Clinical Trial on Sambazon Acai

A new clinical trial investigating the health benefits of acai, the antioxidant and vitamin-rich berry, is adding to the emerging scientific evidence of the fruit's ability to potentially reduce some metabolic risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke. The latest study won top honors during the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine on January 23 and revealed promising initial results for using Sambazon acai to improve vascular health, and lower fasting blood sugar levels.

"This pilot study demonstrated the ability of the Sambazon acai pulp product to significantly lower several markers of cardiovascular risk in a relatively short period of time. Given these promising results, and the biologically active components in the acai fruit, further study is merited," said Dr. Jay Udani, MD, CEO and Medical Director of Medicus Research, a leading contract research organization with functional food experience.

Medicus Research recently conducted a pilot study with 10 slightly overweight, but healthy adult male and female participants (representing 1/3 of the American population). Each study participant consumed 100 grams of Sambazon(R) acai frozen fruit pulp twice daily for one month. Researchers measured participants' baseline fasting plasma glucose, plasma insulin levels, lipid levels (total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides), high sensitivity C-reactive protein and blood pressure. After 30 days of consuming Sambazon(R) acai, participants' fasting glucose, insulin, total cholesterol, and LDL (bad cholesterol) were significantly reduced, as compared to the baseline. In addition, post-prandial (between meals) increases in blood glucose levels were significantly reduced.

"While additional research is needed, this pilot study suggests that in otherwise healthy, overweight adults, daily consumption of acai reduces several markers of metabolic syndrome associated with an increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke," said Jack F. Bukowski, MD, Ph.D., a former Harvard professor and currently Director of the Nutritional Science Research Institute.

This study follows a recently published study showing that acai consumption lowers cholesterol and raises antioxidant activity in rats. Sambazon(R) is committed to scientific and nutritional research about acai and supported the Medicus clinical trial. Sambazon(R) Acai Pure Pulp Packs, which were used in the Medicus study, are a top selling frozen fruit item and available in finer grocery and natural food stores.

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Rainforest allies make headway

International climate negotiators failed last month in Copenhagen to agree on ways to preserve tropical rainforests. But they came closer to crafting a global system to reduce deforestation — an achievement that environmentalists, businesses and nongovernmental organizations attribute to the progress they’ve made over the past year.

“Three years ago, very few people understood this as being a significant issue,” said Jeff Horowitz, co-founder of Avoided Deforestation Partners. “It’s been this quiet, dirty secret that there is an extra amount of pollution coming from tropical rainforests that needs to be dealt with.”

Forests, which store carbon, play a key role in slowing the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. The clear-cutting and burning of forests, largely in Latin America and Southeast Asia, account for nearly 20 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

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Brazil reflects on Lula's last year.

In his last full year as Brazilian leader President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva still commands the political stage here, his popularity at levels most other world leaders would envy.

Now a sympathetic portrayal of his early life is showing in cinemas across the country, although not without creating considerable controversy.

Lula, Son of Brazil, tells how the president was born into poverty in the north east of the country, and how like millions of Brazilians his family headed to the more prosperous south in search of a better life.

It ends as his political career begins as a union activist, arrested during the period of Brazil's military dictatorship and only able to attend his mother's funeral under police guard.

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Growing Demand For Soybeans Threatens Amazon Rainforest

Some 3,000 years ago, farmers in eastern China domesticated the soybean. In 1765, the first soybeans were planted in North America. Today the soybean occupies more U.S. cropland than wheat. And in Brazil, where it spread even more rapidly, the soybean is invading the Amazon rainforest.

For close to two centuries after its introduction into the United States the soybean languished as a curiosity crop. Then during the 1950s, as Europe and Japan recovered from the war and as economic growth gathered momentum in the United States, the demand for meat, milk, and eggs climbed. But with little new grassland to support the expanding beef and dairy herds, farmers turned to grain to produce not only more beef and milk but also more pork, poultry, and eggs. World consumption of meat at 44 million tons in 1950 had already started the climb that would take it to 280 million tons in 2009, a sixfold rise.

This rise was partly dependent on the discovery by animal nutritionists that combining one part soybean meal with four parts grain would dramatically boost the efficiency with which livestock and poultry converted grain into animal protein. This generated a fast-growing market for soybeans from the mid-twentieth century onward. It was the soybean’s ticket to agricultural prominence, enabling soybeans to join wheat, rice, and corn as one of the world’s leading crops.

U.S. production of the soybean exploded after World War II. By 1960 it was close to triple that in China. By 1970 the United States was producing three fourths of the world’s soybeans and accounting for virtually all exports. And by 1995 the fast-expanding U.S. land area planted to soybeans had eclipsed that in wheat.

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