Many scientists are now using the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay to determine the antioxidant capacity.  When we look at the all-time high scores of foods with this method, we again find blueberry at the top of the list with a score of 82 micromoles Trolox equivalent per gram.

As shown in the chart below, açaí has a FRAP score (249) over three times that the previous highest-scoring food, the blueberry.

In every testing method, at every indepentant lab and in testing for the scavenging power against every known type of free radical, the açaí berry comes out the highest, by a wide margin, of any known food.

There is a lot of misrepresentation of antioxidant capacities in product marketing and throughout the Internet.

Many use non-standard measurement units to express an ORAC score.  When pushed for the source of their touted numbers, we find that some express it in total units in an entire bottle of product that July last a person weeks, as opposed to a gram to gram as science and common sense would dictate.  There are many ways we have seen marketers creatively tout high ORAC values with blatant manipulations like this.

Every scientific test to date has shown the açaí berry to be the superfood of superfoods.  This is not only true of its profound antioxidant properties, but, as is detailed on the New Super-Açaí DVD/CD-ROM Package and highlighted more in this article, it's superior properties extend far beyond that of its antioxidant abilities.

Before continuing, it is also important to note that all of these tests were on freeze dried açaí.  This is important to note, especially as an end consumer, when evaluating a food or juice product.

The açaí berry is a very volatile fruit in that when it is picked from the 50-75 foot tall açaí palms (Euterpe Oleracea), it degrades extremely rapidly.  This is why we hardly heard of açaí, outside of that region of Brazil, until about 2004.  It was not feasible to bring açaí out of its native environment because there were inadequate refrigeration, processing and transportation infrastructures in place to export it.

One researcher had açaí picked, transported from the rainforest to an airport, as quickly as possible.  It was then transported by chartered jet to Miami, refueled and flown direct to an east coast lab.  The samples had lost nearly all of their nutritional value during even that expedited transport.

The only option is to use one of several drying processes as close to the harvest source as possible to even begin to have a promising end product outside of that region of Brazil's rain forest.

Each of these methods has been scientifically tested to see how well the antioxidant properties of the açaí berry were preserved.