Healthcare, Health Insurance, Vitamins, Nutrition

Most people like to eat their fruits fresh but it may not be an option when it comes to acai berries. While most fruits last days or even weeks, acai berries only last a very short while. The acai berry deteriorates fast after picking than any other fruit on record. In fact, acai juice can only last up to 24 hours in a refrigerator before it’s many nutrients start to dwindle.

Since acai berries do not last long at all, it is hard to transport them anywhere far. That means, something needs to be done to the acai berries before they can be transported to be sold elsewhere other than near the rain forest regions in Brazil or wherever else the acai palm trees grow.

There are many challenges that manufacturers face when trying to preserve and process acai berries. The cost can be high and any slight drop in quality control could mean the whole batch of acai berries will be worthless. Once acai berries are picked by the locals, they are quickly transported to be processed to avoid any risks of microbial contamination.

Not only do manufacturers need to consider how to preserve acai berries so that they will not become rotten during shipment, they also need to think of ways that will preserve the nutrients in the berries as much as possible. Many of the processes done to the berries destroy the nutrients in them. If this is allowed to happen, then there is no good reason for anyone to reach out to buy any acai berry products and pay a lot of money for them. All to often this is the case.

At first glance, freezing acai berries seem like a natural choice, just like freezing other fruits. However, the acai berry is different from most other fruits and a slight drop of temperature during the shipping or storage process can totally make the frozen acai berries incomsumable by the time they arrive at their wholesale destinations, such as in the United States. This makes freezing the acai berry and shipping it costly and also risky.

Some companies have developed powder-based acai capsules and tablets, therefore making the acai berries’ nutrients last longer. However, there are concerns that the nutritional content of these derivative acai berry products may not contain many nutrients at all. The quality of the products is likely to be very low. Taking acai pills and tablets cannot compare to eating fresh acai berries or drinking most of the acai berry juices around.

There are more complicated ways to preserve and process the acai berries such as the freeze drying process that is supposed to be the best. The freeze drying process is done in a vacuum which is beneficial for limiting the activity of enzymes that would otherwise make the acai berries go bad quickly.

The moral of this story is that while acai berries have lots of nutrients in them, the acai berry products that you find may not contain many nutrients at all. You have to pay attention to how the acai berry is processed in order to find out if a product is really good for you. If the product is not nutritious, then there is obviously no point paying a premium price for it.