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Showing posts from April 3, 2016

Week 3 [4.04 - 10.04] Miracle fruit

Miracle fruit is a plant which makes other things taste different. It natively comes from West Africa, where it was chewed before meals for centuries. Europeans became aware of this plant in 1725 thanks to a French explorer Chevalier des Marchais The fruit itself has a mild tang (similar to cranberry) and a low sugar content. Miracle fruit berries https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/MiracleBerry.jpg So how does it work? Miracle fruit contains a protein called miraculin which makes sour products taste sweet. Normally taste buds on your tongue translate chemical molecules into electrical signals. Each bud contains taste cells which detect flavours by binding themselves with molecules from your meal. When you eat miracle berry it binds its protein with your detectors preventing sweeteners from further bindings. Under neutral conditions miraculin blocs those receptors, but when you eat sour things, the environment in a mouth causes miraculin to chan...