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Modern conflict, ancient lore: Swetha Sivakumar traces the tale of acai
The ‘superfood’ still grows largely in the Amazon rainforest. Highly perishable, it has gained a massive carbon footprint. What’s your role in it all?
Long ago, during a great famine in the Amazon rainforest, a tribal chief named Itaqui made a heart-breaking decision: no more children could be raised within the village until food became plentiful again.
When his daughter Iacá gave birth, her child was taken away like all the others. Grieving, Iaca prayed to the forest spirits for a miracle. One night, she heard a baby crying and followed the sound. Beneath a tall palm, she thought she saw her child smiling. Iaca died peacefully, beneath the tree.
The next morning, the tribe found her body under a palm that bore dark, rich berries. These berries became a new, abundant food source. In her memory, the legend goes, the tree was named acai (Iaca spelled in reverse).
Acai (pronounced ah-sigh-EE), has long been a staple among indigenous communities along the Amazon River. Though it is commonly referred to as a berry, it is technically a drupe.
Let’s pause a bit here because this is interesting. Drupes (such as cherries, peaches and olives) holds their seeds within single hard pit or stone, because they are meant to be swallowed by mammals and dispersed in excreta. The stone protects the seeds through the digestion process. This is very different from berries, which are soft fruit with seeds embedded in them, designed to fall from a plant, burst open and sprout a new plant nearby.
Back to the acai, it grows almost exclusively in the narrow floodplains of the Amazon, particularly in northern Brazil, where the land is regularly replenished by the seasonal flooding of the river. For centuries, people here have eaten acai pulp with fish and cassava, or fermented the pulp to make alcoholic beverages.
In the 1970s, as the flow of indigenous people to urban centres grew, they took their acai traditions with them. Roadside stands began to sell the fruit. By the 1980s and ’90s, its popularity had spread as far as Rio de Janeiro and Ubatuba.
There, athletes embraced it for its sustaining energy and nutrient density. Still, few had even heard of it outside Brazil. Then scientific studies revealed that acai had one of the highest antioxidant levels of any fruit. The media quickly labelled it a “superfood”, and interest in it exploded.
By 2008, acai juice had become the third most popular fruit juice in US grocery and health-food stores, by some accounts, trailing only orange and pomegranate.
It is certainly a nutritionally unusual fruit. It is high in healthy fats, high in fibre, and low in sugar (less than 2%). It also contains a modest amount of protein. It has an unusually high a 1:3 ratio of soluble to insoluble fibre. A fistful provides nearly 20% of one’s daily recommended fibre intake.
Sadly, acai is delicate and highly perishable, which means that its popularity has given it a massive carbon footprint.
The thin layer of pulp surrounding that seed must be processed within two days of harvesting, or it begins to ferment. Traditionally, the berries are soaked in warm water to soften them, then pulped, with added water, to produce a thick, viscous juice.
To meet international demand, companies now freeze the pulp immediately after processing and ship it in refrigerated containers via sea or air. The pulp is what turns up in smoothie bowls. Other forms include juice or concentrate, but these contain far less fibre. Freeze-dried powders are also available, to be added to smoothies or snacks; and acai oil is now being used in gourmet ingredients and even cosmetics.
Harvesting acai remains a labour-intensive process. Indigenous communities continue to climb the 80-ft-tall palm trees to pick the fruit by hand. This is considered the best method among food companies too, given how fragile the fruit is, and the fact that only an experienced human picker can tell which ones are ripe.
There have been reports of labour malpractice and the use of child labour. Even so, many food companies argue that responsible acai production could help both the rainforest and the communities that live within it. Acai grows naturally in flooded forests and doesn’t call for deforestation or large-scale monoculture farming. If local families can earn a stable income from sustainable harvesting, they are less likely to seek employment in logging or ranching operations, thus protecting their forest and their own now-endangered way of life.
Given how hard it is to monitor what goes on in the Amazon — even satellites cannot peer beyond the thick canopy — it is difficult to tell what impact the global boom in demand for acai is having.
For now, the one thing that is certain is that yields are rising dramatically. The Brazilian state of Para, which produces over 90% of the nation’s acai, exported 39 tonnes of the fruit in 2012. By 2022, that figure had risen to over 8,158 tonnes.
I prefer not to adopt fads that involve such a high carbon footprint, but if you are among those now looking to benefit from the advantages of eating acai, do try to choose a brand that at least claims to support fair trade and the forest’s indigenous communities.
Or just add some amla, moringa and coconut to your diet. We have our own superfoods right here in our backyards.
(To reach Swetha Sivakumar with questions or feedback, email upgrademyfood@gmail.com)
