl named Iaca, who was the daughter of a powerful tribal chief. Iaca’s tribe had grown so large that there wasn't enough food to provide to everyone.

So, it was then that Iaca’s father, the chief had ordered that all newborn babies must be killed. When Iaca had bore a child of her own, the chief had his order of killing newborn babies carried out. Iaca had gone into seclusion and mourned the loss of her baby alone in her hut for days on end. Then one day she thought she heard a baby crying nearby and when she went outside in search of the crying baby, she spotted a palm tree shooting up from the ground, covered in these berry like fruits. Full of grief, she lay down under the palm tree and died. The next day Iaca's body was found under the new tree. The tree's fruit provided a valuable food source which satisfied the tribe’s hunger and renewed their energy, and the chief ended his harsh decree declaring that the fruit would be named after his daughter Iaca which later was revealed that it was Acai spelled in reverse. The tribe survived as a result of discovering this tree full of fruit that provided enough food for everyone in the tribe so nobody went hungry.

This very story has been told over and over for generations and that’s how the popularity of this particular fruit had grown. It took hundreds of years for this fruit to evolve itself into modern society of today for its health properties to be taken seriously. It took a pair of surfers from California to bring awareness to this particular fruit since it gave them energy while surfing the best beaches in South America and found that it had some purpose for the rest of the world. Today acai fruit is used in many things from energy shakes to blended fruit juices. Most people are willing to pay a premium for a juice so rare that it’s not grown anywhere except for Brazil in the Amazon River valley.