"miracle berry" news and stories

A few blissfully naive years ago, the cranberry-look-alike miracle berry was just an innocent tongue tripper turning lemons sweet and wasabi into doughnut glaze on our palates. Today: The end for world hunger? That's what Chicago chef Homaro Cantu believes. At last week's annual TED conference, Cantu presented his plan to use the berry's natural sweetening effect to turn otherwise inedibly bitter (yet wildly growing) plants -- like grass -- into something more palatable, reports Wired. Just chew the berry and presto -- Kentucky bluegrass tastes like tarragon.

It sounds to good to be true -- a berry that makes sour things taste sweet!

The berry is very real. It's called "miracle fruit -- that's actually what it's called -- though the scientific name is Synsepalum dulcificum for those of you who want to get technical. And more for the technical folks, a protein in the fruit binds to taste buds and alters the tongue's so-called sweet receptors to activate when sour foods are eaten. Sour things taste sweet for about an hour after the berry is eaten.

It may seem just a novelty or a fun foodie trick to do at parties, but there could be some health and medical uses for the berry once the science people figure it out. I can think of a few now: lose weight by tricking your taste buds into thinking that extremely low calorie foods are actually as sweet as dessert, and any other use in which people need a sugar substitute.

[via: Gimundo]

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