Follows is an indepth article on the acai berry, you will find this full of useful information and see how the acai berry got the super food tag.

Enjoy….

The acai berry (ah-sigh-ee) grows in the Amazon Rainforest on acai palm trees and looks like a purple marble or purple grape. The Acaí berry (fruit) is 90% seed pit and 10% acaí pulp and must be carefully handled before it can be consumed. During the process the acaí berries with water are put into a machine and are agitated against one another. This process separates the acaí pulp from the seed to produce a thick acaí fruit pulp puree.

Acaí berry has a unique tropical fruit flavor and provides a high level nutritional benefits. The acaí berry contains high levels of antioxidants also known as anthocyanins. It also contains Omega Fatty Acids (healthy fats), Amino Acids, Fiber, Iron, along with many other vitamins and minerals (Nutritional Value of the Acai Berry and Acai Berry Juice). An amazonian traditional recipe mixes acaí fruit pulp and natural guarana seed, which gives energy and heighten mental clarity that has caffeine like effects when combined with guarana.

Natives living in the Amazon river region in Northern Brazil, have had as part of their diet the acai berry for hundreds of years for it’s nutritional value. It’s healing and wellness powers are legendary throughout the area. The popularity of the acai berry is starting to spread from Brazil to the rest of the Americas.

Acai Berry has the following nutritional, health and wellness properties:

* Antioxidant
* Antibacterial
* Anti-inflammatory
* Antimutagenic
* Cardiovascular System

Acai berries contain very high amounts of essential fatty acid & omegas proven to lower LDL & maintain HDL cholesterol levels. They also have a remarkable concentration of antioxidants to help combat free radicals and premature aging. Acai Berry is a source of a particular class of flavonoids called anthocyanins. The ORAC value of Acai Berry is higher than any other edible berry in the world! Acai Berry is also an excellent source of dietary fiber!

Acai is extremely rich in organic vegetable protein which does not generate cholesterol
during its digestion and is easier processed and transported to your muscles than animal protein
(such as in milk or meat). Besides its outstanding content of protein and unsaturated
lipids, acai is also rich in carbohydrates which provide your body with the necessary
energy while working or practicing any kind of sport. That is why acai is served in most gyms,
sport clubs and beaches all over Brazil.

According to medical research studies conducted on the acai berries, and cited
below, their analysis reveals:

An amazingly high concentration levels of antioxidants contributed to combating premature aging.

The proanthocyanidine contents in Acai Berries are 10 to 30 times the anthocyanins (these are the purple colored antioxidants) of red wine per volume. (1)

Although the French have a high fat diet, they have a low incidence of cardio vascular disease compared to the western countries. They contribute this factor to their consumption of red wine. (5)

Acai Berries can help a promote a healthier cardio vascular system and digestive tract, because of its synergy of monounsaturated (these are the healthily) fats, dietary fiber and phytosterols.

An excellent source of fiber! There are approximately 2 grams of dietary fiber in our Açaí Energy Mix. Fiber promotes a healthy digestive system. Research studies suggests soluble fibers may help lower blood cholesterol The insoluble fiber may help to reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancers. (5)

Essential amino acid complex along with trace minerals, which are vital for proper muscle contraction and regeneration.

Aside from the energy and fluid replacement, Acai Berries provide a nutrition profile complete with vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids (omega 3, 6 and 9).

The fatty acid ratio in Acai resembles that of olive oil. Studies suggest this is a contributing factor to the low incidence of heart disease in Mediterranean populations. (1,5)

Acai Berries contain plant sterols including beta-sitosterol. Today, sterols are being used to treat associated benign prostate dyperplasia. (6) These plant sterols have also been shown to help control cholesterol as well as act as precursors to many important substances produced by the body. (7)

Acai: The Amazon Acai Berry
With 10 times the antioxidants of grapes and twice the antioxidants of blueberries, the Brazilian Acai berry (AH-sci-EE) is considered to have the best nutritional value of any fruit on earth.

Nutritional Chemistry

* Polyphenols: 16 (14 - 212 mg/L)
* Anthocyanidins: Thirty times the amount in red wine.
* Phytosterols
* Monounsaturated (healthy) fats (fatty acid ratio resembling olive oil): including essential omega fatty acids: Oleic (omega 9)
* Polyunsaturated fatty acids: Linoleic (omega 6)
* Alpha-tocopherol: natural Vitamin E
* Trace minerals: copper, iron, calcium, cobalt, chromium and manganese
* Dietary Fiber: 7 grams / 100 grams
* Protein: amino acid profile similar to
* Low glycemic index

Content per 100 grams of Acai:

* Acid: 0.13%
* Brix: 45.90 g
* Protein: 6%
* Fiber: 16.9g
* Niacin: 0.40mg
* Phosphorous: 58mg
* Iran: 11.8mg
* Vitamin B1: 0.36mg
* Vitamin B2: 0.01mg
* Calcium: 9mg
* Vitamin C: 9mg
* ph: 5.21
* Calories: 247

OMEGA FATTY ACIDS;(Omega 9, Omega 6, and Omega 3). These mono-saturated
essential fatty acids help lower LDL (harmful cholesterol) while maintaining HDL (beneficial
cholesterol). This unique ratio resembles the same combination as olive oil. Omega fatty acids combat heart disease by increasing healthy cell development. Omega fatty acids are essential for healthy nervous system development and regeneration. They help rapidly repair and rejuvenate muscles after intense exercise.

AMINO ACIDS; the Acai berry contains an almost perfect essential amino acid complex. This is vital for proper muscle contraction and regeneration, and for endurance, strength, sustained energy and muscle development.

NATURAL VITAMIN E; to protect against aging.

THEOBROMINE; acts as a bronchial dilator to help open air passage ways in the lungs. This increased air capacity helps in oxygen intake, which increases endurance, strength, and athletic performance.

PHOTOSTEROLS; These complex compounds of plant cell membranes are used to treat symptoms associated with BPH, (benign prostate hyperplasia). Photosterols also help promote a healthy cardiovascular system and contributes to a healthy digestive tract.

ANTI-OXIDANTS; Acai is rich in antocyanins, an essential anti-oxidizer that helps combat premature aging. In fact, acai has 10 –30 times more anthocyanins (purple colored anti-oxidants) that a glass of red wine.

Works Cited
1.Rogez H. Acai: Preparo, ComposiÁao, e Melhormento da ConveraÁao. Belem: EDUFPA; 2000.

2. Seager S, Slabaugh M. Chemistry for Today: General Organic and Biochemistry-4th ed. California.

3. Wardlaw G, Insel P. Perspectives in Nutrition – 2nd ed. Saint Louis: Masby – Year Book, Inc; 1990.

4. Sillberberg S. Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of matter and Change – 2nd ed. USA: McGraw-Hill; 2000. 1086p.

5. Cook-Fuller C, editor. Annual Editions Nutrition 00/01 – 12th ed. Connecticut: Dushkin/McGraw Hill; 2000.

6. Berges B, et al. Randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trial of beta-sitosterol in patients
with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Lancet 345: 1529–1532, 1995.

7. Pegel K. The importance of sitosterol and sitosterolin in human and animal nutrition.
S African J Science. 93, 263 –268, 1997.

8. Miura T, et al. Effect of guarana on exercise in normal and epinephrine-induced glycogenolytic mice.
Biol Pharm Bull. 1998 Jun;21(6):646-8.

9. Henman AR. Guaran· (Paullinia cupana var. sorbilis):
Ecological and social perspectives on an economic plant of the central Amazon basin. J. Ethnopharmacol,
1982 Nov.

10 Duke JA. CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1985, 349

11 Amazon Thunder

You see, we all have toned abs but they’re just hiding under your fat in the belly. The idea of strengthening your abdominal muscles and to lose your belly fat is quite simple but finding the time in our busy everyday lives can be difficult.

You see to get toned abs and lose fat in the belly you not only need to do the right exercises but you also need to eat the right foods.

Nutrition is very important in getting back your tone abs quickly. And mostly overlooked by all the commercials on tv you might see for ab crunchers, Ab belts or ab-rockers. Without eating the right foods you might as well not bother with all the effort you put in with exercising. Think about it!

Stop wasting any more of your money on the products mentioned before and instead think about what you eat on top of any exercise you do. How often have you heard of any athletes like Rafael Nadal or David Beckham tucking into burgers and chips regularly? They don’t and on top of that there job is to train and be active most of their working days. They have a head start on us already. I can’t stress enough how much your diet is important when trying to get tone abs quickly.

There are programs on the market that can help you get rid of flabby belly, helping you get those tone abs fast.

Check out our review of Truth about Abs below, its an excellent package brought together for you by Mike Geary.

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Salmon, sardines and tuna are great sources of Omega-3 fatty acids, which will lower the level of a hormone called leptin in your body. Studies show that it’s easier to lose and keep off weight when your leptin levels are lower, rather than higher. There are other benefits to eating fish, as well, like the cancer-fighting and healthy-heart properties of Omega 3.

Foods rich in protein like eggs, lean meats, beans and even peanut butter will boost your metabolism. Protein is a necessary building block for our bodies and it’s vitality important in keeping a metabolism going. Of these foods that speed up a slow metabolism, peanut butter gets unfairly criticized as a bad food choice. But with any food, moderation is key. You can enjoy peanut butter in moderation and still lose weight steadily, or avoid gaining any lost weight back. Peanut butter can be a healthy addition to your diet, with its good fats and metabolism-boosting protein.

Other foods that speed up the metabolism include foods containing hot peppers like jalapeño, cayenne or habanero. Spicy foods make your body run hotter for up to 3 hours. They’re thermogenic, in that just the act of digesting them speed up the metabolism.

Whole grains like oatmeal boost metabolism by being slow to digest. This gives you the feeling of being full longer, and serves to keep blood sugar levels on an even keel. This keeps minimal amounts of insulin in your bloodstream, and keeps your body from going into fat-storing overdrive. High levels of insulin are linked to metabolic syndrome symptoms like obesity, belly fat, and high blood pressure among others. So whole grains should be a vital part of your diet for many reasons, not just because they’re one of the top foods that speed up the metabolism

Olive oil is one of the foods that speed up the metabolism thanks to its load of Omega-3 acids. It’s a great source of good monounsaturated fat, the kind of good fat your body has to have, too.

Don’t forget that exercise boosts your metabolism in a more permanent way, by increasing active muscle tissue throughout your body. And eating in itself keeps your metabolism stoked. Never skip meals, especially not breakfast, that’s like refusing to put logs on a fire but expecting it to keep burning anyway. And add these foods that speed up a slow metabolism to your diet to bring you closer to your goals.

Hopefully we have shown you some ways to speed metabolism. Now you can get on with your diet and possibly improve the speed at which you lose weight.

Check this review out here of the fat loss for idiots diet plan. A great way to lose weight quickly and efficiently. Take what you’ve learnt today and put it to good use.

Fat Loss For Idiots Review

BMI, or body mass index, was created in the early 1800s by Adolphe Quetelet. Because of that, it’s sometimes called the Quetelet index.  It’s nothing more than a way of comparing a person’s weight to his or her height, and determining if his or her weight falls into a healthy and normal range.  The BMI is still used today pretty much as it was when Quetelet invented it. 

The formula for figuring BMI (body fat, bone and frame size, muscle and body type aren’t included in that) is this: Take your height in meters squared (your height times itself) and divide your weight in kilograms by that number.  For example, if I’m 5 feet tall, that’s about 1.5 meters. To square that number, take 1.5 times 1.5. The result of that is 2.5. So if I weigh 120 pounds, that’s about 54.5 kilograms.  Divide 54.5 by 2.5 and I get 21.8 as my BMI. The normal weight range is from 18.5 to 24.9, so 21.8 is classified as a normal weight.  Underweight is considered 18.5 and below, while overweight people will calculate a BMI of 25 to 29.9.  A BMI of 30 or greater indicates obesity. 

BMI, body fat and general health can all be used as signs of how fit a person is. But where general health is pretty self-explanatory and the percentage of body fat clearly shows whether a person gets enough exercise or not, BMI is a bit trickier.

People with a lot of muscle don’t show accurate BMI readings. Because muscle weighs so much heaver than fat but takes up less space, a relatively small statured person can carry a lot of muscle weight without looking huge.  BMI doesn’t take that into account. Football players, professional wrestlers, bodybuilders, and virtually any athlete who has a lot of muscle is going to measure as overweight and even obese according to the BMI.  So it’s not accurate for them.  Is it accurate for everyone else?

The answer to that is yes, and no.  It depends on you.  The BMI typically doesn’t show an accurate result for children.  And extremely tall or large-framed people will show overweight or obese classifications more easily because of the extra weight from their bones and muscles.  So for very short, tall or muscular people, the BMI appears to not be a good tool.

There’s also no distinguishing between men and women in the BMI. Body fat is more natural for women who are supposed to have more than men, so some sort of distinction in the measurement of the sexes would help the BMI’s accuracy

First off, you should drink plenty of water, since water helps to make sure that you are not as hungry as you would be otherwise by keeping your stomach full. It also helps your body process and metabolize the fat. If you drink ice cold water, you can burn as much as 450 calories a week, since it makes your body work harder to raise your temperature.

As a second way to reduce your weight, try eating your meals regularly, without going overboard. If you keep the amount of calories going into your body at a sensible and regular level, your body will be able to burn calories more effective. These quick weight loss tips are great for ensuring that you are able to lose those pounds you have been dying to get rid of.

Fiber also helps when it comes to reducing your weight. Fiber helps to keep everything in your stomach and digestive system moving. It also helps in making sure you feel more full, helping to cut back those cravings for all sorts of foods. This helps to ensure you do not eat a lot because you feel hungry, helping to make sure that you are able to keep burning that fat off and not just taking it all back in!

Many people think that simply not eating will help them lose weight, however, this does not work as well as some people might think. When your body does not get the food it needs, it tries to conserve its energy and this means your body begins to burn less fat. In addition, when your body lacks those essential vitamins and nutrients, you begin to feel tired and weak and cannot do as many activities, meaning you burn fewer calories.

Remember, not all quick weight loss tips are going to help you lose weight. Many simply want to confuse you and convince you to buy a product to help you. There are many effective ways to lose weight, safely and without purchasing any products.

Just by following these tips, you will find that you are able to lose weight quickly and effectively, while ensuring that you are still healthy and able to keep doing everything you usually do activity-wise. This helps to ensure that not only are you able to continue losing weight, but you are able to enjoy yourself while doing it. These quick weight loss tips are a sure way to help get you on track towards the weight you desire.

First, when you are on an exercise plan, you should also diet in order to ensure that you keep the number of calories you take in balanced in proportion to the number of calories you burn. Exercising does you no good if you just go out and eat more when you are finished. Dieting is the first key to any truly successful weight loss, especially when you want to make sure that you not only get those pounds off, but that you keep them off, too. Once you find the right diet, now you are ready to find the right exercise plan.

Start by doing some stretches. Stretches help to not only get your heart pumping and your blood flowing, but also help to warm up your muscles and joints. This helps to ensure that while you are exercising, you are less likely to do any damage, such as pulling a muscle. Such damage can be extremely painful at times and should be avoided when possible. Stretches help to make sure that you do not hurt yourself when you decide to exercise.

The next thing you should do is your main set of exercising. This can be anything from a good, endurance building workout, such as walking, jogging, running, or riding a bicycle. These workouts help to build up the strength of your heart and your lungs, which enables you to do more without running out of air. You could also choose to go towards more of a strength building workout, which consists of weight lifting. However, if you are attempting to just lose weight, muscle building workouts will not help you much.

Muscles weight more than fat, which means as you burn fat doing strength building exercises, you are increasing the muscles in your body. This makes it so that you end up sometimes gaining weight when trying to use strength building exercises when dieting. If you are aiming to burn fat and gain muscle, but are not concerned about weight itself, then this is the way to go.

After you finish your work out, be sure to stretch again. This helps to bring your body slowly back down from the higher level of activity that it was at. Following all of these tips can help you significantly, as this helps to ensure that you do not damage your body when you are using your exercise plans for quick weight loss.

If you thought that detoxification was meant only as a system for bringing drug or alcohol abusers down from their chemical dependencies you would be only partially right. However, this is not the case with detoxifying diets.  Formulas for detox diets are meant to clean your body’s elimination system of impurities from the food we eat and even the air we breathe.  Generally, detoxification diets are designed to clean the colon and liver, where impurities tend to accumulate.

The key to most blueprints for body cleansing diets is to include lots of fiber, lots of water, and eating veggies, nuts, fruits, and beans.  What is missing from the above lists of foods? Meat! Meat intake needs to be reduced.  What else is missing? Processed starches! Bread and pasta are notoriously absent when you are cleansing your bodies’ digestive system. 

Cleansing drinks are a great way to give another boost to the healthy detoxification your body needs.  Simply get some of your favorite fruits – berries are especially nutritious and delicious – and throw them in the blender with some purified water and ice.  Whip them up until they are a thick-but-drinkable consistency, and you have an awesome breakfast or snack that will help your colon get rid of the yucky stuff that resides there.

Soups of various kinds are also some of the recipes for detox diets that you can find.  Gazpacho soup and alkaline diet soups are very frequently used for body and colon cleaning diets. Alkaline diets are those that rely heavily on vegetables, nuts, and legumes, all of which help move things along in the digestive system and thus, are beneficial ingredients for any soup recipe.

One particularly popular and tasty alkaline soup recipe is for a vegetable broth. You simply chop up celery, broccoli, spinach, and a zucchini into tiny pieces. Add them to a big pot of distilled water, and simmer for about a half an hour. 

Then, run the ingredients through a strainer or colander, reserving the broth.  All those natural vitamins remain in the water when you boil those veggies, which is why you should minimally steam your vegetables when eating them.  In this case, you are after the broth, so it is okay to boil the heck out of the vegetables.  Discard the chopped vegetables and drink the broth.

Each of these recipes for detox diets contain viable ingredients for helping you to lose weight and keeping your body’s elimination system working as it should.

This article is going to cover just two sources of nutrition, Vegetables and Fish.

Vegetables Everybody knows that you should eat at least 5 portions of vegetable and fruit a day. Calories in vegetables are mostly quite low. The only veg to watch out for is the potato as this is quite a starchy food and the calorie count is increased dramatically compared to other vegetables.

Fish Fish is another great food source and with so many varieties available its main pluses are that its low in saturated fat and of course low in calories! Try to include some kind of fish dish at least twice a week in your diet plan, if you can, try and include more! Fish is a dieters dream as the amount of calories is low, it tastes great and there is so much variety.

If you realise that your diet does need to change then it would be better to try and introduce new foods over a long period of time. For example when you go shopping and you spot some fish or a vegetable that you have never tried before, pick it up and see if you can base a meal around that item. This gets you thinking more about the foods you are buying and might break the routine you are in when food shopping.

Eating the right foods mentioned will increase your chance of losing weight.  Choosing the right foods will dramatically increase your chances of achieving your weight loss goals.