Supplement details

Product Name: Acerola Cherry

Uptake Blend: Black Pepper extract (10% piperine), Ginger extract (5% Ginerol), Cumin extract (10:1)

9 parts Vitamin C 1 part Uptake Blend

Scientific Name: Malpighia emarginata

Other Known Names: West Indian cherry, seriz, Barbados cherry and wild crepe myrtle

What is it? Acerola cherry - natural vitamin C
Malpighia emarginata, a bushy evergreen shrub from the Yucatán, the Caribbean and the northern edge of South America, now farmed mostly in Brazil. It carries small, thin-skinned, three-lobed red fruit that look like cherries and taste nothing like them, tart, almost sour-apple.

Weight for weight it is one of the richest natural sources of vitamin C on earth: a fresh acerola runs at roughly 1,500-2,000 mg of vitamin C per 100 g of fruit, against about 50 mg for an orange and 60 for a lemon.

Why the name. "Acerola" is a Spanish word borrowed from Arabic that originally described a different Mediterranean tree; the conquistadors saw a red fruit and reused it. In the islands it's cereza de Barbados, Barbados cherry, or West Indian cherry; in Brazil simply acerola. Botanically it's no relation to a cherry at all. Vitamin C's chemical name, ascorbic acid, means "anti-scurvy", from scorbutus, the old medical Latin, one of the few nutrients named after the thing it prevents (I wonder why ?)

How long people have used it. The Taíno and Maya were eating acerola before Columbus, so at least five hundred years documented and no doubt far longer. Spanish and Portuguese ships spread it through the Caribbean and to Brazil by the 1600s.

Its vitamin C content was first measured at the University of Puerto Rico in 1945 by a team led by Conrado Asenjo, and for a few years afterwards it was a Cold War crop, the US Army looked at it as a ration-pack vitamin source before synthetic ascorbic acid got cheap. 

Brazil planted it seriously from the 1980s and now grows most of the world's supply, largely for the Japanese market, where acerola drinks have been a supermarket fixture since Nichirei launched one in 1986.

Vitamin C as an idea goes back further. James Lind, a Scottish naval surgeon, ran what's usually called the first controlled clinical trial aboard HMS Salisbury in 1747, splitting twelve scurvied sailors into six pairs and giving each pair a different remedy; the two on oranges and lemons were back on duty within a week.

The Admiralty took nearly fifty years to act on it, but from 1795 lime juice was issued fleet-wide, which is where "limey" comes from. The vitamin itself was isolated by Albert Szent-Györgyi in Szeged in 1928-32, from Hungarian paprika, of all things, because he needed a source in bulk, and it earned him the Nobel Prize in 1937.

Who used it. Caribbean and Brazilian households for centuries; the Japanese, more than anyone, for the last forty years; and the Royal Navy, and every child since who's been told to eat their oranges.

Which part of the plant is used ? Fruit

Strength / Specs ? 17% Vitamin C

What exactly is in the Veg Capsules ? Acerola Cherry extract in veg capsules.

What exactly do we get ? Each Capsule has 666.9mg of Cherry extract which equals to 113.3mg of natural vitamin C + our Uptake Blend 74.1mg (Black Pepper extract (10% piperine), Ginger extract (5% Ginerol), Cumin extract (10:1))

9 parts Vitamin C 1 part Uptake Blend

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