The Legend behind the Acai Berry

If you haven't heard about acai berries by now, you must have been living under a rock. Acai berries have been getting a lot of attention lately, especially since they were mentioned on Oprah and on Rachael Ray's TV show. The berry has been around for a long time and represents nothing new, but it is being popularized thanks to its amazing health benefits, which have been presented on extremely well-known TV shows.

Acai is actually a tree which grows in the northern part of Brazil, specifically in the Amazon rainforest (the trees are not harmed in the making of the acai berry products you buy). The berry is called "içá-çai” by the local tribes in Brazil. This translates into "the fruit which cries". The reason it is called that is because of an old legend. It is told that, once, there was a girl named Iaca, who was the daughter of a tribal chief. This tribe lived in the rainforest and lived off of the land. The tribe grew in size, they’ve started to have food shortages and were slowly going to starve to death if something did not happen. They needed more food or less people. The Chief, Iaca's father, ordered that all newborn babies were to be killed in order to cut down the food intake, so that the majority could live.

The problem was that his daughter had a baby right as he ordered that all newborns were to be killed. He could not go against his own rules, and that meant that the baby of his own daughter had to be killed along with the rest of the newborns. Iaca was so saddened by this that she stayed in her tent alone for days, mourning the death of her baby.

As she was in her tent, she thought she heard a baby crying. She went outside, hoping that she would find the baby but she did not find it. Instead, she found a tree loaded with fruit. She was so saddened and angry that the tribe did not find this fruit before killing the babies that she laid down and died right there in front of the tree. The fruit could have sustained the tribe and it could have fed everyone, the babies included.

The next day, some of the people found Iaca's body and the fruit tree. The tribe ate the fruit and gained much needed strength and energy. They were no longer going to starve to death or be hungry. The chief then proceeded to lift the law about killing all newborn babies because they now had plenty of food. The chief, in memory of his daughter, named the newly discovered fruit tree Acai, which is the name of his daughter spelled backwards.

With this new food source, the tribe managed to grow and flourish. The acai berry is still a very popular fruit in Brazil today. It is sometimes eaten for breakfast and can be found in all sorts of foods. Its health benefits were not discovered until the 1950's, and just recently, this fruit started to receive the attention it deserves. That is why more and more people are eating it today. With health benefits such as preventing diseases and even preventing lack of energy, it’s more than clear why people are starting to fall in love with it.