Sambazon Acai Berry

The first to bring to the United States the incredible acai berry Sambazon can be credited with introducing Americans to a superfood that people elsewhere all over the world were already enjoying, appreciating, and benefiting from.

In the acai berry Sambazon saw an untapped potential and leapt on it—in 1998 beginning to export the acai berry into the US. Just 2 years later, in 2000, Sambazon had grown to become the world’s largest exporter of the acai berry, today bringing in about $2 million each year.

The acai berry Sambazon provides comes with the peace of mind that rainforests are not being depleted in order to provide you with the fruit’s healing bounty. Learning from the mistakes of others, Sambazon recognized how harvesting of another acai tree product—Hearts of Palm—had led to the obliteration of entire groves of acai trees, and decided to come up with a better way. A more sustainable way of harvesting the acai berry Sambazon would use in its products that protected, preserved, and perhaps even strengthened the Amazonian rainforests where they’re grown.

To respectfully and responsibly harvest acai berry Sambazon has been working jointly with the Brazilian, non-governmental Federation of Organizations for Social Assistance and Education (FASE) which works with more than 50 growers associations to ensure fair and sustainable farming practices, both for the farmer and for the precious land they steward.

All this combines to say that when you buy Sambazon acai berry products, you get the peace of mind of knowing that the acai berry Sambazon provides comes with 100% good karma.

The history of Sambazon acai is a rich and noble one—not to mention fruitful (pardon the pun).

Before there was Sambazon acai fruit juice and other acai products, there was SAMBA, or Saving and Managing the Brazilian Amazon. The mission of California-based SAMBA, a grassroots environmental enterprise, is to protect the biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest and improve the quality of life and self-sustainability of the local rainforest people by promoting—and here’s where acai comes in—non-timber forest products.

To that end, SAMBA works hand-in-hand with low-income acai fruit collectors throughout the prolific Northern Brazil Amazon River floodplains. In 2003 alone, SAMBA sold $1 million of acai under the brand name of Sambazon Acai. Today SAMBA does more than double that in sales.

And by working in cooperation with local agencies and family collectors, SAMBA ensures that rather than the ghastly and unsustainable practice of cutting down perfectly health palm trees to get at their fruit, all of the acai contained in Sambazon Acai is hand-picked) with no damage or harm coming to the acai palm tree that provided it..

Sambazon Acai contains a blend of acai berry pulp and guarana extract processed into frozen packs.

Sambazon Acai is now carried by major health food chains across the country—including Wild Oats and Whole Foods.

Since hitting the public stage, Sambazon Acai has been featured by Vogue Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the NBC Today Show, the London Times, and In Style Magazine.

Today SAMBA has four worker-owned cooperatives of fruit collectors who provide the acai used in Sambazon Acai, consisting of some 650+ families in the Varzea Flooded Forest Region of Para, a state in North Brazil.