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Losing Weight, Supplements

Acai Berries – The Cheap Weight Gainer

For quite a while questions about acai berries, the supposed weight loss aid, ran rampant and only lately this flood died down a good bit. But nonetheless you still find numerous offers for seemingly free trials of this little fruit, that supposedly helps you lose weight and lets you stay young into your 90s.

First Problems In 2009

The first problems with acai products already became evident in January of 2009, when the Better Business Bureau issued a warning to consumers about the above mentioned “free” trials, saying they often turn out into you unkowningly signing up for costly monthly shipments of acai juices or supplements.

Later that same year, popular talk show host Oprah Winfrey and her on-air doctor Mehmet Oz sued 50 Internet retailers for using their names and pictures to advertise acai berries and related products. This was followed by the FTC getting a court order against several acai-selling companies, stopping them from using deceptive advertisements and unfair billing practices.

From The Jungle To The Internet

Times look dire for the little berries, but it gets worse when we look – quite literally – at where they are coming from.

Man extracting juice from acai berries

Acai juice extraction in Brazil

In its natural South American home the acai palm grows wild along the Amazon river and its energy-dense berries can be picked for free, which already a long time ago made them a staple in the diets of the poor. This high calorie content ultimately also was what brought them from the rain forest into the urbanized world, when it was discovered by Brazilian bodybuilders. One of them told National Public Radio:

I eat a lot of acai after lifting weights because it’s got a lot of calories and because I like the flavor.

Miraculous Marketing

How this turned into “eat acai berries to lose weight” is hard to fathom. We can only guess that clever marketing of something exotic and novel could have led the people the FTC estimates were shilled out of $30 million to buy into it. That the last year so rightfully enraged Mrs. Winfrey four years earlier advertised the berry as a “super-fruit” herself of course didn’t help either.

Picture courtesy of Decio Horita Yokota.

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Latest Comments

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10 Comments

  1. Moon says:
    October 21, 2010 at 5:52 pm

    I think evil just runs around starting fights now…

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      October 21, 2010 at 6:01 pm

      With Oprah? I’d lose! 🙂

      Reply
      • Moon says:
        October 21, 2010 at 6:38 pm

        Yea, her chest dwarfs your’s 😀

        Reply
    • Owen says:
      October 24, 2010 at 4:56 pm

      LOL you are right Moon.

      Reply
  2. Myschly says:
    October 21, 2010 at 6:37 pm

    Well what’s Oprah going to say? Pull the Tea-party “The liberal media is being cruel to me”-card for when people air clips of them speaking in context?

    If you endorse a product for something it doesn’t do, it’s your own fault. If Scooby had made a video saying “The Acai-berry, food for fat-loss” in his early days on youtube, why wouldn’t it be fair game to criticize him for that?

    But Scooby didn’t do that, because Scooby doesn’t buy into stupid gimmicks and endorse them to unknowing viewers, which Oprah did. This doesn’t make it OK to use her photo in an ad, but it makes it OK for us to be very skeptic about her endorsements, as they’re not based in science.

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      October 23, 2010 at 3:05 am

      Remember what I said a while ago about giving celebrities credit in fields they have no idea about? 😉

      Reply
  3. Canadianguy says:
    October 22, 2010 at 1:27 am

    I prefer the Blueberry as the super fruit. 🙂

    Never did care for the Acai taste

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      October 23, 2010 at 3:06 am

      My personal super-fruit would be the banana 🙂

      Reply
  4. Derek says:
    October 26, 2010 at 2:49 pm

    Anyone remember goji berries 😀 Same deal with acai, and it goes round and round.

    Evil we should partner up and scour the globe for another berry plant and do fake testing and research then sell it off to people marketed as the ultimate super berry. We’d be millionaires before they find out and get a law suit against us 😀

    Reply
    • evilcyber says:
      October 27, 2010 at 8:45 pm

      And we’d do a better job about making it look scientific! 🙂

      But then again we seem to have too much conscience to trick people that badly 😉

      Reply

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