Whence
Açaí
Food

Where does Açaí come from?

Açaí comes from the eastern Amazon, where the açaí palm grows in the floodplains around the river's mouth in Pará, Brazil. Families there have eaten its small purple-black fruit for centuries, long before it became a sweet frozen bowl around the world.

A palm of the tidal forests

The açaí palm, Euterpe oleracea, is native to the eastern Amazon, which Brazil's agricultural research agency Embrapa calls its centre of origin and genetic diversity. Its slender trunks grow more than 25 metres tall, mostly in swamps and floodplains that the tides flood again and again. Each cluster carries 500 to 900 small round fruits. Archaeological studies suggest that Amazonian peoples may have helped the palm become so common by growing, eating and spreading it over the past five to ten thousand years.

A meal, not a treat

In the Amazon, açaí is part of the main meal, served with fish or meat and cassava flour. It became a staple of the floodplains around the 18th century; in one study of three traditional riverside communities it made up as much as 42% of all food eaten, by weight. Its consumption in cities and its promotion as a health food began only in the mid-1990s. Pará grows roughly 90 to 95% of Brazil's açaí, and neighbouring Amapá eats the most per person, about 26 litres a year.

Why people think of California or Hawaii

Abroad, açaí is best known as the açaí bowl: frozen pulp blended thick, often sweetened, and topped with granola and banana. Outside Brazil the bowls first caught on in Hawaii and Southern California, but the idea is Brazilian. In the 1980s the Gracie family of martial artists, originally from Belém in Pará, promoted açaí as an energy drink or crushed with granola and bananas. Imports to the United States began around 2000, and Brazil's açaí exports grew from 60 kg in 1999 to over 15,000 tonnes by 2021.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Euterpe oleracea ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Açaí na tigela ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Gracie family ↗ · infoteca.cnptia.embrapa.br ↗

More Food

Granny Smith apple
Food

Granny Smith apple

📍 Eastwood (Sydney), Australia

The tart green Granny Smith sprang up by a creek in Eastwood, now a suburb of Sydney, in 1868. Maria Ann 'Granny' Smith had tossed out some French crab apples there, and she grew the lucky seedling on.

Wasabi
Food

Wasabi

📍 Japan (first farmed in Shizuoka)

Real wasabi is the grated stem of a plant that grows wild in Japan's cold mountain streams, first farmed about 400 years ago in Shizuoka. Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is actually horseradish, mustard and green colouring.

Kimchi
Food

Kimchi

📍 Korean Peninsula

Koreans have fermented vegetables for well over a thousand years, but early kimchi wasn't red: chili peppers from the Americas only reached Korea around 1600. Families still gather each late autumn to make the winter's supply.

More from South America

Sombrero vueltiao (striped cane hat)
Fashion

Sombrero vueltiao (striped cane hat)

📍 Sinú & San Jorge valleys (Córdoba & Sucre), Colombia

The black-and-white sombrero vueltiao comes from the Zenú people of Colombia's Sinú and San Jorge valleys. It is braided from caña flecha cane, its name refers to the braid being turned round and round, and in 2004 it became a national symbol.

Siku (panpipes played in pairs)
Music & dance

Siku (panpipes played in pairs)

📍 Lake Titicaca (Peru & Bolivia)

The siku is the panpipe of the Andes, most at home among the Aymara around Lake Titicaca. Its pipes come in two halves, ira and arka, traditionally played by two musicians who alternate notes to build a single melody.

Condor (the word)
Word

Condor (the word)

📍 Andes, Peru

Condor comes from kuntur in Quechua, the language of the Inca, and reached English through Spanish around 1600. With wings spanning up to 3.3 metres, the Andean condor is one of the largest flying birds in the world.