Whenever something is advertised as being "good for us", or "exceptionally healthy" - it really should make you think. What is the basis for such a claim? What research has gone in to ensuring that indeed the ingredients inside the product are actually "healthy"? What even makes a "healthy" product in the first place?
All of these question need to be answered at some point. Therefore, we will take this chance to run you through the nutritional makeup of the Acai Berry - one of the fastest growing and most popular berry supplements on the market today.
In this article, we will look at all the questions above, to see once and for all whether the nutritional content of the Brazilian berry warrants its high price tag.
To get an exact score of what the Acai berry is made up of - we need to study the components of the berry on a microscopic level. This means that we will need to measure the exact amounts of fat, protein, and carbohydrates per 100g of berries.
This requires a lab, and hence we took ourselves to one. After extensive testing and a number of different varieties of Acai tested, we came out with an average set of data. Our results are included below:
Measures per 100g of Acai Berries:
- Calories = 540
- Carbohydrates = 52g
- Protein = 8.1g
- Fat = 33g
On first glance, these statistics are pretty unconvincing. There is very little you could say about the nutritional aspect of an Acai berry supplement just by looking at those figures above. Therefore, to get a better idea of what all the hype is about, we need to look past these base measures.
The first thing you will see when you go in to more depth is that there is a huge amount of fiber in the Acai Berry. In particular, per 100g, there is 44mg of fiber! That's not too bad by anyone's standards. Another interesting feature is that the fat content of the Acai berry is biased mainly towards the healthy fat. That means that there is very little saturated fat, and quite a bit of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. These two fats by themselves lend a hand to the antioxidant power of the berry - which we will discuss further in another article.