the adventures of teapot the cat

Turn that sour frown upside-down!

Posted on January 16th, 2006

According to crisscross, the miracle fruit tablet can make anything sour taste sweet for up to two hours. I was a little skeptical about a wonderfruit (cue superhero theme) called Miracle Fruit and a miraculin protein, but it looks to be real.

“Tablets made from miracle fruit, which makes sour things taste sweet, went on sale Sunday online. Mitsuharu Shimamura, a 31-year-old horticulturist based in Chita, Aichi Prefecture, established the world’s first technology to make tablets out of the tropical fruit, native to West Africa, which contains a sweet-inducing protein called miraculin.

One pink-colored tablet is made of three miracle fruit berries, Shimamura said. When people eat or lick the fruit’s red berries, any sour thing they eat or drink a minute later tastes sweet for about two hours. This is because the protein miraculin firmly binds to sweet receptor cells in a person’s tongue when sour substances are present. The protein then transmits a false message to the brain, resulting in a strong, sweet taste.”

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