Acai, "Purple Gold."

After much exhortation from my mother, I was finally convinced to take a trip to Costco to buy some cactus juice. (It's good for you!) I couldn't find what she was telling me about, so I bought Acai berry juice instead (~$9.50 for two one-liter bottles).

I drank a small glass of it with my dinner. It was bittersweet and had a thick, viscous consistency, almost like a syrup - not like any of that watered-down Apple Dandy stuff that kids drink today. I was pretty buzzed for awhile, and I'm wired on it now! I don't know how I'm going to fall asleep; it's almost 10pm and I feel pretty energetic. I should've had it early in the morning as recommended, as a replacement for coffee/tea.

This stuff is great and claims to have the equivalent of 110 servings of fruit in terms of antioxidant power in one serving. I don't know if it would be great for losing weight, though. In terms of taste, the bottle I got had blueberry juice mixed in, so I couldn't tell what the pure juice tasted like. It might be pretty bad....

It's pretty amazing that the acai berry has gone mainstream, a lowly, once-unknown fruit from the Amazon now blown to stardom by Oprah and spam generators. This once-humble fruit is now available to the general public, Walmart shoppers! According to this NYT article, 53 new acai-containing food products were introduced in the US in 2008, up from 4 in 2004, with over $106 million in sales in 2008.