"miraculin" 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.

You probably remember hearing about The Miracle Fruit (containing the mysterious protein miraculin) earlier this year. It makes bitter and sour taste sweet, and, by altering those two flavors, makes everything taste like something else.

Surprise surprise, they turned it into a pill!

Available from ThinkGeek, the Miracle Fruit Tablets come in dodgy-looking packets of ten and will apparently blow your mind so much, they recommend only taking half a tablet to start.

Originally documented in France in 1725, the Miracle Fruit has been experiencing a renaissance of interest since 2007. We attribute the public fascination to the hope that one day cauliflower will taste like ice cream and vinegar will taste like ranch dressing. As people continue to invent crazy diets to lose weight, everyone is on the lookout for a way to make diet food taste more like Snickers bars. We wonder what it does to cabbage soup!

For now, people are mostly using the tablets recreationally. Two pills per person makes one heck of a crazy dinner party!

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