A few weeks ago, we ordered a 14-count pack of mberry tablets. These dissolving tabs are made from synsepalum dulcificum, commonly known as miracle fruit. The berry, native to West Africa, contains a glycoprotein called miraculin which "plays an active role in altering how the mind perceives tastes.(It)...coats the taste buds, temporarily modifying their shape, which causes the taste receptors to interpret certain flavors differently." Which means that after eating miracle fruit (or dissolving an mberry tablet on your tongue) foods which normally taste sour or bitter will taste sweet.
Last night, while visiting friends we brought a platter of tart and distinctively sour foods to eat with our tablets. We brought strawberries (famed by mberry users to be the ultimate taste-test), lemons, kiwis, pomegranate seeds, salt and vinegar chips, hot sauce and fresh jalepeno (though mberry has limited, if any effect, upon most spicy food), sour cream, granny smith apples and dill pickles. We also scrounged through their kitchen and added red onion, pickled ginger, Parmesan cheese and shots of apple cider vinegar.
I, myself, am guilty of mis-using the phrase "taste-test" to describe trying that isn't particularly new to me like a restaurant's take on a well-beloved dish, this is more like "sampling" - where you give something a go just for the hell of it. Traditionally "taste-test" means trying something new without any concept of what it is or how it should taste.
Our taste-test was of the purest form but with the added twist of being completely disorienting. Mberry suggests that you use your tablets at a "flavor tripping party" - and that title is not for dramatic effect - because you are eating very familiar foods that look and smell the same as always, however, their flavors are completely different.
The granny smith apple, is one of the most tart, drool-inducing varieties of apple. But after the mberry, theses slices tasted like any sweet red delicious apple. The pickles still had the flavor of dill, but had lost their pickled-twang. Nick commented that he'd never realized how sour pomegranate seeds normally are until he ate them with the tabs and they were almost flavorless. And the kiwi almost lost its tart distinctiveness by becoming indistinguishable from any other sweet fruit.
It was hard enough wrapping our minds around the fact that we no longer knew what food should taste like, but we also realized how involved the rest of our body is in distinguishing flavor. All the foods still smelled the right way and the highly fragrant and acidic items - like chips and vinegar - still affected other parts of our mouths and throats. We threw back shots of apple cider vinegar and on our tongues it tasted like sweet cider or juice, but our throats, cheeks and soft palates still felt the tingle and burn.
The three runaway successes were the lemon, strawberries and sour cream. As a child, I found the easiest way to eat strawberries was with a cup of sugar to dip them in. With the mberry, they tasted exactly like that saccharine childhood snack; and as Kristen pointed out, as an adult it's almost too much sweetness. The lemons tasted like the most perfected lemonade and we ate them like oranges - sucking all the juice and savoring their pulp. And the sour cream was like a deflated whipped cream - and anything dipped in it, from fruit to chips, was made even more sweet and creamy. (On that note, remember that despite it all tasting good in your mouth, some combinations may not sit well in your stomach - like large quantities of sour cream and pickles).
The strength and length of effects of the tablets vary from person to person but last between 15 minutes to two hours; and the only way to tell is continue sampling food to see when your normal sense of taste returns (again, be careful with eating large quantities of funky stuff!).
This was a great experience and so much fun for us. For a few bucks a person we were able to have our minds blown and experience food euphoria - much less expensive and drastically safer (the only ingredients are miracle fruit powder and cornstarch) than indulging in other items we could dissolve on our tongues for fun! I highly recommend this product for a disorientingly great time with friends or the most whimsical diet plan ever - why eat chocolate cake when you could have an mberry and lemon?
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