Cheri Walters

Assume nothing.  Least not when your taste buds are on the ride of their life.

Here’s how it works:

• Insert one Miracle Berry into your mouth
• Scrape the pulp off the seed
• Swirl it around for a solid minute or two and you’re off to the races.

For the next two hours the miracle of the berry will transform sour and acidic sensations into sweet tastes.  This means stout beer will taste like a chocolate shake, cheese like frosting, grapefruit like pixie sticks, and lemon and lime slices will be like sweet morsels of love (wink).

No joke!

The Miracle Berry, aka Synsepalum dulcificum, hails from West Africa and was originally documented by French explorer Chevalier des Marchais on an 18th century excursion in search of exotic fruits.  He noticed local tribes chewing the berry before meals.

The berry contains a glycoprotein called Miraculin consisting of 191 amino acids and carbohydrate chains. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this glycoprotein binds to the taste buds.  Then, when sour or acidic foods are consumed it sends a message to the brain that the food is sweet.

Depending how long you leave the pulp in your mouth, this sensation can last from thirty minutes on up to two hours.

‘Flavor Tripping Parties’ have popped up in the past couple years where people are experimenting with everything from Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, and pickles… to maple syrup, tobasco sauce and wild assortments of fruit.  Apparently, cheap tequila tastes like fresh lemonade.  I’d be curious to try some high acid wines like German Riesling or Vinho Verde.

Scientists have proven that Miraculin is not harmful.  It only affects your taste buds and does not change the food’s chemistry.  Therefore, your mouth and stomach remain vulnerable to the high acids, from fruits like lemon, that may cause irritations if consumed in large quantities.  As for the berry itself, it does not have much flavor on its own and its seed is bitter.

There are several places to purchase the Miracle Berry online.  It’s available in whole fruit form, as freeze-dried granules or as tablets.  Obviously the freeze dried granules and tablets have a longer shelf-life.

You can get them in tablet form through Amazon.  However if you are looking to experience the actual berries, a site I recommend is MiracleFruitMan.com, who I found on recommendation from The New York Times.  ’The Man’ sells whole berries in small quantity, on up to bulk.  A freezer pack of 30 berries costs about $90 with overnight shipping.

Enjoy, and let me know about your adventures with the Miracle Berry.

Photo Credits: Top image provided by jasoneppink, Creative Commons.  Miracle Berry image courtesy of Wikipedia.