The Miracle of Sweetness

                                      Miracle Berries on the Miracle Plant. (Photo: Hamale Lyman)


 I recently ate a fruit which gave me a miraculous experience.   You might like to experience this miracle too.

A few months ago, I visited the conservatory at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Garden.  I always love encountering new plants.  On this day, one of the new plants I discovered was the miracle plant.  They named it miracle plant because when you eat the fruit, it changes sour into sweet. 


The miracle plant (Synsepalum dulcificum) is a tropical plant native to West Africa.  It is a shrub that grows 6 to 15 feet tall.  The fruit is small, a little less than an inch, containing one seed.   It is also known as miracle fruit or miracle berry.


I just had to try eating this fruit.  I went online and ordered a small quantity of Miracle fruit.  They were non-gmo, dried berries grown in Florida.  It is always more fun experiencing a miracle with another person so I asked my son to join me.  We tried turning sour into sweet by eating the miracle fruit first and then eating a lemon.




We got out a lemon and cut it into quarters.  We each chewed two half pieces of miracle fruit for 30 seconds, as instructed on the package, moving it everywhere within our mouths.  Next we swallowed the fruit.  The berry tasted a little bitter to me, but not unpleasant.  It certainly was not sweet.  Then we took a quarter of a lemon and started eating it like an orange.  Of course, my expectation was to be immediately bombarded with a blast of sourness.  Instead, I was surprised to taste a perfectly sweet lemon - A MIRACLE.


The berry has very little sugar.  Instead, it has a chemical known as Miraculin.  Miraculin is a glycoprotein - a carbohydrate attached to a protein.  This chemical itself does not taste sweet.  When taste buds are exposed to Miraculin, the glycoprotein binds to the sweetness receptors.  Miraculin attached to taste buds causes sour tasting foods, like citrus, to be perceived as sweet when eaten.  The effect can last for one to two hours or until the saliva washes away the Miraculin.


There are two other species with the common name miracle fruit or miracle berry.  They also alter the perceived sweetness of foods.  They are Gymnema sylvestre and Thaumatococcus daniellii.  


Gymnema sylvestre does the opposite of Synsepalum dulcificum.  Its leaves contain a chemical, gymnemic acid, that temporarily suppresses the taste of sweetness.  You can eat sugar and it won’t taste sweet.  This plant grows as a perennial woody vine in Asia, Africa and Australia. 


Thaumatococcus daniellii is the natural source of thaumatin, an intensely sweet protein.  When the fleshy fruit is eaten, thaumatin binds to the taste buds causing a sweet sensation.  Thaumatococcus daniellii is a rhizomatous herb native to the rainforests of West Africa and grows 9 to 12 feet in height.  It has been introduced into Australia and Singapore.  At the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, a gene from this plant has been inserted into the cucumber plant to increase its perceived sweetness.


Researchers have successfully created genetically modified lettuce, tomatoes, and E.coli bacteria, all containing Miraculin.  You can probably see where this is going: Extract the Miraculin and put it in pills and processed foods.  


We have evolved to seek out sweet foods because sweetness usually means we are consuming the calories that our bodies need to move and operate.  As you can see, nature has created other molecules (like thaumatin) that can trick us into thinking we are consuming the sugar we need for energy.  This is a reminder that the sweet we experience through our taste buds is only a signal transmitted through our neurons to our brains.  Nature sometimes tricks us by making us think we are getting sugary calories when we are not.  This can be a good thing,


Another plant, called stevia, contains a molecule that fools our tongues into thinking we are consuming sugar.  It is available commercially in the US.  This plant may hold the safe, natural, non-gmo solution to the obesity and diabetes epidemic we are experiencing in the US today.  This is the topic of my next article.  


Thanks for reading.  Please share this blog with a friend.  

You might like to take a look at my most recent books.  They are available in digital and print formats.  You can preview them by clicking this link:

  

https://www.amazon.com/Edwin-McLeod/e/B08TCJTKSW?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000 











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