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The source of the acai berry is a plant called Euterpe oleracea, which is a type of palm tree native to South and Central America.

Acai scams have populated the Internet, and in the rush to promote and sell the amazing fruit some scammers found themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit from Oprah Winfrey (who featured the acai berry on her TV programme). Please take note that there are some scams still in operation, but the main topic of this short essay is not about these scams per se.  It is about the evidence (or lack thereof) that acai berries contain antioxidants that are good for our health.

Since it was discovered that acai berries contain antioxidants, the hype surrounding this fruit has escalated quite dramatically. So why is this? As the name suggests, antioxidants stop oxidants. Oxidants are simply chemicals that take part in oxidation reactions in our cells. Oxidation reactions are in fact crucial for life.  For example the oxidation of glucose is an essential part of our energy metabolism. But, there are some oxidation reactions that are random and these give rise to damage in the cell. These random oxidation reactions can result in molecular damage giving rise to faulty proteins and DNA mutations, which in turn can lead to diseases such as cancer. Reactive molecules known as free radicals often bring about the haphazard oxidation reactions. Free radicals are generated by normal metabolism, exposure to sunlight and pollutants such as cigarette smoke.

Antioxidants neutralize harmful free radicals and oxidants; this can stop any damaging reactions from occurring, and so provide protection in the cell. Some of the more complex antioxidants are made by the body, but the building blocks for making them ultimately come from the diet. Other antioxidants that the body does not produce for itself also come from the diet.

The molecular structure of an antioxidant determines how good it is at counteracting oxidants and free radicals. To evaluate how efficient an antioxidant is, the ORAC test was developed by scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture. ORAC is an acronym for oxygen radical absorbance capacity. High ORAC values mean that the antioxidant is efficient at scavenging free radicals and oxidants.  ORAC scores are generated by a scientific method, and as I am a scientist myself, I took note when I learnt that the ORAC value of acai berries was very high.

So in spite of the hype, it seems that there is some real evidence showing that acai is a “powerful” antioxidant. There is one important fact to remember about ORAC scores: they are based on experiments done in the test tube, not in living systems.

The ORAC score is one thing, but what about other data?  Is all that hype about acai berries having amazing antioxidant powers based solely on one test-tube experiment? And how exactly, does the scientific data measure up to the hype?

Let us begin to try and answer these questions by firstly looking for all the articles about acai and antioxidants in the scientific literature. PubMed is an online database specialising in this area, so we will look there.

The search was set to find articles published in the last 10-year period.
The term acai gave 52 articles, the term antioxidant(s) gave 138 687 articles and the term acai AND antioxidant(s) gave 26 articles.

In case you are interested, there are in total 6.7 million entries in PubMed for the last 10 years.

It is not easy to measure the hype about acai. One way however, is to simply perform a Google search and count the number of web pages we get. There are many assumptions in doing it this way, and there are bound to be better methods. But to keep things simple I went with a basic search,

The term acai gave 24 200 000 web pages, the term antioxidant(s) gave 13 800 000 web pages and the term acai + antioxidant(s) gave 4 720 000 web pages.

A quick calculation tells us that the ratio of web pages to scientific papers about acai and antioxidants is 180 000 to 1.  That ratio on its own is not too useful. It could be that the web pages to scientific papers ratio for all topics is an even 180 000. We need to do the analysis for something else. Ideally it would be a similar topic, so I chose the word vitamin in place of acai.

Results from PubMed database:

The term vitamin gave 87 000 articles and the term vitamin AND antioxidant(s) gave 23 000 articles.

Results from Google:

The term vitamin gave 96 000 000 web pages and the term vitamin AND antioxidant(s) gave 6 100 000 web pages.

Here we can work out that the ratio of web pages to scientific papers for vitamins and antioxidants is much smaller than 180 000, its only 256.

What these numbers tell us is that, acai and antioxidants have about 700 times more web pages per scientific paper than vitamins and antioxidants. Despite the fact that there are without doubt some flaws and a fair bit of error in the calculations, 700 times more seems like a very big number. Are there any good reasons for this? Perhaps magical fruit from Amazonia is just more appealing than boring old vitamins?

To summarise, a large amount of data is published linking the antioxidant properties of vitamins to human health, but there are relatively few web pages making that same link. On the other hand a tiny amount of data exists linking the antioxidant activity of acai berries to human health, yet a huge number of web pages are making that exact link.

The acai berry does have a high ORAC score, but this does not tell us very much. Do the antioxidants of acai berries actually work in the human body? Only time, and strong scientific research will tell.

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