Acai ("The New Fruit in the Blender")

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

http://www.amazon.com.br/camta/acaiRio.htm
http://www.amazonacai.com/faq.shtml

   "Acai" is not in WEBSTER'S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OF CULINARY ARTS (2001),
which has 25,000 terms.
   This is from today's WALL STREET JOURNAL, 18 April 2003, pg. W10, col. 4:

_The New Fruit_
_In the Blender_
(...)  Wheatgrass, protein shakes--so 2002.  At juice bars and health stores
around the country, the hip new taste is acai, (pronounced ah-sigh-EE) a
grape-size, deep-purple berry that grows atop palm trees in the Brazilian
jungle.  In the two years since it hit the U.S., sales have jumped five-fold
to $2.5 million, says Ryan Black, founder of Sambazon, the fruit's main U.S.
importer, while at Juice It Up, a California chain, acai drinks and dishes
account for 10% of sales.  (...)
   Fans say the fruit (which comes to the U.S. as frozen pulp) not only
tastes good, but also is good for you--packed with anthocyanins, the same
antioxidants that give red wine its health benefits.  And, in a hat trick of
health-bar chic, it's good for the Amazon, too, because it's collected by
local families who can earn as much as $1,000 during the December-to-August
harvest season (twice as much as they can usually make). (....)
   Of course, the fruit is just the latest exotic newcomer looking for a
place in U.S. produce aisles--remember the starfruit?  And the acai's
new-found cachet would probably take a lot of Brazilians by surprise: There,
acai, whose taste has been likened to blueberry with a hint of chocolate,
typically is eaten as puddinglike mush over bananas for breakfast.


(ADS-ers Kathleen Miller and Dennis Preston have been to Brazil.  Any verdict
on acai?...I'm supposed to remember starfruit?--ed.)