Wise Young
04-25-2007, 04:22 PM
This is apparently from the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=7335
To Make Lemons Into Lemonade, Try 'Miracle Fruit'
Arlington, Va. - At a party here one recent Friday, Jacob Grier stood on a chair, pulled out a plastic bag full of small berries, and invited everyone to eat one apiece. "Make sure it coats your tongue," he said.
Mr. Grier's guests were about to go under the influence of miracle fruit, a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet.
Within minutes of consuming the berries, guests were devouring lime wedges as if they were candy. Straight lemon juice went down like lemonade, and goat cheese tasted as if it was "covered in powdered sugar," said one astonished partygoer. A rich stout beer seemed "like a milkshake," said another.
After languishing in obscurity since the 1970s, miracle fruit, or Synsepalum dulcificum, is enjoying a small renaissance. In-the-know food lovers from Hawaii to Finland are seeking out the berry as a culinary curiosity. In Japan, it's freeze-dried and canned or sold in tablets. Some restaurants there have featured it as an avant-garde dessert, including at Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental hotel. So has the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where two miracle-fruit shrubs are planted in the hotel's garden.
Growers like Curtis Mozie of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., are racing to keep up with the recent demand. The 63-year-old retired postman has cultivated the slow-growing shrub for a decade, and now says he has hundreds of them at a nursery near his home.
<more>
It is actually called miracle fruit that can be grown indoors in the U.S.
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/miracle_fruit4.jpg
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/miracle_fruit.htm
Miracle Fruit
Synsepalum dulcificum
a.k.a. Miracle Berry
A relatively tasteless berry with an amazing side-effect. After eating one miracle fruit, sour things will instantly taste sweet. Eating even the sourest of lemons, one will taste only sugary sweetness. The effect lasts an hour or two. The miracle fruit is a remarkable natural sweetener that is virtually unknown to much of the world.
According to Wikipedia, the active ingredient called "miraculin" not only turns sour to sweet but also bitter to sweet (Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_fruit)). Makes the concept of saccharin sweetness a bit more comforting than "miraculin sweet".
Wise.
http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=7335
To Make Lemons Into Lemonade, Try 'Miracle Fruit'
Arlington, Va. - At a party here one recent Friday, Jacob Grier stood on a chair, pulled out a plastic bag full of small berries, and invited everyone to eat one apiece. "Make sure it coats your tongue," he said.
Mr. Grier's guests were about to go under the influence of miracle fruit, a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet.
Within minutes of consuming the berries, guests were devouring lime wedges as if they were candy. Straight lemon juice went down like lemonade, and goat cheese tasted as if it was "covered in powdered sugar," said one astonished partygoer. A rich stout beer seemed "like a milkshake," said another.
After languishing in obscurity since the 1970s, miracle fruit, or Synsepalum dulcificum, is enjoying a small renaissance. In-the-know food lovers from Hawaii to Finland are seeking out the berry as a culinary curiosity. In Japan, it's freeze-dried and canned or sold in tablets. Some restaurants there have featured it as an avant-garde dessert, including at Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental hotel. So has the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where two miracle-fruit shrubs are planted in the hotel's garden.
Growers like Curtis Mozie of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., are racing to keep up with the recent demand. The 63-year-old retired postman has cultivated the slow-growing shrub for a decade, and now says he has hundreds of them at a nursery near his home.
<more>
It is actually called miracle fruit that can be grown indoors in the U.S.
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/miracle_fruit4.jpg
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/miracle_fruit.htm
Miracle Fruit
Synsepalum dulcificum
a.k.a. Miracle Berry
A relatively tasteless berry with an amazing side-effect. After eating one miracle fruit, sour things will instantly taste sweet. Eating even the sourest of lemons, one will taste only sugary sweetness. The effect lasts an hour or two. The miracle fruit is a remarkable natural sweetener that is virtually unknown to much of the world.
According to Wikipedia, the active ingredient called "miraculin" not only turns sour to sweet but also bitter to sweet (Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_fruit)). Makes the concept of saccharin sweetness a bit more comforting than "miraculin sweet".
Wise.