Move over the acai—the Amazon has more “superfoods” to offer

In a laboratory inside a renovated warehouse on the banks of a rippling brown river in Belem, Brazil, machines are sorting candidates for the next global “superfood.”

Cupuaçu… Tapirpa… Pacaba… Like acai berries – this exotic fruit is rich in antioxidants, fiber and fatty acids.

If Brazil achieves its goal, it could soon be appearing on your social media pages and being sold in trendy cafes in the UK, Europe and the US.

It is part of a bold plan by the country, which is hosting the UN COP30 climate talks, to tackle climate change, protect nature and create wealth in the face of significant regional poverty.

“There are a lot of superfoods in the jungle that people don’t know about,” says Max Petrucci, founder of local company Mahta, which sells cocoa powder and Brazil nuts for shakes.

The drink he offered me to try is stout and tastes like chocolate without the sugar.

“We focus first on the nutrition and health benefits these Amazonian ingredients provide,” he explains.

But he explains that the second benefit is “social and environmental.” He says they pay fair prices and only buy from farmers who practice sustainable agriculture.

It sounds like a marketing pitch, and the company’s impressive packaging promises “ancestral ingredients” and “the power of purple fruits from the forest.”

Scientific research on the benefits of “superfoods” is limited, however It is generally recognized that eating Amazonian fruits is good for you.

Larissa Bueno, who also works at Mahta, explains that they only sell dried foods – “similar to Hoyle in the UK,” she says.

Transporting raw fruits that decompose within days of being picked is expensive. But if companies freeze dry ingredients and turn them into powders to sell to supermarkets or ship abroad, “it preserves more of the nutritional value, and it’s a smart way to preserve more economic value in Brazil,” she explains.

The laboratory in Belém’s Bioeconomy Park helps small businesses test new methods of preserving fruit.

“People have been eating from these forests for over 10,000 years,” says Max. “There are many, many undiscovered superfoods.”

The Amazon rainforest, covering an area of ​​6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles), has always been full of natural riches. But its vast ecosystem has been degrading for decades, as tracts are cut down to sell timber or make space for livestock or crops such as soybeans.

This has damaged one of the Earth’s great protectors against climate change – trees that absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Unusually, More than two-thirds of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions come from land use and agricultureinstead of energy like most countries. These emissions mainly stem from cutting down forests or growing huge amounts of food.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has promised to halve deforestation by 2030. In the 12 months to July 2025, rates reached their lowest level in 11 years.

But the forest is a resource. The approximately 30 million people living in the Amazon region and throughout Brazil need and want to earn a living.

Brazil pushes the idea of ​​building a prosperous economy through the sustainable use of natural resources, conserving nature to protect the vitality of the Earth, and developing valuable products including fuel, medicines and food.

Building this “bioeconomy” features strongly in the National Climate Action Plan.

Sara Sampaio runs a small coffee company that grows coffee beans in the shade of trees, using a method called agroforestry — or agriculture that helps grow forests.

It works with about 200 farming families in the Apoé region, which has one of the highest rates of deforestation.

“We grow indigenous Amazon trees and coffee together,” she says. “The trees remain coffee plants and farmers can also grow their own food around those plants.”

“When the coffee plant dies, the trees remain the forest, so they help restore the Amazon.”

Her fresh brew has a light, fruity flavour, and she’s proud that three of her coffees were selected among the top 30 in Brazil in the national Coffee of the Year competition.

“If we want to stop cutting down more trees, we have to provide people with an alternative income and a sustainable way of living,” Sarah says.

Whatever your next Amazonian superfood is, you’ll need an acai challenge. The purple berries are grown and eaten in large quantities in northern Brazil and are sold for around £10 ($13) per juice bowl in parts of London.

Damien Benoit sells acai ice cream in Europe. “It is very high in antioxidants, fibre, unsaturated fatty acids, and various minerals that make it very popular among people who exercise,” he says.

He works with families who maintain four hectares of açaí plants in the forest “with the minimum number of species per hectare that need to be monitored.”

“We make sure children go to school, and gender equality is a big topic for us,” he says.

These small businesses alone cannot feed millions of people, and so far they have thrived thanks to grants or capital from charities and funds that invest in companies that aim to protect nature.

There are questions about the extent to which it can be expanded.

If acai production expands to include many industrial-sized farms, it could start to cause the same problems that people like Damian are trying to solve.

But there’s a reason the word “bioeconomy” is plastered all over UN climate talks.

“We need to move away from a world dependent on fossil fuels – that much is clear,” says Anna Young, director of the Center for Environment and Society at Chatham House.

“If we didn’t have bio-based solutions, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” she says.

This is by no means a magic solution to the problem of how to replace fossil fuels with clean energy and use the land in a way that protects nature.

Brazil also promised to quadruple the use of biofuels, which may be controversial, by 2035. Biofuels such as ethanol are often touted as an alternative to fossil fuels, but they may lead to deforestation as demand increases for burning crops to make fuel.

Some fear this will lead to unsustainable extraction of timber or sugarcane for export abroad, burning and the theft of indigenous land.

Ms. Yang says it is necessary to put safeguards in place such as strong regulation.

“Not all biotransformations are good,” she says.

“If it destroys the natural environment or they don’t have good social practices, it doesn’t solve the original problem.”