What is the Miracle Berry? - By Skye
A few weekends ago during dinner, my dad brought up a very interesting thing. It was a packet of these little tablets. The tablets are made from this berry called the miracle berry. I asked him, “What is the miracle berry?” He explained that it is this berry that when you eat it, it makes sour things taste sweet. My mom added on that a few years ago, we tried this with my grandparents, and it didn’t work, so we basically wasted good miraculin tablets (miraculin is the protein in the berry that attaches to your taste buds and makes sour things taste sweet). It turns out, you are supposed to let the tablet dissolve on your tongue, and we chewed them instead. But then, he asked me if I wanted to try it again, and I was like “Yeah, totally!” so we got some more. It came with a little sheet of foods to try, and when we tried doing the tablets again we tried some of the suggested foods. Some of the foods that we tried included lemons, lime, grapefruit, balsamic vinegar, hot sauce, yogurt, sour fruit roll-ups, and tomatoes. It worked for the lemons, lime, grapefruit, yogurt, and sour fruit roll-ups, and most of the sour in the food turned to sweet! It was almost like a miracle! 😉 But, it’s not just for fun. People who have COVID-19 and have lost their sense of taste, or people who have cancer and are getting treatment and have lost their sense of taste, when they eat the miracle berry tablets or the berry itself, they can taste things again! I don’t really know how it works, but it could change science forever.