Acai Powder versus Acai Berries

Choosing between Acai Powder and Acai Berries is usually only an issue of availability. The acai berry loses quite a lot of its' goodness every minute after it is picked, so the only recommended way to process Acai berries is to freeze-dry them within hours or even minutes of being picked.

Unfortunately, many Acai plantations fail to freeze dry their berries at all, (just freezing the pulp normally or using a low-tech process called "Spray drying") so the first thing that you have to ascertain in your choice of acai berry format is if the berry itself was properly freeze dried or not.

If it was not freeze dried, or then the difference between Acai powders and acai berries is completely negligible... Neither would be likely to retain more than 1% of its' natural amount of nutrients nor antioxidents!

However, if you can confirm that the Acai powder is made from Acai berries that were freeze dried within hours of being picked, then you can expect Antioxidant levels ranging from 30% to 50% of levels in the natural berry pulp state, gram per gram.

This all pertains to the berries' pulp, not to the Seed, which contains the other half of the Antioxidants, and many of the nutrients of the Acai berry. (It is in fact the only part of the berry that contains the Omega 3, 6, & 9 fatty acids!) The seed does not need to be freeze-dried, but is notoriously difficult to chop down small enough in order to be consumed in drink.

Very few companies take the time to use properly freeze-dried Acai powder and then combine it with finely chopped acai seed. -This is clearly the best form of Acai to consume outside of the Amazon basin.

Most brands of retail acai berry juice do not include the seed in their juices, whereas absolutely no powders include the seed at all. Naturally, drinking Acai berry juice with finely chopped seed in the juice is the preferred form of the drink for the most nutritional value. Unfortunately, very few brands of juice include the seed too. If you feel that the nutrients from the Acai seed are more important for your body than the pulp, then you should first try to find one of the juice brands that include it, and only failing that should you attempt to take powdered Acai.  

So in summation, Acai Berry powder is clearly the inferior form of Acai for all possible purposes. In almost all cases you should skip the vitamin aisle at your local health food store and look for juice drinks with the highest amount of Acai in them instead... With the best drinks including the finely chopped Acai seed.