The berry that helps keep Brazil's bodies beautiful

Christopher Middleton samples acai, known to it's fans as 'Botox in a bottle'

Some people call it the youthberry, others call it Botox in a bottle. Either way, it's important you learn how to pronounce açai (ah-sigh-eee), because it looks like it's going to be big this year. Unlike the people who drink it.

So what exactly is it? Well, the açai is a small, purple, grape-sized fruit that grows on palm trees in the swamps and flood plains of the Amazon, and its juice is said to be what keeps Brazilian bodies beautiful.

It's what the bronzed young beachgoers of Ipanema order at the Bibi juice bar, in Rio de Janeiro, and it's what the people of beachless northern Brazil have traditionally eaten in pulp form, mixed with either flour, yogurt or dried cassava powder.

Claims of its rejuvenating and detoxifying properties come thick and fast: it's packed with cholesterol-lowering Omega 3, 6 and 9, and it's 10 times richer than red wine in anthocyanins, the substances thought to be responsible for France's low rate of heart disease.

Amid some rather frenzied claims from Copacabana-based surfers about how açai improves both your sex life and your surfboard technique, one sober scientific report from the University of Florida reports that, in test-tube experiments, açai triggered a self-destruct mechanism in up to 86 per cent of leukaemia cells.

And a British organisation, Heart Research UK, confirms that the antioxidants in açai "mop up" the unstable molecules known as "free radicals". These chaps, caused by pollutants such as cigarette smoke, can not only be harmful, but speed up the ageing process.

So far so good, but what does this superfruit taste like?

"Eaten on its own, açai is actually rather an acquired taste," says Charlotte Delal, who is Brazilian-born and Bedales-educated. This glamorous young shoe-designer-cum-supermodel is fronting (in microscopic bikini) the marketing push for Sparky, one of three açai juice brands newly-launched in Britain.

She's not wrong about the taste. Drunk on its own, açai has a fruity, blackberry feel, but without the expected full-steam-ahead sweetness. Instead, there is a very-nearly-but-not-quite bitter chocolate aftertaste.

That is the reason why juice companies such as Innocent market açai that has been pepped up with other fruits, such as mango, pomegranate and blueberry.

Helping to make the fruit politically palatable is the fact that, unlike many natural resources removed from the Amazon, its harvesting is environmentally sustainable. In fact, the new-found global demand for açai means that the people of Para province can now make more money out of harvesting the berries than they can out of palm hearts.

The significance of this is that removing the heart of a palm involves cutting the whole tree down, whereas removing the fruit merely requires cutting off a branch, on which giant clusters, or "panicles" of the berries, or "drupes" are growing (up to 900 at a time).

So important is the fruit to Belem, the main port town of Para, that there are now 60 factories processing the berries around the clock (an açai is 90 per cent stone and 10 per cent fruit).

Credit for exporting the berry from rural northern Brazil to the urban south goes to a jiu-jitsu trainer by the name of Carlos Gracie, the great-grandson of Scottish immigrants (from Dumfries), who brought the açai-consuming habit with him when he moved from Belem to set up a training academy in Rio early last century.

Indeed, the walls of many Rio juice bars are lined with signed photos of martial arts and bodybuilding champions, testifying to the contribution made to their training regime by the fruit.

For the past decade or so, açai has been the fashionable beachfront drink in Rio, usually taken with a dash of guarana, another herbal stimulant from the rainforest. Now, the little superberry has made the long journey across the Atlantic.

"I'm sure açai is going to take off in Britain," says Khaled Yafi, whose Berry Company is selling a mixture of açai and raspberry juice in Waitrose and Sainsbury's.

"I think 2007 will be the year that açai berries explode."

WHERE TO FIND IT

The three brands of açai on the market, in descending order of sweetness:

Innocent: natural detox smoothie of açai, pomegranate and blueberry. From Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Tesco: £1.85 for a 250ml bottle, £3.29 for a 1 litre carton.

Sparky Brand: wild açai berry and mango, from Sainsbury's and Tesco; £1.99 for a 330ml bottle, £2.29 for a 1 litre pack.

The Berry Company: açai and raspberry, from Sainsbury's, Tesco, Holland & Barrett, Harvey Nichols; £1.49 for a 330ml bottle, £3.29 for a 1 litre carton.

Soon to launch pack-of-four-100ml daily shots, £1.99.

FRUIT TO THE RESCUE

There are many unsung berries out there, just waiting to do us good: DGoji: small, bright reddy-orange colour, dubbed the "cellulite assassin". Ultra-high in vitamin C.

Cloudberry: amber-coloured, autumn-flowering, found in boggy parts of the northern hemisphere; used by Nordic seafarers to prevent scurvy.

Acerola or Barbados cherry: distinctive three-lobed shape, with a slight hint of apple. Nearly-but-not-quite sweet. Also high in vitamin C.

Camu camu: light-orange colour, found in the Amazon, same size as a lemon and said to have the highest vitamin C content on the planet.

Lingonberry: small, red, tart-tasting; close relative of another berry "outsider", the partridgeberry.Superfruit: açai berries are harvested from Amazonian palm trees