Due to the magic berry’s ability to completely alter the flavor of foods, the protein found inside was appropriately named Miraculin. But how does this protein change taste buds and make everything sweet?

It is important to first understand how our taste buds respond under normal conditions before understanding how miracle berries work. Every person has several different types of receptors on their taste buds. These receptors help us discriminate between sweet, sour, bitter, savory, and umami tastes. So if you were to bite a lime, for example, your sour receptors would begin firing, signaling that the flavor you are detecting is sour. Your taste buds die and regenerate every couple of weeks and when you get older they can start to lose effectiveness. These conditions are true for people who haven’t had serious damage inflicted to their taste buds or tongue from things like smoking, chemotherapy, or from eating that cheesy pizza that just came out of the oven.

Miraculin binds strongly to the receptors found on the human tongue. Because Miraculin in the magic fruit changes shape when exposed to acids, it causes corresponding changes in the way the receptors on our tongue respond to these acids.

Where to Buy Miraculin

You can buy Miraculin whenever you buy miracle fruit. Unfortunately because of the FDA, Miraculin is considered a food additive and therefore can not be produced for consumption by itself as it has not been ruled “GRAS” otherwise known as Generally Recognized As Safe. To get this distinction the “additive” needs to go through testing and certification which is a very expensive and long process that no one has successfully completed yet. 

mberry Freeze Dried Miracle Berry

The best Miraculin option we offer is our freeze dried miracle berries. You can achieve the same effect and get Miraculin in the natural state by eating freeze dried berries. Though each of our tablets contain more than one single berry, we know some people would rather use the whole berry. We pick our biggest, ripest berries specifically for freeze drying. Quite literally picked from the miracle berry tree to your front door.