With A Chocolate Flavor? Brazilian Scientists Create Honey Made From Cocoa Shells and Promise to Revolutionize The Market With A Healthy and Sustainable Product

Written by Felipe Alves da Silva

Published on 20/10/2025 at 10:33

Mel com sabor de chocolate criado por pesquisadores da Unicamp a partir da casca do cacau.

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Researchers at Unicamp Transformed the Waste from Chocolate Production into a Tasty and Ecological Innovation: A Honey Enriched with Caffeine and Theobromine that Combines Flavor, Nutrition, and Sustainability

A group of scientists from State University of Campinas (Unicamp) has just developed a surprising creation: a chocolate-flavored honey. The innovation was born from the combination of honey from native stingless bees and the cocoa pod husk, a waste product that is normally discarded in chocolate production. The result is a functional food, full of bioactive compounds and with great potential for use in the food and cosmetic industries.

According to a study published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, the honey acts as a natural edible solvent, extracting stimulating compounds such as theobromine and caffeine from the husks — substances known for their positive effects on heart health and for their energetic action. The method used, called ultrasound-assisted extraction, not only maintained the properties of the original honey but also enriched it with phenolic compounds, powerful natural antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.

A Honey that Resembles Chocolate and Can Change the Future of Healthy Eating

Although the researchers are still conducting sensory tests to evaluate the taste and texture of the new honey, the initial results have excited the Unicamp team. According to the scientists themselves, depending on the ratio between honey and cocoa husk, the product presents a distinct chocolate flavor, in addition to a pleasant texture and deeper color.

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Native Bees and Brazilian Biodiversity as Allies of Innovation

One of the most interesting differentials of the study is the use of native Brazilian bees, known for not having stingers and for producing honey with higher water content and lower viscosity. These characteristics make the honey more suitable to act as a natural solvent during the extraction process.

The scientists tested honey from five species common in Brazil: borá (Tetragona clavipes), jataí (Tetragonisca angustula), mandaçaia (Melipona quadrifasciata), mandaguari (Scaptotrigona postica), and moça-branca (Frieseomelitta varia). Among them, the honey from the mandaguari presented the ideal balance between water and viscosity, making it the chosen one to optimize the technique.

According to Bragagnolo, the method can be easily adapted to other types of honey, depending on regional availability and climatic conditions. “Honey is very sensitive to external conditions, such as temperature and storage. Therefore, the process can be adjusted for each local variety,” explains the researcher, reinforcing the sustainable potential and low environmental impact of the technique.

Clean Technology: How Ultrasound Extraction Works

The ultrasound-assisted extraction process is considered a milestone in green chemistry, as it is faster, safer, and more ecological. It uses a metal probe — similar to a pen — that vibrates at high frequency within the container containing the honey and cocoa husks. These vibrations generate microbubbles that implode, raising the local temperature and breaking the cell walls of the plant material. Thus, the bioactive compounds migrate to the honey, enriching it.

In addition to efficiency, the method reduces the need for chemicals and energy, making it an environmentally friendly alternative for the food and cosmetics industries. The scientists are also planning new studies to understand the impact of ultrasound on the microbiology of honey, as the process may eliminate undesirable microorganisms and prolong the shelf life of the product.

According to the article from Unicamp, this technique reinforces the role of Brazilian scientific research in creating solutions that combine innovation, sustainability, and the utilization of natural waste. With this, the country positions itself at the forefront of a new generation of functional foods and high-value natural ingredients.

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With A Chocolate Flavor? Brazilian Scientists Create Honey Made From Cocoa Shells and Promise to Revolutionize The Market With A Healthy and Sustainable Product

Researchers at Unicamp Transformed the Waste from Chocolate Production into a Tasty and Ecological Innovation: A Honey Enriched with Caffeine and Theobromine that Combines Flavor, Nutrition, and Sustainability

A Honey that Resembles Chocolate and Can Change the Future of Healthy Eating

Native Bees and Brazilian Biodiversity as Allies of Innovation

Clean Technology: How Ultrasound Extraction Works

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With A Chocolate Flavor? Brazilian Scientists Create Honey Made From Cocoa Shells and Promise to Revolutionize The Market With A Healthy and Sustainable Product

Researchers at Unicamp Transformed the Waste from Chocolate Production into a Tasty and Ecological Innovation: A Honey Enriched with Caffeine and Theobromine that Combines Flavor, Nutrition, and Sustainability

A Honey that Resembles Chocolate and Can Change the Future of Healthy Eating

Native Bees and Brazilian Biodiversity as Allies of Innovation

Clean Technology: How Ultrasound Extraction Works

Scientists enter a narrow, flooded cave 500 meters deep and find giant dinosaur footprints on the ceiling measuring up to 1.25 meters, preserved in such a rare way that a new type of trace had to be created.

A giant half-ton ring fell in Kenya from space, and more than a year later, scientists still do not know where it came from.

Seen from space, an image taken by an astronaut shows an unlikely oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert, protected by a terrain that slows the advance of sand, surrounded by green circles, remnants of an extinct lake and nearly 10,000 years of preserved history.

In Botswana, a salt flat of up to 16,000 km² that was once an African megalake spends months as an absolute white desert, but during the rainy season it transforms into a shallow sea that reappears from nowhere and can be seen from space in the middle of southern Africa.

Bavarian archaeologists unearthed a medieval skeleton that had an articulated iron hand in place of its left arm, and the discovery reveals that doctors were already creating sophisticated prosthetics over 500 years ago.

For the first time, scientists have mapped the Etna magma system in almost real time and discovered where the volcano was storing large volumes of molten material before years of eruptions, revealing an underground reservoir that fills and reorganizes like a living organism beneath the mountain.

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