Miracle fruit

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Miracle Fruit
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Ericales Family: Sapotaceae Genus: Sideroxylon
Binomial name
Sideroxylon dulcificum A.DC.

The Miracle Fruit Plant, sometimes known as Miraculous Berry, (Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum Daniell) is a plant first documented by an explorer named Des Marchais during an 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry off shrubs and chewed it before meals. The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet high in its native habitat, but does not usually grow higher than 5 feet in cultivation, and it produces 2 crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced many months of the year.

Although the berry itself is not sweet, it contains an active glycoprotein molecule, with some trailing carbohydrate chains, called Miraculin. This molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing bitter and sour foods (such as lemons and limes) later consumed to taste sweet. This effect lasts between 30 minutes and as long as two hours. It is not a sweetener, as its effects depend on what you eat afterwards, but has been used to sweeten bitter medicines. It will not however, make sweet foods taste sweeter.

[edit] General information and cultivation

The plant prefers to have a pH as low as 4.5 to 5.8. The Miracle fruit grows well with blueberries. Position free from frost and in partial shade with high humidity. Without the use of plant hormones the seeds have a 24% sprouting success rate. The plants take from 8 - 10 years to bear fruit, but treatments for commercial crops can reduce gestation to less than 4 years.

Attempts have been made to create an artificial sweetener from the fruit, with an idea of developing this for diabetics. However, Miraculin was denied approval for this purpose by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

[edit] References and links

• The Old Sweet Lime Trick by Donna Cannon
• Five Decades with Tropical Fruit, A Personal Journey (2001) by William Francis Whitman
• Miracle berry lets Japanese dieters get sweet from sour from The Guardian
• 'Miracle fruit' yields sweets for dieters from MSNBC
• Miracle fruit facts from the California Rare Fruit Growers
• Miracle Taste - A forum for discussion of miracle fruit
• Beyond Tomorrow Science TV Programme - Feature story of a cafe in Japan that uses such fruit for their dessert
• Recueilli: Miracle Fruit! - A list of foods that work with miracle fruit