If you’re a fan of acai bowls, I’ve got bad news for you

If you’ve ever thought a tiny purple berry could solve everything wrong in your life, then congratulations, you’re probably enjoying the current acai bowl craze that’s sweeping Australia.

Acai bowls are impossible to miss if you’re someone burdened with a social media account and cursed with a working internet connection – they’re essentially smoothie bowls but with one key, exotic difference. They’re purple, and nobody understands how to pronounce them.

I’m old enough now to have lived through, and ignored, multiple food trends. But the gaping empty stores that once flogged froyo, fried chicken and salted caramel have been revitalised with acai bowl franchises. I’ve had my fair share. Acai bowls are relatively similar to froyo in spirit if not taste – the fun (and flavour) mostly comes from the various toppings and additions. I’ve had a more savoury-style breakfast acai bowl, with granola, shredded coconut and honey, and a sweet one covered in strawberry, icing sugar and chocolate. They were fine, and definitely the most purple thing I’ve eaten in a while.

Acai is a berry from the Amazon, which due to its “antioxidant, hypolipidemic, and anti-inflammatory properties” has long been marketed as a “superfood”. Sure they have healthy properties, but superfoods, as far as I can tell, are largely a way to market weird things that taste bad to rich people who truly believe they can cheat death through the power of money and bits of rare plants. It joins the ranks of past “delicious” superfoods that have health benefits that will change your life, such as wheatgrass shots, bone broth for babies, adding charcoal to everything, and those juice cleanses that clear you out (for therapeutic reasons). Why do all these wellness trends involve either putting things inside you, or violently expelling other things?

The psychology behind superfoods is probably linked more closely to medieval peasants hanging garlic in their houses to ward away vampires than anything to do with medical science, mashing Brazilian berries into a pulp to frighten away the grim reaper. The fact that superfoods are so seasonal, with each fad haunting the cafes of Byron Bay like a Victorian widow in a lighthouse, should be an indication of how much of a scam they are. If they worked, wouldn’t we have a race of ultra-healthy immortal yoga instructors, powered only by wheatgrass and activated almonds, ruling over us all?

The scam relies on taking ingredients considered slightly exotic to western markets, and implying that if we could only ingest them, we could solve all of our bodily agonies. It’s intoxicating to think that a berry from the Amazon could fix the RSI I have from scrolling on my phone, or my phone-related eye strain, or the concussion I got from being hit by a phone. But they’re from the Amazon, you protest. That place is mysterious – that’s where Madame Web’s mum researched spiders. It’s a (food) pyramid scheme.

But the interesting thing about the acai bowl trend is that it’s a returning superfood – it had its moment in the sun back in 2017, beloved by expensive beachside suburbs and life coaches everywhere. Now it’s back, and it’s expanded beyond wellness-seekers to become beloved by beefy gym fellows and food influencers, with hordes of swollen men and Instagrammers lining up to jump on the trend.

It’s also changed form – originally just a classic type of smoothie bowl, topped with granola and square bits of fruit and the like (but purple!), now it’s turned into a kind of soft serve dessert, with an entire galaxy of toppings. The acai bowl is no longer simply breakfast food. It’s billed as a healthier dessert option, which is a ridiculous concept – the entire point of dessert is not to be healthy. To make acai taste good – it’s been likened to having an earthy taste such as “blackberries” or “tea” – it has to be pumped full of sugar anyway, which I would say negates the majority of the health benefits. (It’s fine to have a sugary treat, just don’t pretend you’re doing it for health reasons. It’s part of the delusion – I can fix my broken body by eating something delicious.)

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Pretty much the only other edible thing that’s the same shade of purple are eggplants, and it’s debatable whether they’re actually edible. It’s a weird colour for food to be. It’s my genuine belief that the acai bowl ultimately doesn’t owe its current popularity to any realistic health benefit or hyperbolic superfood lure, but for a simple reason that the smartest and wisest people in our society – Instagram influencers and TikTokkers – instantly recognised: it’s purple. Yet it doesn’t matter how purple something is, it cannot fix your life.