Miracle Berry: a Tasty Treat and Diet Idea

So recently I helped put on a “flavor tripping” party, with one of my close friends. The theme? The little-heard of miracle berry. Native to Africa, it seems the only place the berry can be cultivated in the US is Florida. And I know what you are thinking – no, this berry is not a drug. It’s completely digested and has no neuro-active components (It doesn’t mess with your brain). It does, however, mess with your nerves, more specifically with the nerves in your tongue. The berry’s pulp contains a special protein which binds to taste buds. The result? Sour tastes sweet, sweet tastes so-so, and many things taste different from usual. When you first put it in your mouth it tastes sour, but as it touches your tongue, that sour taste turns sweet slowly. It’s easily one of the stranger things you will have a chance to eat. And now I’ll run you through a list of what we got for our party and my experiences with it.

1) Grapefruit – delicious. Usually grapefruit is bitter and sour, but after the berry it is very pleasantly sweet. Definitely something I’d eat again (and again, and again)

2) Lemons – SWEET! It tastes like some kind of super-sweet drink, but with some of the sensation of the lemon’s acidity.

3) Limes – like lemons, but obviously different in flavor.

4) Salt and Vinegar potato chips – sweet and salty. Very pleasant to snack on!

5) Tomatoes – little bite-sized tomatoes pop in your mouth and are sweet – almost like some kind of candy.

6) Granny Smith Apples – pretty mundane actually. They just taste like regular sweet apples.

7) Bleu Cheese – very strange actually. It tasted sweet, but still had the smell and some of the flavor of the bleu cheese. Hard to explain actually.

8) Goat Cheese – very nice. Its flavor varied from semi-sweet icing to a vaguely cheesecakey flavor. One of my favorites.

9) Cottage cheese – quite sweet and very tasty. Not the best, but good.

10) Cream cheese – easily one of the best. It was like eating cheesecake!

11) Oranges – tasted sweeter than usual, pretty mundane actually.

12) Red Wine – tasted very sweet, somewhat like white wine. Pretty tasty.

13) White Wine – Tasted sweeter than usual, but still like itself. Somewhat mundane.

14) Guinness – Tasted vaguely chocolate-y and bitter. A great drink.

15) Hot sauce – tasted sweet and burned the lips, but the tongue felt find. It actually tasted pretty good!

16) Dijon Mustard – very, very difficult to explain. This was easily the strangest thing to try. Not my favorite, but I’d recommend it for its novelty.

17) Sour Patch Kids and Sour Skittles – just like regular sweet candy. Good, but there’s better stuff.

18) Dill Pickles – since they became sweet, they tasted like regular sweet pickles. Not the best thing out there.

19) Vinegar – obscenely sweet. And it retained the vinegar kick. Makes a great shot.

20) Refined lemon juice – like drinking candy water. Good, but I liked the Guinness more.

So there you have a list of 20 things to try next time you get miracle berry (or for your first time). I can’t help but think there’s some chance that a diet could be adapted to using miracle berry. Well, a fully fledged diet might not be feasible, but I think miracle berry might be useful for the people who tend to “cheat” on their diets. Instead of eating something like candy or cake when the need for something sweet arises, for example miracle berry and grapefruit can be eaten. The only problems are the price of the berries and their tendency to go bad swiftly. If you want to try it though, my friend recommends www.miraclefruitman.com/ for your miracle berry needs. Just be sure to have some Tums in case you eat too much acidic food!