Hotelympia
19-23 Feb 2006
Açai (pronounced,
if you want to sound in the know, as Ah-sigh-ee) is the Brazilian wonder
berry that contains miraculously high levels of iron and some important
anti-oxidants and has health giving properties such as the ability to help
lower one’s bad cholesterol and helps alleviate common types of anaemia
The juices on offer are full
of exotic Amazon flavours and rare South American ingredients such as guarana,
a rain forest ingredient that gives one a light alert feeling, without
the ‘drop’ that coffee has. Other juices are made from the Acerola cherry
or the cashew (or CAJU): not the nut that we know of but the fleshy part
which surrounds the fruit and which is rich in vitamin C.
The people who have bought
all these delicious health treats to the UK are Gaya Foods. They are
a family company who develop new natural products, concepts and flavours
made from healthy ingredients which are grown in Brazil, in particular
the Amazon Forest. In Brazil, Gaya Foods encourages local farmers to
turn their areas in sustainable plantations producing high quality food.
And just to remind you that Gaya Foods is an Anglo-Brazilian company.
Gaya Foods’s mission is
to introduce their sizzling health giving juices to the UK. Says Family
member Gabriel Achê Gaya, “We want to spread awareness amongst retailers
that there is a novel, flavoursome and nutritionally rich range of health
foods from Brazil now available in U.K”. They are an easy and delicious
way to living healthily”.
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Brazilian
Juicebar
Thursday, May 6, 2004 - METRO
Brazil has more than 100
tropical Amazon fruits and they all have health benefits. Juices tend to
be blended from frozen pulps adding ground guarana, sugar, crushed ice
or alcohol as the palate or the situation requires. For dire emergencies
try the capeta (meaning devil). A favourite with long-haul truck drivers,
it is 100g of frozen fruit pulp (your choice) to 350ml water, 3 tsp caster
sugar, mescado, guarana and 500ml of cachaca rum
Guarana
Small, red fruit with a
strong caffeine kick. The people of the Amazon region chew the seeds as
a source of energy or drink the powder dissolved in water.
Cupuaçu
A cousin of the cocoa bean
with a chocolatey tang. Surprisingly sour, it's drunk in large quantities
in the North of Brazil. The fruit increases physical efficiency and acts
against anaemia.
Acerola
Looks like a cranberry,
tastes like a papaya. It's known as the Barbados cherry and has over 100
times the vitamin C of an orange. In the Amazon, they eat it sour with
tapioca for energy; in Brazil (and Momos), they sweeten with crushed ice
and honey.
Cashew
We take the nut from the
stalk and bin the husk but the fruit can be blended for a delicious health-giving
juice. Tastes slighly bitter on it own but add distilled sugar and crushed
ice and you're in business.
The Juice bar will be
serving Brazilian cocktails and juices on the lower ground floor of Selfridges
throughout May. Acai frozen fruit pulps are available through Gaya Foods.
Tel: 020 7383 0866, www.gayafoods.co.uk
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Main Squeeze
in Brazil
Saturday, September 20, 2003
- THE TIMES
What's purple, gloopy and
coming to a juice bar near you? Alex Bellos toasts an amazing Amazonian
potion
Wheatgrass, pomegranate juice?
That's so last season. The latest fitness fad in the United States is a
purple fruit that originates from the Amazon and that users claim is one
of the most nutritious and versatile foods in the world.
Açaí - pronounced
AH-SAH-YEE - has boomed in the past four years, going from zero to a $2
million business and attracting celebrity fans such as Gisele Bundchen,
Andre Agassi and Sting. Described by the US Health Sciences Institute as
"nature's perfect food", açaí is the fruit of and Amazonian
palm tree with the nutritional content that makes other fruits blush with
inadequacy.
Served in juice bars as a
slush puppie, usually mixed with bananas and guarana extract, açaí
has a unusual tropical taste - a little like blueberries mixed with chocolate.
But it is its effects on health, not just tastebuds, that has been creating
the biggest buzz.
Açaí's biggest
selling point is that it contains a remarkable concentration of antrocyanin,
the antioxidants in red wine believed to lower chances of heart desease,
although swig per swig, açaí contains between ten and thirty
time more. The purple fruit also contains the good-for-you fatty acids
present in olive oil, hight level of vitamins A and C, fibre, iron and
calcium. What doesn't it have? Just the bad things - zero cholesterol and
only 4 per cent fat.
You can't miss açaí
in Rio de Janeiro. All juice bars that lline the blocks near Ipanema and
Copacabana do a roaring trade. In fact, açaí is more of a
lifestyle option than a foodstuff. It is the magic potion that fuelled
the hedonistic energy of Brazilian beach culture.
The way it looks is integral
to its appeal: a dark violet, a deep, dense colour that seems weighed down
by its prodigousness. Its thick gloopiness means you slurp it up with a
spoon. Ofent served in a ceramic bowl - as if to emphasise its superiority
gravitas. It is a whole meal, not just a thirst-quenching snack.
Five years ago two friends
from California went to Brazil on a surfing holiday and they sampled açaí
for the first time. "The fruit is amazing. The taste, the texture and -
more than anything - the way it makes you feel," says Ryan Black. "We were
hooked on it from day one." Black founded Sambazon to export frozen açaí
pulp to the US. The company is the fruit's main exporter, serving 2,000
retail outlets in the US, including gyms, health food stores and juice
bars and also selling to Italy and Australia. It has recently hit London
at a specialist Brazilian food store.
Research has shown that the
antioxidants present in açaí are uniquely powerful - 50 times
greater than mangoes, more than five times greater than in blueberries
and almost twice as much as pomegranates.
Antioxidants can prevent
blood clots, improve circulation and, some scientists believe, can work
as an antiviral or help to prevent cancer. A reesearch group at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro that specialises in the pharmacheutical analysis
of Amazonian palm trees discovered that açaí may be useful
in treating prostate problems and works as a remedy for several diseases.
The fruit's priapic powers
are already legendary. A friend of mine apparentle unable to impregnate
his wife was told by his doctor to drink açaí. He didi, and
nine months later their child was born.
Fifteen years ago açaí
was a secret known only in the Amazon estuary area, where for generations
it had been a staple of the local population. Açaí is served
unsweetened, thickned with manioc powder, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In Belém, the colonial port at the mouth of the Amazon, about 200,000
litres are drunk every day - more than milk.
On the floodplains of the
estuary, açaí palms regerate with ease and the is thought
to cover a area half the size of Switzerland. The fruit is the shape of
a small berry and is all stone apart from a thin dark purple skin, which
is pulped to form a juice known locally as açaí wine. Farming
in unmechanised and açaí pickers scamper up the palms to
cut off branches with machetes.
Since açaí
perishes with 24 hours, the fruit was originally limited to the Amazon.
With the advent of freeze-packing and modern transport links, however,
frozen açaí pulp started to appear in Rio's speciality food
shops.
Carlos Gracie, the great-grandson
of scottish immigrants from Dumfries, helped açaí to become
a health fad in Rio, where he ran the country's first jujitse academy.
He remembered the fruit from his childhood, incorporated it into his diet
and encouraged his sportsmen to eat it, too. Carlos sired 21 children and
many sons and grandsons went on to become jujitse champions. In the 1970s
the surfing community slowly became hooked on açaí, too.
By the early 1990s it was widely available and is now much part of Brazilian
beach culture as football ad dental floss bikinis.
The influence of the Gracie
clan around the world has helped to give açaí credibility
among the international sports set. Reigning jujitse world heavyweight
champion Roger Gracie swears by it. "It's healthy because its natural,
there are no chemicals in it," he says. Roger prepares his açaí
at home in Rio and mixes it with banana and muesli. If the health benefits
aren't enough to tempt you - açaí is also good for you conscience.
Growth in demand for açaí has been changing the nature of
agriculture in the miserably poor Amazon estuary.
Agronomists have successfuly
developed ways of cultivating açaí sustainably. Production
has boomed and is bringing riches to poor areas.
In the past five years, according
to Francisco de Jesus of the Amazon Bank, açaí production
has almost tripled. Belém, the local city, has more than 60 pulping
and freezing factories. "In my opinion, açaí is the most
promising product we have here for development," he says.
Ryan Black of Sambazon says:
"When we found out that sustainably-managed açaí was a perfect
model of the Triple Bottom Line success [economic, enrionmental, social],
that all the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] are trying to prove
then we decided this message needed to be shared with the world."
Açaí is
available at Sabor & Cor, 27 Grosvenor Gardens, London, SW1. call 020-7233
9686
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