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Uploaded: May 24, 2018
A new açaí bowl shop is now open at 650 Castro St. in downtown Mountain View.
Vitality Bowls, a national franchise that got its start in California, serves made-to-order açaí bowls (a thick, smoothie-like blend of thesuperfruit,typically topped with granola, fruit and other ingredients) as well as smoothies, fresh juices, soups, salads and paninis. The bowls have no fillers such as ice, frozen yogurt, added sugar or artificial preservatives.
An array of açaí and other bowls at Vitality Bowls. Photo courtesy Vitality Bowls.
This newest location is being run by Angelo Camacho, the 18-year-old nephew of Vitality Bowls founder Tara Gilad. Gilad opened the first Vitality Bowls in San Ramon in 2011 after coping with the challenges presented by her young daughter's severe food allergies.
Growing up "surrounded by healthy foods and successful entrepreneurs," including his aunt, Camacho dreamed of opening his own business, the recent high school graduate said in a press release.
Camacho opened the Mountain View outpost on May 10, marking the company's 50th location. There are nearby outposts in Palo Alto and Redwood City.
The Mountain View location replaced another açaí bowl shop, Mahalo Bowl, which closed in January.
Check out the Vitality Bowls menu here. There will also be nitrogen cold-brew coffee and organic kombucha available on tap.
Dedicated açaí bowl shops have been popping up throughout the Midpeninsula in recent years.
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Comments
Posted by Acai,a resident of Old Mountain View,
on May 24, 2018 at 9:35 am
Acai is a registered user.
It's scary how these açaí bowl places can advertise themselves as "healthy" when what they're selling has WAY more sugar than a bowl of ice cream or a 32 oz soda. :/
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Posted by @ Acai,a resident of another community,
on May 24, 2018 at 12:28 pm
If "Acai" finds that point scary, others might be scarier. Popular perceptions of nutritional science have long been dominated by misunderstandings, advertising, and fads.
50 years ago, public-health guidance disdained all saturated fats in favor unsaturated fats of any kind, supporting the processed-fats industry's artifically hydrogenated vegetable oils, high in trans-bond fatty acids (scarce in nature). A leading advocate of those artificial fats, incidentally, was the "Center for Science in the Public Interest," a group dominated not by scientists but lawyers. It's now known that trans-bond fatty acids promote serious health problems, while some saturated fats are necessary nutrients.
Today it's fashionable to avoid wheat products, on the claims that (a) they promote obesity and (b) wheat was "genetically engineered" to increase gluten. Realities: French and Italians eat twice as much wheat as Americans, but have one-third the obesity rate; wheat gluten content has remained unchanged for centuries (and GMO wheat isn't commercially available here); many people harboring those misconceptions are alive to do so because gluten grains nourished generations of their ancestors.
This month a parallel blog post by Laura Stec advertises as "sugar free" a dessert recipe based on dates: Web Link Dried dates are over 60% sugars by weight; they and other ripe fruits deliver a typical natural sugar mix (especially fructose, glucose, and their compound, sucrose, aka table sugar, which reverts to fructose and glucose when digested), roughly like honey or high-fructose corn syrup; any biochemist will explain that these simple sugars have the same metabolic effects in human bodies regardless of source. Natural-fruit sources like dates do contain other nutrients unlike refined sugars; but calling a date-based recipe "sugar-free" is a real-life modern example of Orwellian euphemism.
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Posted by Amelia,a resident of Old Mountain View,
on May 28, 2018 at 11:22 am
These bowls taste much less sugary than the ones served at this location before. And the listed calorie count is a lot lower. Probably because of the reduced sugar? Anyways, my first impression of this place is good.
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