Acai fruit is truly a remarkable nutrient that offers a ton of healthy benefits that will prove to kick your training up a notch. What’s so special about it? Well for starters, it’s got one of the most powerful antioxidants known to man and that is anthocyanin.
We’ll get into that a little bit later but first how the heck was Acai fruit even discovered?
History & Origin
Well it all started in the Brazilian Amazon many, many years ago. According to legend, and this is when it gets DARK!, a Native Chief named Itaqui ordered all newborn babies be put to death because of the immense famine that was going on at the time. When the Chief’s daughter gave birth to a child, the child ended up being sacrificed. Because of the grotesque nature of the act, the poor girl was traumatized, she ended up running to a tree to cry profusely and she died shortly after. But the thing was, shortly after her death, the tree she died next to start to sprout fruit and somehow fed the entire tribe! And then on, it was called Acai which is the daughter’s name (Iaca) spelled backwards.
History is cool guys! (and also disgusting)
To this day, this fruit is mostly seen growing in parts of Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and parts of Colombia.
Benefits
1. Nutrient Dense
For just a fruit, Acai has a pretty unique nutritional profile. In fact, this might surprise you but it’s got a decent serving of healthy fats. About 5 g per 100g of frozen acai fruit.
It’s also got pretty high Vitamin A content and contains some super beneficial including chromium, zinc, copper, manganese and so much more. It was because of this high nutritional content that it was labelled as a weight loss product for so many years. It does do that but where so many people get it wrong, as is the case with most dietary supplements or “fad” diets, they expect immediate results when their lifestyle does not fit their expectations. What happens then? They start saying that Acai is useless. We need to abolish Acai fruit! Hateful marketing! (1) (2)
But that’s just not true. Are some of the claims in Acai fruit advertising complete bunk & don’t hold up any weight? Yes absolutely. But for the most part, Acai is safe to use, healthy and gives you more bang with each buck.
Check out some of its nutrient facts:
Calories: 70
Fat: 5 grams
Saturated fat: 1.5 grams
Carbs: 4 grams
Sugar: 2 grams
Fiber 2 grams
Vitamin A: 15% of the RDI
Calcium: 2% of the RDI
2. Antioxidant Powerhouse!
As mentioned before, Acai fruit has this very powerful antioxidant called Anthocyanin.
Coincidentally, it’s the same ingredient that’s found in Red Wine that many scientists claim to be the reason why it helps people to add years to their life. But why are antioxidants so important? Because they help to neutralize & destroy the free radicals that plague our body. Free radicals are usually caused by high intensity exercise, like the ones you do in CrossFit, and they are some of the main contributors to lactic acid build up and inflammation. Inflammation is very dangerous because that’s when your muscles experience immense pain and soreness, and in doing so, just obliterating your energy levels. Gross! Worse yet, if the free radicals are not neutralized effectively and quickly, it can lead to other more dangerous diseases like cancer & heart disease. (3) (4)
The reason why Acai fruit is so unique is because it has a surprisingly high amount of that antioxidant content. In many studies, scientists often use the ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) and they use this score to determine the quality of certain foods’ antioxidant content. Well, Acai Fruit has an ORAC score of 15, 405. Just to compare, blueberries, another superfruit has a score of 4,669. Acai has almost 4x as much effective antioxidants than blueberries. (5)
Acai has also plenty of evidence to back it up. During a 6-week study period, seven athletes supplementing with Acai had been shown to increase antioxidant content in their blood & experienced a reduction in muscle damage caused by high intensity exercises. This all comes from the Journal of The Biology of Sport from a study published by Ms. Krapowska in 2015. (6)
3. Acai Improves Cholesterol Levels
Another great thing about Acai is that it contains a lot of plant sterols, and that becomes so important because they’re so vital to your health especially in keeping healthy cholesterol levels. Why? Because they prevent low density lipids (LDL) from being absorbed into your body. And we can all agree that with more “bad” cholesterol in your body, the less likely you’ll be able to perform as effectively in your workouts. However, because of the high amount of plant sterols in Acai it helps to improve the good kind of cholesterol, high density lipids or HDL for short. And this proven through research as well. A 2011 study had 10 overweight adults eat acai smoothies twice daily for one month. Overall, they had lower total and "bad" LDL cholesterol at the end of the study. You can learn more about the study right here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21569436/
4. Acai Helps To Boost Brain Function
As mentioned previously, Acai has plenty of antioxidants that works on your brain just as much as is in your body. Why? Because it helps to counteract the damaging effects of inflammation & oxidation in brain cells and increases autophagy. Autophagy is one of the ways the brain stays healthy by cleaning up cells that are toxic. It makes for new nerves to form, helping to improve communication between cells in the brain. (10) (11)
Looking at all these benefits of Acai, it’s no wonder why we use it in our supplement, SUNFIRE.
It’s the 1st ever, all-natural & Paleo-friendly pre-workout made exclusively for those just starting out in CrossFit & those who want to take their workouts to the next level.
And for a limited time only, you can take up to 30% off SUNFIRE when you order today & also get over $100 in sweet bonuses!
Visit our website and order now: https://apollosupps.com
Sean James is a passionate and driven young CrossFitter from Toronto, Ontario.
He created Apollo Essentials with a guiding vision.
That anyone from anywhere could become an athlete. That's what his company strongly believes and he'll do whatever it takes to see it through.
Throughout his life, he's always enjoyed fitness and nutrition. You could even say it saved his life. With him being over 200 pounds in the 12th grade. But he took a long look at himself and became a dedicated fitness enthusiast. Who knows where he'll go?
After many, many months of research, he decided to hop into the supplement industry and started to create his own supplement, SUNFIRE.
The 1st, all-natural & Paleo-friendly pre-workout made exclusively for CrossFit beginners & driven athletes.
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