Classroom lesson · Food · 🇧🇷 Brazil

Açaí - the purple superfruit

A tiny berry from the Amazon, served frozen with toppings

What is it?

Açaí (pronounced 'ah-sigh-EE') is a small purple berry that grows on tall palm trees in the Amazon. Brazilians blend the berries with ice into a thick, dark purple bowl, then top it with banana slices, granola, honey or strawberries. It is eaten cold with a spoon, like a smoothie you can scoop.

Tell me more

The açaí palm is one of the tallest trees in the Amazon, sometimes growing 25 metres high - taller than a five-storey building. The berries grow in big bunches near the top. People climb the trees barefoot, hugging the trunk with their feet, to harvest them.

On its own, the berry isn't very sweet. It tastes a bit like a mix of dark chocolate and red wine - which is unusual for a fruit. In bowls today, it's usually mixed with banana or honey to sweeten it up, and topped with things kids love like granola, fruit and a bit of condensed milk.

For Indigenous peoples in the Amazon, açaí has been an important food for thousands of years. Whole families collect it, blend it, and eat it almost every day. It is rich in iron and vitamins, and gives people energy for long days in the forest.

These days, açaí bowls are popular all over the world. You can find them in cafés in London, Tokyo, New York and Sydney. But the berries on top of every one of those bowls grew on a palm tree in the Amazon, and were picked by someone who climbed up to get them.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01If a fruit grows 25 metres up a tree, how would you pick it? Would you climb, or invent a tool?
  2. 02Açaí isn't very sweet on its own. Why might people like a food that isn't sweet?
  3. 03What's a food from far away that you've tried? Did you like it? Was it surprising?
Try this

Classroom activity

Design your own perfect smoothie bowl. Draw it on A4 from above (so you can see the toppings). Label each ingredient and where in the world you think it comes from.