Have you by any chance heard of the acai berry? If you have any interest in weight loss, you probably have.
I mean, it’s been everywhere (even Oprah), and apparently still is. I personally thought this was a dead topic by now, but judging from the emails I continue to get, I appear to be wrong. So, this is me beating this topic to death and hopefully limiting the number of emails I get about it in the future.
See, whenever some kind of product comes along that has health and/or weight loss related claims attached to it, there is always a lot of confusion. It turns out that the acai berry is no different. So, let’s clear it all up by taking a look at exactly what it is, and exactly what it isn’t.
A healthy food just like… oh, I don’t know… any other f’ing berry!
Seriously.
It contains a bunch of healthy stuff. What kind of healthy stuff? The very same healthy stuff that is in 80 million other healthy foods.
Anything else at all.
It doesn’t cause weight loss. It doesn’t help weight loss. It doesn’t do anything special in any way, shape or form that has anything to do in any way with weight loss.
Was that clear enough? No?
The acai berry won’t help you lose weight faster, or easier, or better. It contains no weight loss magic, voodoo or super powers of any kind.
Better now? Good.
Dude, because making money is awesome!
For those out of the loop, every single time you see someone mention the acai berry online along with the suggestion that it will in some way help with weight loss, the person doing the suggesting is always getting a percentage of the sale. So, if they tell you the acai berry is a weight loss miracle food, and then you click the conveniently located link to buy it, a percentage of your money will go to the dumbass who just convinced you that the acai berry will help you lose weight (it won’t).
And, for the record, I refer to this person as a “dumbass” because that is honestly what they are. They don’t know anything about weight loss. They don’t even know anything about the acai berry. These are affiliate marketers. They make money by getting people to buy products from companies that are willing to pay them a percentage of every sale that they send. When they see a good product with a high payout, they go for it. The acai berry just so happened to be a great product with a very high payout.
It’s an affiliate marketers dream, really. The percentage they’d get per sale was fantastic, and the fact that they could market it as this magical weight loss food all but guaranteed that the sales would come flying in at an extremely high rate. You know, because you can sell a fat person anything if you told them it would help them lose weight without actually having to do any work. That’s sad, and a little mean (nothing personal, just making a point), but it’s 100% true. Weight loss is a billion dollar industry built around this fact.
So, when you combine an awesome payout with the likelihood of an almost infinite number of possible sales, it makes sense that the acai berry quickly became the go-to product of affiliate marketers everywhere who’d be perfectly willing to lie their asses off to get people to buy it.
And when I say “lie,” I really mean lie. I’m talking completely made up people sharing completely made up personal stories about completely made up weight struggles. And let’s not forget the fake before and after pictures. Those are key. The best part is that if you look around long enough, you’ll notice that the same few fake pictures were used over and over on countless fake sites created by countless different liars.
And that right there is the #1 reason people think the acai berry will cause, help, or improve weight loss… because affiliate marketers like making money, they are really good at what they do, and there just happens to be millions of fat people out there that are gullible enough (or possibly just dumb enough) to buy into this nonsense. Which now brings me to…
For the love of God, create a moderate caloric deficit. That’s it. That’s weight loss. Everything else is always bullshit 100% of the time, acai berry included. Confused? Read The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide. It explains everything.
(*Special note to the various affiliate networks and acai berry companies that still contact me in an attempt to get me to sell this crap: Go away. Or, at least double my payouts. 😉 )
Very nice post! That’s exactly what I say about acai berries. It’s amazing what a good marketing campaign can do. I’ve always said a good salesman can sell a pile of dog crap. Well, acai berries are good for you but they aren’t magic! As you’ve said, there’s nothing magic when it comes to getting a better body.
Mythbusters would call this BUSTED as well, I think. You so totally rock.
I agree…. No Magic!
My friends used this and NOTHING happened..
Beside wasting their MONEY!!!!
OK I was seriously about to purchase this stuff… AS SEEN ON CNN, Oprah, etc.. it’s EVERYWHERE! Thank you for helping me see the light and saving my money. I think they’re dumba$$e$ too. And I love a calorie counter… LOVE. Thank you for all you do!
Thank you! We need more knowledgable people out there…talking loudly! I feel the same way about xocai overpriced chocolate as you do about acai! This blog’s cool. I will check it out more often!
People should understand that Acai Berry, much like Goji Berry or any of those other rainforest berries don’t cause weight loss in and of themselves, they simply contain high levels of antioxidants. There is benefit in taking them but they should not be considered magic pills for weight loss. There is a reason that if you are trying to loose weight, Acai, etc. can be helpful to take but it’s not the reason you might think. Antioxidants help your body get rid of dangerous free radicals generated when you do things like…burn/metabolize fat. So if you are dieting and exercising and burning calories and basically living your life, you are generating quite a bit of free radicals…which can be harmful to your organs like your pancreas, liver, etc. The antioxidants in the berries help you nutralize those so the process is not so hard on your body and you can stay healthy. Thinking of it in this way may make more sense. See the research of acai, goji berry etc. as antioxidants for legit studies. But a weight loss miracle pill it is not nor should it be marketed as one. I take them and I feel better when and after working out but I still have to do the work to burn the fat and change my diet to loose weight, IMO that is the realistic, non-hyped explanation. I agree that greed of unsavory marketers and companies has caused much confusion (and fraud) on the issue. Cheers!