Giant Miracle Fruit

Giant Miracle Fruit Synsepalum subcordatum A large fruited miracle berry which lacks the interesting side effect of the miracle fruit.

Uses

Berries are eaten fresh.

Plant Cultivation

No cultural information is available.

Origin and Distribution

Native to West Africa.

Related Species

Sapotaceae Chrysophyllum cainito Star Apple Chrysophyllum oliviforme Satin Leaf Tree Chrysophyllum soboliferum Armadillo Fruit Manilkara bidentata Ausubo Manilkara zapota Sapodilla Mimusops elengi Kabiki Pouteria caimito Abiu Pouteria campechiana Canistel Pouteria hypoglauca Cinnamon Apple Pouteria lucuma Lucuma Pouteria multiflora Bully Tree Pouteria pariry Frutao Pouteria ramiflora Macaranduba Pouteria sapota Mamey Sapote Pouteria torta Curiola Pouteria ucuqui Ucuqui Pouteria viridis Green Sapote Synsepalum dulcificum Miracle Fruit Synsepalum subcordatum Giant Miracle Fruit

Star Apple

Star Apple Chrysophyllum cainito a.k.a. Caimito Round, baseball sized fruit that when cut has a core that takes on a star shape. Pulp is soft and sweet. The star apple usually comes in two forms, either the dark purple skinned variety with red-purple pulp, or the green skinned variety with clear-white pulp. The star apple is a very popular fruit in many tropical parts of the world

ongbak/martial arts.

ongbak/martial arts.

CULTURE

Location: As an indoor plant, provide the plant with bright light such as a well lit window. In the summer the plant can be moved with care to a warm, lightly shaded spot.

Soils: An acid soil is a must for miracle fruit. They prefer a soil acidity of pH 4.5 to 5.8. This can be achieved by planting in equal parts Canadian acid peat and pine bark. Also peat and perlite mixes are said to give excellent result. In the basic soils of California, the plants slowly die back until virtually only the stems remain. Allow the roots of the plant to fill the container before transplanting into a larger one.

Irrigation: Be sure that the soil is well draining as the plants do not like to sit in wet soils. Coming from a tropical climate they need highly humid conditions. When indoors, especially during the winter months, a small clear plastic bag put around the plant and supported by wood or a wire frame is helpful in maintaining humidity. Also, placing the plant container on a tray with stones on the bottom and filled with water to the top of the stones will add humidity to the local area. Misting the leaves with good water also helps.

David Barzelay says:

Hi, I'm the guy who had the miracle fruit party and wrote the post to which you linked today. The guy from whom I got the miracle fruit grows the stuff in Ft. Lauderdale, and he charges actual overnight shipping plus $5 handling, and $1 per fruit. He'll also ship just the seeds, or the plants themselves. He said it was okay if I gave out his contact info, so I just posted it. Since earlier today, I've gotten almost sixty emails from people wanting to know where they could get some miracle fruit, so I figured you'd be interested in posting this info.

Also, by the way, the description in the original post says that our food blog is linked "above," but in fact you linked to the tipster's site. The link below ("Link") links to the correct blog, but to one of the posts, instead of to the index where readers can find both posts. You might just add a second link at the bottom, to the other post.

The miracle fruit thing was seriously awesome. Also, I love this blog . Thanks for the links.

Miracle fruit alters sense of taste

Jacob says: "Miracle fruit is an obscure fruit that alters one's sense of taste, masking bitter and especially sour flavors, causing lemons, limes, beers, and lots of other things to taste amazingly good. After reading about it on the Web and tracking down a source, my friend held an extensive tasting party. We wrote about the experience on our food blog, linked above. (The miracle fruit entries are the newest posts.)

"Alas, the FDA does not look well upon miracle fruit, having forbidden its marketing to diabetics in the 1970s. The stuff is hard to find."

Limes tasted like lime candy, lemons like lemonade, and meyer lemons and red grapefruit were some of the most tasty things I've ever eaten in my life. On the other hand, pineapples and kiwi were cloying, coffee was mostly unchanged, and wine was just plain disgusting.

Miracle Fruits Cafe

TOKYO - A Japanese cafe started serving up berries that make sour desserts sweet Tuesday, offering dieters the chance to indulge in snacks without piling on the calories.

The desserts at the Miracle Fruits Cafe in Tokyo contain almost no sugar and are unbearably sour, but come with a berry from the Synsepalum dulcificum plant — also known as miracle fruit — which make the sour desserts sweet to the taste, according to Namco Ltd., who runs the cafe.

"You could eat a whole lemon and it would taste sweet," Namco spokesman Yuko Tsukui said of the berries, which accompany desserts on the cafe's menu — all of which have less than 100 calories, or one-fifth that of normal cakes and puddings.The berry's juices affect the tongue for about 30 minutes to an hour and can be washed away with hot tea or water, Tsukui said.

Found in Western Africa, miracle berries contain the protein miraculin, which stimulates the tongue's taste buds and makes sour food and drinks taste sweet.

Though discovered centuries ago, miracle berries have not been widely marketed because they are easily perishable. But a Japanese supplier recently developed a way to freeze-dry the fruit, allowing for a stable supply of the berries, Tsukui said.

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Magicberry-do a magic job

My friend Wan Pha-shafien has created an online stir with his post about the wonders of the Miracle Fruit.

It's a small, red berry from West Africa with a strange and wonderful property: It makes sour things taste sweet.

I tried one over the weekend, from the same batch Wan pha tried. You put the thing in your mouth, chew it, and slosh it around so it coats your tongue. I then bit into two lemon wedges, and ate them both. I chewed them like candy. They tasted like sweet lemonade.

The secret is a glycoprotein called Miraculin (yes, that's actually what it's called) that attaches itself to your taste buds. No one seems to be quite sure how it turns sour and bitter to sweet. The effect lasts for about 90 to 120 minutes.

The fruit is heavily marketed in Japan, where it's used in fruit form, in powder form, and now that scientists have figured out a way to isolate Miraculin, in tablets. Some chefs there have constructed low-cal deserts around the use of the fruit. Wired News reported last December that there's even Miraculin-infused lettuce in the works.

In Japan, the Miracule Fruit is particularly popular among diabetics and dieters. Those are two very large (sorry) and growing markets in the U.S. It's also used to help leukemia patients get back their appetites, and to make bitter medicine more palatable. All this would seem to mean a great market for the stuff in America. So why can't Malaysian consumers get any?

It seems that the FDA banned the fruit under mysterious circumstances in the 1970s. I've seen speculation on various websites that it may have had something to do with the sugar industry, or with the fact that aspartame was working its way to FDA approval at about the same time. There's been little written about why the fruit was banned, only that the prohibition appears to have been sudden and unexpected. It came on the eve of one company's plan to roll out a major marketing campaign.
The Miracle Fruit has been used for centuries, now. And there have been quite a few studies of it, with no known ill-effects, other I guess than that it could potentially cause something toxic to taste better than it should. That hardly seems like a reason to ban it.

Seems like something the FDA ought to revisit, particularly with the up tick in diabetes cases over the last several years.

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.

Berries are eaten fresh. Africans sometimes use the fruits to improve the taste of stale food. Fruits are being investigated as a possible source for a natural food sweetener.

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General information and cultivation

General information and cultivation

The plant grows best at a pH as low as 4.5 to 5.8, in an environment free from frost and in partial shade with high humidity. The miracle fruit grows well with blueberries. Without the use of plant hormones the seeds have a 24% sprouting success rate.^{[citation needed]} The plants take between eight and ten years to bear fruit, but treatments for commercial crops can reduce gestation to less than four years.^{[citation needed]}

The Miracle Fruits plant

The Miracle Fruit Plant, sometimes known as Miraculous Berry, (Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum) is a plant first documented by an explorer named Des Marchais during a 1725 excursion to its native West Africa. Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from 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 five feet in cultivation, and it produces two crops per year, after the end of the rainy season. It is an evergreen plant that produces small red berries, with flowers that are white and which are produced for many months of the year. The seeds are about the size of coffee beans.

miracle fruit.

Plant Cultivation
A slow growing bush or small tree to 15ft. Needs acidic soil and is intolerant to alkaline conditions. Will tolerate minimal frost when full grown, but needs lots of water year round. The miracle fruit cannot be grown outside in the United States except Southen Florida, but it makes an easy house plant. Fruit is produced throughout the year and hundreds of berries can be harvested from a single plant.