Look, I'm as big a fan of smoothies as the next person. But there is one trendy ingredient that throws me off my game every time: Açai. You'll find it in every single smoothie bowl, and honestly I don't know what to say. Is it Ah-kai? Ah-sigh? Some other thing? You'd think I'd have looked it up by now, since açai is all over the dang place, but ... no.
I had long defaulted to the ah-sigh pronunciation, until about a year ago, when I ordered something involving the fruit at a juice bar and was promptly corrected by the barista. So now I know: Acai is pronounced ah-sigh-ee.
Watch this YouTube tutorial if you still need to hear it to believe it:
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So how did açai's meteoric rise to smoothie bowl fame start? The New Yorker attributes its popularity to the California juice company Sambazon, which began importing the pseudo-berry in the early 2000s from Brazil (it's been a fixture in the diets of river tribes there since forever).
Sambazon's founders discovered that the pit fruit (not an actual berry) packs a remarkable nutritional punch: omega-6 and -9 fats, vitamin E, fiber, and notably, the antioxidant anthocyanins, which may help ward off cardiovascular problems and even cancer.
It really took off in the U.S. after that, and soon açai was being billed as a weight loss and anti-aging miracle, thanks to its antioxidants. It was even marketed as a scam weight-loss supplement at one point, according to NBC.
Of course, as with everything that sounds too good to be true, some of those claims have been scaled back—and some of the health benefits you're getting from açai may be outweighed by the busload of sugar added to many purées to counterbalance the fruit's natural, earthy flavor.
Still...it tastes pretty damn good in a smoothie bowl.
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