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Hi everybody this is Dr. Shawn Talbott MonaVie's Chief Science Officer
And welcome to another edition of "From the Lab"
Today I want to take a few minutes to talk to you about something that is
central to MonaVIe and has been since the very first
day that MonaVie started in business. And that's acai.
This wonderful berry that we find in the Amazonian
rainforests in Brazil. Why did MonaVie
start with the acai berry?
Why that? Why that berry
became central to everything that this company
has stood for the last 8 years or so.
Well, If you're talking about antioxidants and you're talking about
protecting the body, and improving the health of the body
you really want to look at one category of antioxidants
First, even though there are 5 categories of antioxidants
in total that your body needs, that whole antioxidant network.
That one category that acai
is so rich in, are these compounds called flavinoids
And we know from a series of studies
that have been done at Harvard Medical School,
at Birmingham Women's Hospital, over this
course of several years, we know that those flavonoids
are associated with health benefits in virtually
every body system you can think of.
Flavonoids are good for the heart, and the blood vessels,
and the brain and the ability to modulate your blood sugar levels
And even for the bones.
They're good for the nervous system in general.
They're good for almost every single tissue you can point to
And if you look across population studies
You can see that populations of people with
higher levels of flavonoids in their diets,
do better and they do better from the standpoint
of mental function, psychological function
physical function, almost everything that we can measure
from a scientific medical perspective does
better when you have a high level of flavonoids
in your nutrient profile.
Where are you going to get flavonoids? Acai is
particularity high in flavonoids. Not just in total
content, but in range of the type of flavonoids
Flavonoids represent a class of
compounds that have maybe, three thousand
four thousand different constituents.
So there's a lot of flavonoids in nature. Acai, because of its color
that dark color that you
see, that dark, dark purple almost black color
is indicative of a
high flavonoid content. Acai is one of the highest
flavonoid content fruits around
the entire globe. And the reason it's so high in flavonoids
and the reason it's so beneficial for our health
is because of where it grows.
It grows basically on the equator and it's put under
a lot of stress. It's put under of oxidative stress
from photo damage, from sunlight.
And it has to protect itself. It's put under
a lot of oxidative stress from lack of oxygen.
From a hypoxic standpoint because of the way
the Amazon River basin floods on a routine basis.
For that acai palm
to survive and be able to produce this
very rich flavonoid fruit, it has to produce a lot
of its own protective flavonoids.
Thus, the high concentration in those dark berries.
The benefit for us as a company
is that we can go to Brazil and do partnerships
with indigenous people who are living there
in the acai groves, and we can do a partnership
where they'll harvest these berries in a sustainable way
we can use them and
manufacture them in a very particular way, process them
in a very particular way to get the flavonoids out
in a way that benefits health around the world.
And that's one of the things that is unique about
the way we do acai at MonaVie
Acai ten years ago,
was not very widely known. It was very difficult to find
anywhere outside of Brazil.
MonaVie was really one of these companies that was at the
forefront of educating people about the health benefits
of the acai and bringing it around the world.
But in order to do that effectively, you need to
harvest it in a sustainable way, and you need a
process it in a very particular way, and
that is what we call at MonaVie "AcaVie"
AcaVie is very different
than the acai that you might find
in other places. Nowadays you can find acai
in chocolates, you can find acai juices,
you can find acai in all sorts of different
foods out there. But very
often what you're finding is a very low quality fruit.
You're finding a very low quality juice that isn't particularity
high in antioxidants. You're finding a low potency
powder that's just used for coloring, but not
really used to provide those health benefits that
the Harvard studies are showing us that are very
beneficial for us long term for our
whole bodies. What does AcaVie mean though?
For MonaVie, it starts really at the
jungle where we harvest in a particular way
we process in a particular way to stabilize the
flavonoids and we're able to bring that to our
manufacturer partners and produce under good manufacturing
practices so we can bring that out around the world.
What AcaVie means is some proportion of
concentrated acai, some proportion
of pulp, some proportion of freeze-dried
This is not the same acai
that you're finding some place else. This is acai
that's been produced in a particular way to deliver
benefits in a particular way.
And one of those benefits that you'll find in our juices
and you won't find other places, is that green film
that you'll see. I do know that some people
in our food industry will look at that and say
Yuck! We need to get rid of that, we need to filter that out
so we have a nice clean and beautiful look product
We don't do that at Monavie. And we don't
do that for a very specific reason
and that's those oils, that green sheen you see
on our glass after you've finished drinking
a glass of MonaVie. Those are monounsaturated fatty acids
oleic acid primarily. The same
kinds of fatty acids that you'll find in heart healthy olive oil.
So the combination of those two things.
the high flavonoid content
that you get from the outside of the berry
the high oleic acid content
that you get from the middle of the berry that's good for your
brain, heart, bones, joints
and your skin. It's good for exactly
what those Harvard studies are telling us.
Every single tissue system in the body. it's one of the key reasons
that people will use MonaVie products
and in a very short amount of time they'll say
You know what? I feel better. I feel better than I did
back there and that's because we're
protecting the body from very important aspects
of cellular damage. We're able to protect those
cell in some very important ways, so that we can
maintain health over time. And we do that
not because we're giving individual components
but because we're giving all of that goodness, all
balanced back together again. It's there in the berry
growing in the jungle. What we've been able to figure out here
at MonaVie is how we can get that out of the jungle
in a sustainable way, that it can be
stabilized and delivered to people around the world.
So that you don't have to be there in Brazil
You can be there in Brazil, we have a very good business in Brazil.
That is benefiting from this blend
of acai, but you can be in Japan, you can be in the
United States, you can be in far flung parts
of the globe and you can be getting that same wonderful goodness
from the Brazilian rainforest. And we do it
through what we call AcaVie.
So I really encourage you to take a look at. Look at our juices
They all have the AcaVie across. Look at our RVL shakes.
There's AcaVie built into that shake so that
you get phytonutrient protection that we have in our
flagship juices. And it's really something that
we do the science, we work with
the local people, we really try to blend that tradition
and science with what we're doing today
with education so people understand what they're putting
into their body and how important that is.
Hey this is Dr. Shawn Talbott. Don't forget to send in your questions
So that we can answer them on future editions
of From The Lab. Just send your emails to the address you see
at the bottom of the screen. Thanks.