An açaí a day keeps the doctor away! If you subscribe to the current trend developing in North America since about 2005, you may believe this to be the case. Ever since the term "superfruit" was coined, an increasing number of exotic and often difficult to pronounce fruits have been popping up as ingredients in everything from granola bars to your favourite grocery store brand of fat-free yogurt.

But is there a link between long life and vitality and these foreign fruits, or are their supposed benefits false? According to the majority of real scientific evidence, what makes most of these fruits so "super" is their amazing marketing potential. Yes, unfortunately your açaí, goji, lychee and pomegranate smoothie won't be providing your body with any of the magical nutrients that popular advertisers would have you believe. To be sure, they do contain some of the positive antioxidants and vitamins that your body needs to be healthy, but no more than your run-of-the-mill apples and oranges.

In fact, apples, oranges, strawberries, tomatoes, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and grapes (in other words, the fruits most North Americans have been consuming since childhood) all achieve many of the same criteria as the so-called superfruits. The only difference is that they lack the novelty and perceived rarity to be successfully marketed as superfruits. It turns out that, once again, what the general public perceives to be true is far more important than the actual truth. Thanks to clever campaign slogans for the fruits calling them "the future of health" and "superheroes of functionality," most people have willingly accepted the notion that the more unusual-sounding the name, the more healthy the fruit.

Indeed, according to Jeffrey Blumberg, Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Antioxidants Research Laboratory at Tufts University in Boston, "There's no evidence that one type of fruit is better for you than any other variety. They're all good." The idea that certain fruits are "wearing capes" while others are not is preposterous to many nutritionists, who know that the muchtouted antioxidants in superfruits can better be found by eating a healthy variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, rather than obsessing over the latest trend in diet.

The fact of the matter is, all the research going into these "superfruits" has not been going on long enough to give any reliable or conclusive evidence to support their consumption over other more common fruits. The studies tend to be small, short-term and lacking in adequate control groups, not to mention that the studies are usually funded by the very industries who stand to gain from their positive results.

If this sounds fishy to you too, your best bet is to stick with eating the same assortment of fresh fruits you have always enjoyed. Not only are they probably cheaper, they'll save you from experiencing the embarrassment of mispronouncing "açaí" for the tenth time.

(For the record, it's "ah-sigh- EE").