When acai juice is concentrated and subsequently reconstituted, much of the nutritional benefit is lost through pasteurization and bottle sterilizing.  Checking with your manufacturer to ensure that the product was cold bottled is one way of knowing that the healthful anthocyanins have not been destroyed by heat during the bottling process. 

Sodium benzoate is sometimes added to hot bottled acai drinks to prolong the shelf life.  However, this creates a problem of its own; it may lead to the formation of carcinogenic benzene.  The manufacturer should be able to guarantee a benzene-free product if they have used a cold bottling technique.

This is one of the cheaper ways to process acai berries to produce an extract.  Unfortunately, spray drying requires that the berries are heated to a very high temperature to remove the water content and, as we have discussed, this destroys the anthocyanins that produce the healthy antioxidants.  After the heating process, the remaining berry product is sprayed with a substance such as maltodextrin. 

Other herbal remedies extract the active, beneficial component out of the ingredient and concentrate it to make a “super” health supplement.  However, the entire acai berry has health benefits.  It just doesn’t make sense to extract any one portion, as the seed, pulp, juice and stem all have something to offer.

The other problem with acai extracts is that most are made of spray dried berry powder.  The label may say “concentrated”, but the extract contains a high concentration of additives.

This is the preferred method of acai berry preparation.  It is not the fastest or cheapest way, but it preserves the integrity of the berry without adding artificial substances. 

Freeze drying requires little heat and no additives.  The acai pulp is dried, frozen and turned into a powder that can be added to drinks, cereal, ice cream and other cold dishes.