Acai Berry Hype

And Hype in General

Surfing the Internet for Weight Loss Supplements…

turns up an overwhelming number of sites extolling the virtues of the acai berry.

A review of the most recent 100 posts turned up only four that suggested using the acai berry as an effective weight loss product was a scam.

Read about those here…

Scammed by acai-berry site? You may be able to get money back - acai berry I recently wrote about the rash of scammers offering ‘free’ trials of acai-berry weight loss products. Today we learn that some of those taken in by these shady dealings stand to get a little of their money back, …

$350000 for acai berry drink customers - NextAdvisor Daily - A couple of weeks ago, Joe blogged about the acai berry and the outlandish claims made about its supposed health benefits. Yesterday, Arizona’s Attorney General.

Açai of relief | MNN - Mother Nature Network - You can’t browse the Internet without running across at least one: giant banner ads touting miraculous weight-loss and cure-all elixirs made from the exotic South American açai berry. This staple of the Amazon, a small blueberry-like …

I looked up acai berry (or just acai) and weight loss at the National Library of Medicine. Twenty-two papers appeared and not one had anything to do with weight loss. This means that no study has ever been completed and submitted to a reputable medical or scientific journal on the results of a study of acai berry and weight loss.

I’ve not been one to be a proponent of using references from the literature in my weight loss books; I received so much flak on this that in subsequent books, I caved under the pressure.

My arguments against this are simple:

• most people could not read the papers anyway
• most people won’t even get the papers
• few people have the training and background to do a pro/con on what they read
• the literature can be very biased, i.e., that cholesterol and fat cause heart disease
• you’d have to do exhaustive research to find out  that isn’t true because the journals rarely published the articles that debunked this theory (for more info read on this site and search “cholesterol myths”)

But you should be able to have at least one double-blind study so even if an author did not provide a reference, then one could do a search on it at the National Library of Medicine (pubmed).

I’m amazed at the vast number of people who convince themselves of these ideas. We’re moving very rapidly into the Age of Delusion.

The Internet Hype About the Acai Berry and Weight Loss Shows Just How Scary the Internet Can Be

How do people actually get to the truth anymore? It’s very difficult, if not impossible.

If Acai Berry Did Work There Must Be a Mechanism of Action

Now, it’s well-known that weight loss (fat loss) is purely a function of calories in vs. calories out. If you type in weight loss anywhere, say Twitter, you’ll discover that people and even the self-appointed weight loss experts have no clue about this basic fact. They conjure up all kinds of thoughts but always dance around this basic fact.

Wonder why we’re all so fat — you couldn’t find the truth if you were standing on it.

Confusion reigns supreme.

For our friend the berry, the most bizzare claims are conjured up:

• removal of toxins in the colon
• the power of the anti-oxidants
• appetite suppression
• removal of cellulite
• on and on it goes
• my favorite is that it increases your metabolism

That idea, of course, is the major hypester used by all the weight loss scam artists that abound in nature.

Folks, You Can’t Change Your Metabolism. And if You Believe You Can Then You Must Believe in Levitation

As a scientist, I have to ask what does this miracle berry do? It must somehow affect calories in vs. calories out.

If it doesn’t do that, then it’s not any good for weight loss.