Many scientists, nutritionists, and pharmaceutical companies feel that the Amazon rain forest has many, as yet, undiscovered medicinal plants and herbs. What makes them excited over this belief is that the Para region of has produced one such plant and exported it globally. This plant is a palm berry called the acai.
The acai berry juice has been used by Amazonian natives for centuries. The almost magical powers ascribed to this fruit is reflected in the fact that it features in a myth all about feeding starving people and its mystical discovery. According to this folk story, there was a tribe that was in great need of a new food source because of too many children being born and some poor harvests.
Under the very real and recurring threat of starvation, the leader of the tribe, Itaki took a drastic decision. He ordered that all newborn infants be killed. Even when Itaki’s own daughter Laca became had her first child, no exceptions could be made, and her baby was culled along worth the others. Unable to bear the grief, sorrow and guilt, Laca became a recluse in her hut and began to starve herself to death.
One night, she awoke to hear the ghost of her baby crying, and she went outside only to see a vision of her baby calling out to her from beneath a palm tree. The following day, the tribes discovered the body of the princess below that very acai palm tree where she had seen a vision of her dead baby. When the tribe’s people looked up, they discovered large clumps of purple blue-colored berries. These berries became known as monavie (the tree of life) acai berries and they became the salvation for the tribe.
The locals of Belem, the regional capital of Para in Brazil, which is where the acai berry is most abundant and harvested, are said to be the direct descendants of Lacas’ tribe. So out of this ancient myth of birth, death, rebirth, and magic food comes the acai berry. It still plays a vital role in the economic growth and prosperity of this region.