The Miracle Fruit or Magic Berry (Synsepalum Dulcificum) is a plant first documented by French explorer Chevalier Des Marchais during a 1725 excursion to West Africa. Des Marchais noticed that local tribes picked the berry from shrubs and chewed it before meals. The “ Magic” berry causes bitter and sour foods (such as limes and lemons) eaten later to taste sweet.
In 1852, a British surgeon described the fruit in a pharmaceutical journal as a “miraculous” berry. In the beginning of the 20th century, a renowned botanist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, David Fairchild, was the first person to bring the Miracle Fruit from West Africa to the United States and Bill Whitman was the first to grow the plant successfully.The plant grows in bushes up to 20 feet high in it's native habitat and it produces two crops per year. It is an evergreen plant with little white flowers that produces small red berries. The seeds are about the size of a small olive.
Although the berry itself is not sweet, it contains an active glycoprotein molecule with some trailing carbohydrate chains called “Miraculin”. When the fleshy part of the fruit is eaten, this molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds causing bitter and sour foods to taste sweet. This effect lasts more or less one hour. Eating more than one fruit does not increase the intensity of this modification. It is unfortunate that heat destroys the active principle, so canning for jams, preserves, baking, drying, etc. are impossible. However, the fruits can be held for an indefinite period of time by freezing or freeze-drying. The United States Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require prior approval to sell or grow this fruit.