When I was in São Paulo, Brazil, I tried the cold açaí berry dessert and loved it! Açaí (pronounced ah-sah-EE) is probably known as the foremost of the "super" berries, so termed due to their high anti-oxidant content. This wasn't too sweet, and my local friends told me that it was a very healthy and natural snack consisting of açaí berries blended with bananas and ice. The other friends on my tour group claimed that it worked like coffee in keeping them awake for hours after they ate it, apparently due to the high levels of antioxidants. (Personally, I didn't feel much of a difference, so I can't say for myself what effect it had.) But regardless, it was a cool and refreshing snack. This is the picture of the original product.
And recently, I found these shelf-stable retail açaí drinks, so I was eager to try them. I had tried to look for something similar in Singapore, but haven't been too successful. The closest I'd seen were some açaí shakes by smoothie stands, but they seemed to add a lot of other ingredients, and I wasn't sure if the would be cheating me of my money by reducing the açaí content. I also saw an açaí drink on the menu of a bar in an MMA gym offering Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu... but there was no one manning the bar and they didn't seem to be serious about selling drinks, so I never ordered it.
Anyway, I got these from a Cold Storage branch. The one on the left is the plain version, which contains just organic açaí juice from puree, evaporated cane juice, citric acid and "natural flavours", whatever they are. The one on the right is the same thing, but with just a bit of blueberry juice from concentrate added (as the third ingredient, after the cane juice). A couple of ingredients that could count as additives, but overall, both had relatively trim ingredients lists.
In terms of their colour, they looked very much like the Brazilian dessert, with both flavours being rather indistinguishable in hue.
Taste wise, it was completely different from what I had in Brazil! It tasted very much like something between a sour plum drink and the hawthorn berry snack that we have locally. There were also little beady bits, which I vaguely remember from my experience with the dessert in Brazil, so I think those are from the açaí berry. Any typical berry taste could have been as much my imagination as actual. And I couldn't taste much of a difference between the plain and blueberry flavours! Hm... Although, I suppose that is somewhat expected given that blueberry came after the sugar in terms of proportion of ingredients.
I suppose those who like sour plum and sour preserved fruits would like this, but even my mom who does like sour plum drinks didn't like this one. I personally hate the sour preserved fruit taste, so this was drinkable, but a bit on the yucky side to me. Needless to say, I was very disappointed!
I wonder what caused the discrepancy in tastes... perhaps it was the citric acid. But I don't get the impression that citric acid made foods THAT sour. Or perhaps it was the oxidation and cooking process, given that bottled drinks are processed in manufacturing, whereas the dessert I had in Brazil could have been naturally made directly from the fruit. OR, perhaps it was because there was banana added to the dessert version, which could have defrayed the sourness.
Anyway, am probably not buying this again. Will still be on the look out though for another pure açaí drink or dessert... to see which experience of mine was closer to the pure açaí taste.
Taste wise, it was completely different from what I had in Brazil! It tasted very much like something between a sour plum drink and the hawthorn berry snack that we have locally. There were also little beady bits, which I vaguely remember from my experience with the dessert in Brazil, so I think those are from the açaí berry. Any typical berry taste could have been as much my imagination as actual. And I couldn't taste much of a difference between the plain and blueberry flavours! Hm... Although, I suppose that is somewhat expected given that blueberry came after the sugar in terms of proportion of ingredients.
I suppose those who like sour plum and sour preserved fruits would like this, but even my mom who does like sour plum drinks didn't like this one. I personally hate the sour preserved fruit taste, so this was drinkable, but a bit on the yucky side to me. Needless to say, I was very disappointed!
I wonder what caused the discrepancy in tastes... perhaps it was the citric acid. But I don't get the impression that citric acid made foods THAT sour. Or perhaps it was the oxidation and cooking process, given that bottled drinks are processed in manufacturing, whereas the dessert I had in Brazil could have been naturally made directly from the fruit. OR, perhaps it was because there was banana added to the dessert version, which could have defrayed the sourness.
Anyway, am probably not buying this again. Will still be on the look out though for another pure açaí drink or dessert... to see which experience of mine was closer to the pure açaí taste.
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