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Healthyish Loves It is our weekly column where we tell you about the stuff we can’t live without. See our past recommendations here!
Herbal teas and brews can be made by extracting ginger, orange zest, and even rose petals, but avocado pits? The idea wasn’t far-fetched for food scientists Sheetal Bahirat and Zuri Masud, who met in Drexel University’s culinary science masters program in 2017. “I was making guacamole one day and I had so many seeds (a.k.a. pits). I thought to myself, I am such a hypocrite if I am studying food waste and here creating more,” Bahirat says. She partnered with Masud to launch Hidden Gems Beverage Company last August, a women-owned, minority-owned, and Philadelphia-based beverage company that aims to utilize food waste in creative ways. Reveal Avocado Brew, a subtly sweet kombucha-like beverage, is made from cold brewed avocado seeds, apple cider vinegar, monk fruit, and other natural flavors. The line includes grapefruit-lavender, rose-mint, and mango-ginger.
“Extracting avocado seeds is nothing new,” Bahirat says. “People in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Mexico have been using them to treat diarrhea, stomachaches, and even hypertension for years and years.” But before moving ahead with production, the team needed to get FDA approval. Conducting the necessary clinical trials would require thousands of dollars, so Bahirat dedicated her graduate thesis for Drexel University’s culinary science program to getting a “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) designation from the FDA. According to Bahirat’s thesis research, many health benefits are in the seeds that consumers throw away—including antioxidants, which are known for helping inflammation. Once they were able to get the GRAS designation, formulation testing began.
An important part of their development process was ensuring that every aspect is sustainable, from rescuing seeds bound for restaurant trash cans to packaging the brew in recycled bottles. “When we first started testing, we would get avocado seeds from restaurants who were just going to throw them away,” Masud says. “We can stop that from happening.” Today, Reveal’s pits come from restaurants like Juno and Rosy’s Taco Bar in Philadelphia and Tacombi in New York, who save and freeze the avocado seeds after the flesh has been used for various preparations. Bahirat and Masud gather the seeds, which are cleaned and processed at the Food Innovation Center at Rutgers University.
As someone who has jumped on and off the flavored kombucha train, I can honestly say this beverage is my new favorite. It has less sugar than leading kombucha brands and only 15 calories a bottle. But using a bottle of mango-ginger to make a Moscow Mule is the real tea!
