Maybe not a miracle, but still pretty cool

So when I first heard about miracle fruit, my thoughts were-"Here we go again, another hyped up super food that's going to cure everything from a hang nail to cancer." As is often the case, however, I was wrong.

I was reading a study conducted by another grad student on the subject and was surprised to discover miracle fruit is actually a berry native to West Africa which has been said to cause a sour food to taste sweet. Apparently the fruit contains a protein that has been named miraculin (duh) which binds to sweet receptors cells on the tongue. During times of a low pH in the mouth, the receptors get stimulated by the protein. The sour taste in sour foods is caused by hydrogen ions dropping the pH in the mouth and causing an acidic environment. The idea is to consume miracle fruit and then eat something sour and it will taste sweet instead. Miracle!

Although I've never had it myself, miracle fruit isn't supposed to have a taste, making it a possible option to explore in the way of sweeteners. In fact, the study I read was interested in miracle fruit to help those attempting to lose weight. The idea is that consuming miracle fruit before a low-calorie diet/sour food would increase the satisfaction of the food, thus lowering the desire for sweets and extra calories. I would love to reference the study, but it hasn't been published yet.

Exciting stuff! I'm sure we're going to be hearing a lot more about miracle fruit. However, I would like to change the name to something less bombastic. I mean making sour foods taste sweet isn't exactly a miracles. Maybe-that's-pretty-cool fruit, or confuse-the-hell-out-of-your-mouth fruit. But miracle fruit? Seems a little dramatic to me. By the way, anyone ever tried it? Just curious what people think of this outside of the study.