What is a taste altering berry that when eaten causes sour or bitter foods to taste sweet?

Answer 1

This is the "Miracle Berry" plant; if you were to eat a berry from it, and then tasted a lemon or other tart/sour food, it would taste sweet. The effect lasts for about an hour. We have one growing in our yard in Hawaii.

Answer 2

The miracle berry is now being called the berry that makes things sweet. Although technically this is not true, it does not make things sweet at all.

What it actually does is make you believe that things taste sweet. It does this by the magic ingredient which is called miraculin. The miraculin is a glycoprotein that coats your tongue, blocking out certain taste bud receptors. Most of the food which is perceived as changing to sweet actually already has sugar content, whether that be sucrose, lactose, glucose or fructose or acetic acids, its just a case of the bitterness or sourness having a stronger tang than the sugar, therefore your tongue tends not to notice the sugar - hence there is no taste of sweetness.

So after taking the miracle berry either as the fresh fruit or in a product such as miracle berry tablets and then noticing that a variety of certain foods taste sweeter then its no wonder the miracle berry is being called the berry that makes things taste sweet.

The actual amount of foods that change taste is very small, probably less than 1%, so the statement that is makes things taste sweet is untrue, actually it should be called the berry that makes some things taste sweet !

The 'some things" or some foods are limited to foods which already contain sugar and are bitter, sour or acidic. An example of this is of course the lemon which is the favourite of most taste trippers and the quickest way to get the wow factor after eating the miracle berry.

Now the lemon contains a lot of natural fructose, but when we eat the lemon as normal the bitterness overcomes the sweetness therefore we don't register much of a sweet taste, however as soon as the bitterness is removed by the miraculin blocking out the taste bud receptors responsible for bitterness, then we can taste a very sweet lemon.

Then what about other foods like vinegar, well as you know vinegar comes from wine - which comes from grapes - which naturally contain fructose, what about cheese, things like blue cheese, cream cheese and cottage cheese are known to taste sweeter after eating the miracle berry - well these contain lactose a sugar that occurs naturally in milk. What about bitter or Guinness - well they also contain a lot of sugar, but we cannot enjoy a sweet taste because the bitterness is the dominant flavour.

So all in all, its not true that the miracle berry makes things taste sweet, if the miracle berry did make things taste sweet then you could eat anything such as meat, fish, pasta etc and it would taste sweet, but it does not, these things have no naturally occurring sugar and therefore they taste exactly as normal and not sweet at all.

So when you are taking your taste trip and you are wondering what foods might 'appear' to taste sweet then ask yourself, does it have any naturally occurring sugars, fructose (sugar found in fruits), lactose (sugar found in milk), vinegar (pickled foods) or glucose and sucrose, if not then there is no point eating it as the taste will be just as it normally is.

So next time you see an article which claims that the miracle berry is the berry that makes things sweet remind yourself that it doesn't really make things sweet at all, it makes things 'appear' to be sweet !