Dear Health-Conscious Reader,
The first time I cracked one open I couldn’t believe the exotic, chocolaty-vanilla smell.
Here I was in one of the most remote parts of the Amazon, looking for healing herbs to bring back for patients at my clinic. And instead I had found the “Food of the Gods.”
That’s the Greek name for the tree that produces one of the sweetest, creamiest fruits I have ever eaten.
It’s called cupuaçu (coo-poo-ah-SOO). Have you heard of it?
Let me tell you the story of how I first experienced cupuaçu…
Andrea is a small town doctor I met in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. He lives in the very tiny, quaint town of Bela Vista deep in the Amazon near the center of South America.
His father was the first white man in the area. He was a Dutch missionary who had to take a helicopter and then a boat to even reach this very, very remote part of Brazil. He came from the Netherlands, and worked with the locals who had never been exposed to white people at all.
I was having a meeting with Andrea, talking about how much things had changed. And how there were only a few isolated pockets, deep in the jungle, that had not been influenced by white people.
He was going to take me to them. And while we were having this meeting Andrea’s mother said, “Oh, those are the people who introduced us to cupuaçu.”
“What’s cupuaçu?”
“You’ve never heard of it?”
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She brought out the fruit for me to try… and then she made me a milkshake.
And I don’t think I could describe that milkshake with words. It was just incredible. It had a tropical fruit aroma and flavor, but a very distinct cocoa-vanilla aftertaste. It was like a cross between berries, chocolate, vanilla and pineapple.
Cupuaçu only ripens during the rainy season from January through April. It’s so prized everywhere you go in the Amazon River basin and South America that sellers run out every year.
I was lucky enough to be there during season and I got to taste it.
It has such a mild, sweet taste that South Americans have been using it as soothing medicine for centuries. Doctors give patients cupuaçu seeds to chew to relieve stomach pains.
Shamans used to bless juice made from cupuaçu pulp, and give it to women having difficult births.
When modern researchers looked at cupuaçu, they discovered two previously unknown flavonoids, theograndins I and II.
Flavonoids are antioxidant compounds that provide the color in many fruits and vegetables. They stem from the seeds, skin and certain other parts of fermenting plants, and they help prevent hardening of the arteries. Flavonoids also improve blood flow and blood pressure.
They tested the two theograndins, and found that type I is a potent antioxidant, while type II kills cancer cells.1
Cupuaçu contains nine other antioxidants. Four of them are glucuronides. They bind to toxins that your liver traps, and helps flush them from your system.
Another is epicatechin, an antioxidant that other members of the chocolate family have. It acts like insulin, helping lower your blood sugar when you eat cupuaçu, even though it’s creamy and sweet.
South Americans have used cupuaçu for energy for thousands of years. One of the reasons is that cupuaçu contains theobromine, a stimulant similar to caffeine. But theobromine doesn’t act on your central nervous system as much as caffeine. So you don’t get the shakes and jitters.
Cupuaçu also has quercetin, an energy-booster you may have heard of. In fact a study by the Arnold School of Health at the University of South Carolina showed quercetin can dramatically increase energy and endurance in active, healthy adults.2
Another reason cupuaçu gives you energy is that it’s full of saturated fatty acids – the good kind of fat. Your body can pack these kinds of fats together very tightly. This let’s your body store a lot of energy very densely.
Your body also uses fatty acids to make hormone-like substances that regulate blood pressure, blood clotting, cholesterol, immunity and your response to injury and infection.
The sweet-smelling, exotic-tasting pulp fills most of the inside of the fruit. People in the Amazon basin use it to make different kinds of drinks, ice cream, jam and dessert tarts.
It’s very difficult to get fresh cupuacu in the United States. But fortunately, you don’t have to go to the Amazon jungle like I did to try cupuaçu. You can now find different cupuaçu products in health food stores.
Mostly you’ll find it in ice cream and juices. You might see cupuaçu included in various energy drinks, but you don’t get the full effect that way. The best thing to do if you can’t get fresh cupuaçu is to find cupuaçu powder, or frozen cupuaçu pulp.
When you make the juice, you’ll get a rich, buttery-smooth, tropical-looking drink like a poured milk shake with a fruity but chocolaty taste.
You can also find cupuaçu in skin creams and even shampoo. What they do is press the seeds to release the oil, and make cupuaçu butter.
All those fatty acids are excellent for keeping your skin soft and elastic. Plus they have an anti inflammatory effect, and create an effective skin barrier that stops moisture loss.
We like cupuaçu so much, I have been working hard to get it out of the Brazilian rainforest for you.
In fact, I am using it in my new and improved ubiquinol, so keep an eye out for it. It will be a wafer instead of a pill so that you can taste the great flavor of cupuaçu just like I did that day in Brazil.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
[1] Yang, H., Protiva, P., Cui, B., et al, "New bioactive polyphenols from Theobroma grandiflorum." J Nat Prod. 2003 Nov;66(11):1501-4.
[2] “Arnold School Studies Benefits of Quercetin”, University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health, http://www,sc,edu.