Acai Scams – Yes Or No?
You may also run into a handful of articles that advise you to drink acai juice to prevent cancer. One article showed a preliminary result using colon cancer cells in culture. After doing many years of research on cancer cell cultures myself (in my case, brain cancer cells), I can tell you that research on cell cultures rarely has anything to do with cells in a whole person. The reference above from 2008 regarding colon cancer is very, very, very preliminary. Did I say VERY preliminary? No health advice whatsoever can be taken from this lone article.
Acai Scams Are Not Going Away
Many supplement manufacturers have jumped onto this bandwagon. Customers in my retail nutrition store in Tempe, AZ, come in regularly to ask about acai for weight loss and other health benefits. My recommendation is that acai berries contain some antioxidants that are probably beneficial. It is the new berry on the block. Another one will come along soon. Fruits juices litter the supplement landscape. They are all good to some extent. However, the information about acai has reached a level of silliness that I regard as a scam. The big Acai Scam.
What About the Folk History of Acai?
It is not possible to rely on scientific research to guide us for most health claims, simply because such research doesn’t keep up with marketing. Scientific research is too slow to find out most the answers we want. This is where folk knowledge can be helpful, especially when herbs have a folk medical history. Unfortunately, the acai berry is more well known as a poor man’s fruit juice than as a medicinal herb. People in Brazil, where acai palms are cultivated, are probably laughing in their beer about all the hullabaloo in the U.S. regarding acai. You can read about this plant from the point of view of a naturopathic doctor, Dr. Leslie Nelson, at RainTree Nutrition to see what I mean. Search at RainTree Nutrition for this ethnobotanical review of acai by Dr. Nelson.
Details on References
I welcome you to scan the references that I dug up. The titles below provide a lot of detailed information that only scientists like me get excited about. Enjoy! Don’t scientist have a way with words? You can get even more information by looking up the PubMed ID numbers for the complete abstracts of these articles, which I have included. If you look them up, you will also find full journal citations, author names, and the address of the lead institution where the research was conducted.
- Pharmacokinetics of anthocyanins and antioxidant effects after the consumption of anthocyanin-rich acai juice and pulp (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) in human healthy volunteers. PubMed ID: 18693743
- Lignans and other constituents of the fruits of Euterpe oleracea (Acai) with antioxidant and cytoprotective activities. PubMed ID: 18656934
- Absorption and biological activity of phytochemical-rich extracts from acai (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) pulp and oil in vitro. PubMed ID: 18442253
- Characterization of the acai or manaca (Euterpe oleracea Mart.): a fruit of the Amazon. [Article in Spanish] PubMed ID: 17824205
- Endothelium-dependent vasodilator effect of Euterpe oleracea Mart. (Acai) extracts in mesenteric vascular bed of the rat. PubMed ID: 17049314
- Total oxidant scavenging capacity of Euterpe oleracea Mart. (acai) seeds and identification of their polyphenolic compounds. PubMed ID: 16756342
- Inhibitory effects of Euterpe oleracea Mart. on nitric oxide production and iNOS expression. PubMed ID: 16635558
- Total oxidant scavenging capacities of Euterpe oleracea Mart. (Acai) fruits. PubMed ID: 16019315
- Phytochemical composition and pigment stability of Acai (Euterpe oleracea Mart.). PubMed ID: 15030208
If you find yourself wondering about an acai berry scam, just take a look at the list above and see whether anything that you read elsewhere has been addressed by scientific research. More than likely, the answer is, no.
The one thing that a scientific review such as this one does not do is evaluate testimonial evidence. Testimonials are not scientific. However, the medical community does recognize them as case studies when they are documented with the right kind of details. Testimonials often entail the power of the human mind, which is not to be discounted by the absence of science. We really don’t have objective statistical protocols for evaluating this kind of evidence.
Dr. Dennis Clark, PhD, retired after 30 years as a professor at Arizona State University. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and owns a retail nutrition store, Doctors Nutrition Center, in Tempe, AZ. His professional research and teaching expertise includes plant biochemistry, integrative medicine, and medical botany. Dr. Clark has co-authored a college-level textbook on plant biology, written popular books on herbal medicine, and published more than three dozen research articles in scientific journals. He invites you to learn more about the views of a research scientist on how to live a long and healthy life naturally, at the HerbScientist’s blog at http://HerbScientist.com. You can get your free copy of his scientific report, “The Five Pillars of Basic Nutrition,” through his blog.
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