Miracle Fruit

My cousin has been really into fruit trees for about the past year or so. He and his friends have been riding their bikes around Atlanta, trying to see what types of wild fruits and berries they can collect. They have tried all kinds of wild grapes, figs, blueberries, raspberries, etc. They collected so many apples and varieties of apples that they had a cider party in the fall.

Anyway, he's been talking about this plant that heard about for a month. It's called Miracle Fruit. Apparently, when you eat the berries from the tree, it temporarily causes anything sour you eat to taste sweet.

It took him a long time to find one. He finally bought a plant from Florida and it has just now grown to the point where it has produced berries. He brought one over to my Aunt's house yesterday. He cut it in half, and he and his girlfriend each ate half of it. Then we all watched while they ate a lemon, a lime, and a grapefruit with no problem at all. They said it tasted like it was coated in sugar! They even drank vinegar straight from the bottle. It was the wierdest thing. I looked it up online, and it says that they use this plant in Japan as a sweetner. The food apparently tastes horrible until you give people these berries to eat before they try it. Pretty cool.