Acai – Healthy Gut Fibre

I always look for good products and superfoods to help my clients with their wellbeing. I find Acai berries to be fantastic. Of course there has been some negative publicity created by the usual MLM scammers out there trying to make false claims and so on. My advice, simply steer clear of anything MLM.

I recommend Riolife Acai. This is an Australian based company, NOT MLM at all. This is a great source of information about Acai as well and I am going to bring you regular articles from their team to help you understand more about Acai and it’s benefits for your wellbeing. I encourage you to visit Riolife at their website riolife.com.au for more information and to purchase the real, top quality Acai products. Here is today’s article from Riolife.

Gut Healthy Fibre

“Eat more fibre”. Easy to say but hard to do? You have probably heard that before, but why is fibre so good for us?

A high fibre diet (approximately 30-40g per day) reduces your risk of chronic disease. It is also a great way to help you feel full quicker and lose weight.

Fibre comes from plant foods: whole grain cereals, vegetables, legumes, fruit, nuts and seeds, and is necessary for your gut to function properly. However, it is important to drink plenty of fluids in order for the fibre to swell and act as a sponge and regulate your gut movement.

Fibre acts like a sponge and soaks up sugar in the foods you ear, and releases it slowly, helping control your blood sugar levels. It also reduces cholesterol absorption and excretion, therefore reducing your blood cholesterol and your risk of heart disease. But that’s not all, foods that are high in fibre expand in your stomach and intestine like a sponge, to help you feel full, and these foods tend to be those low in energy. These foods are said to have low energy density. If you compare to a bag of lollies, there is no fibre in it and they are very high in energy, and lollies don’t act like a sponge and expand in your stomach to help you feel full and stop eating!

Açaí can help you bulk up your diet with fibre, and therefore decrease its energy density. This way you’ll be eating less energy for the same weight of food and therefore hep prevent weight gain and your risk of obesity! Pure Dried Açaí has a relatively high fibre content of 1.35g (per 5g serve) compared with an apple (1.8g) or a weetbix (1.8g). In an Açaí smoothie with 3 scoops of Pure Dried Açaí powder, you get around 4g of dietary fibre! The new recommended intake for Australia and New Zealand suggest we consume 30g of fibre.

Independent author: Flavia Fayet from http://www.nutriesca.com.au/- info@nutriesca.com.au
FlaviaFayet has completed her Masters of Nutrition and Dietetics at theUniversity of Sydney, and is currently working on her PHD. She is arespected Dietician and lecturer at Sydney University.
Copyright (c) Nutriesca 2006

Acai – Heart Friendly Nutrients

I always look for good products and superfoods to help my clients with their wellbeing. I find Acai berries to be fantastic. Of course there has been some negative publicity created by the usual MLM scammers out there trying to make false claims and so on. My advice, simply steer clear of anything MLM.

I recommned Riolife Acai. This is an Australian based company, NOT MLM at all. This is a great source of information about Acai as well and I am going to bring you regular articles from their team to help you understand more about Acai and it’s benefits for your wellbeing. I encourage you to visit Riolife at their website riolife.com.au for more information and to purchase the real, top quality Acai products. Here is today’s article from Riolife.

Heart friendly nutrients

We know that certain diets promote heart disease. And we also know that the proper diet can help reduce heart risk, even if you have risk factors which cannot change (such as age, genetics and family history of the disease). However, we also know that the lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise and smoking are modifiable!  That’s great news.

One of the key aspects of a heart friendly diet is the inclusion of fruits and vegetables and the replacement of saturated fat in the diet by unsaturated fats.

Numerous research studies have shown that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can reduce heart disease and stroke by 25%! So what about these foods that help reduce our risk?

It is believed that it’s the abundance of antioxidants. One way that antioxidants guard against heart disease is by protecting the LDL, or bad cholesterol from oxidizing – which is what forms plaque in our arteries and hence causes atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

Acai is cholesterol-free. It is naturally cholesterol-free since cholesterol only comes from animal products! Why do we want to lower our cholesterol? This is because it is linked to heart disease. Açaí is not only cholesterol-free, but low in the heart-clogging saturated fat and high in the heart-friendly unsaturated fats and fibre. Together, these nutrients help reduce your cholesterol, making Açaí a heart-healthy fruit!

Let’s take a look at the types of fat in Açaí. There are three types of fats found in our foods. Saturated fat, polyunsaturated fay, and monounsaturated fat. Polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats tend to be liquid at room temperature (your vegetable oils, with the exception of coconut and palm which are mainly saturated).

Açaí is low in saturated fats. These are the fats that increase your cholesterol and clog up your arteries. Açaí contains the unsaturated fats omega-6 and omega-9 (a classification  of the type of unsaturated fats), which reduce LDL-cholesterol levels (think L = Low, so we want them to be low in our blood) when they replace saturated fats in our diet.

Açaí is richer in monounsaturated fats than polyunsaturated fats. Monounsaturated fats maintain the good HDL-cholesterol levels (think H = healthy, or you want it to be high) in our blood. Monounsaturated fats are less susceptible to oxidation than polyunsaturated oils. This makes monounsaturated fats a heart-healthy choice. These fatty acids maintain the cell membrane’s fluidity, which allows our hormones, neurotransmitters, and insulin receptors to function more efficiently. Other sources of monounsaturated fats include olive oil, macadamia oil and canola oil.

The berry’s synergy of monounsaturated (healthy) fats, dietary fibre, and antioxidants make it a heart friendly fruit!

Independent author: Flavia Fayet from http://www.nutriesca.com.au/- info@nutriesca.com.au
Flavia Fayet has completed her Masters of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Sydney, and is currently working on her PHD. She is a respected Dietician and lecturer at Sydney University.
Copyright (c) Nutriesca 2006

Acai Berry

Hi. Acai berries from the rainforrests of South America are amazing and well worth your time to try. The Acai berry is not your regular fruit. One of the reasons for this is its high antioxidant content. You have probably heard over and over that there is consistent evidence in research that diets rich in fruit and vegetables and other plant foods are associated with lower mortality rates and lower death rates from cardiovascular disease and some types of cancer. Sound familiar? Probably. So why is that?

This association is partly given to the high content of antioxidants in fruits and vegetables, which protect our bodies against chronic disease by decreasing free radical oxidative damage. Our bodies are in constant attack by free radicals, which are a common by-product of normal metabolism. In our day to day lives, we are further exposed to high amounts of free radicals through increased physical activity, stress, pollutants, chemicals and toxins. Antioxidants which are obtained through our diet act like scavengers, which seek and “relax” the free radicals. Once the free radicals are “relaxed”, they do no further damage.

So what kinds of antioxidants are in Acai?

Acai is rich in anthocyanins, compounds that provide colour to the fruits and serve as natural antioxidants. Those are the same compounds found in red wine. However, Acai pulp has 10-30 times more. Organic Freeze dried Acai contains more, 70-210 times more!

Acai;s royal purple pigment not only makes the fruit appealing to eat, but studies have shown that berry anthocyanins are beneficial in reducing age-associated oxidative stress (or the free radical damage). If berries can combat premature aging with 25 to 40 times less antioxidants than Acai, then just imagine what organic freeze dried Acai can do!

The US food industry is now labeling the antioxidants in food with ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity). Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests a serving of fresh fruit and vegetables has between 890 and 2,500 ORAC units. Just one 5g serving of organic freeze dried Acai will provide you with around 4,695 ORAC units!

Source: riolife.com.au