Almost 45 percent of the American population will be obese by 2030. That will increase the total toll on the healthcare system from related illnesses to a staggering $60 billion.
Over the past 30 years, global obesity rates have more than doubled, and behind the stark statistics is a simple truth about human nature. Most of us are bound by our innate desire for foods high in both sugar and fat, and given the opportunity to consume in excess, we will.
The values of healthy eating have been extolled for decades, but with little effect as the junk food industry has boomed. But perhaps the way forward is to work with our cravings, rather than attempt to deny them. For many, the Holy Grail of food research is to create a dessert free of both sugar and artificial flavoring that tastes as good as the real thing. The owner of a new coffee shop in downtown Chicago believes he has finally solved the puzzle.
Homaro Cantu believes the answer to one day eliminating sugar from our diets lies in a protein known as Miraculin. Miraculin is a taste-modifier, one of only a handful of such naturally-occurring molecules in the world. It is found in the berries of a plant known as Synsepalum dulcificum or, colloquially, the “miracle fruit,” which grows in parts of West Africa.
In 1725, the French explorer Reynaud Des Marchais was astounded to find that the locals regularly consumed the berry to improve the taste of bland or sour breads.
The surface of your tongue is covered by a multitude of different receptors to detect tastes from sweet to umami. Just like sugar and artificial sweeteners like aspartame, the miraculin in the berry binds to your sweet taste receptors, but far more strongly.
The acid present in sour foods sparks a chemical reaction that causes miraculin to temporarily distort the shape of these taste receptors, enhancing them and making them so sensitive that the powerful sweet signals they are sending to your brain completely drown out the sour ones.
So far, miracle fruit has largely been used as something of a fine-dining gimmick at high-end restaurants from New York to Tokyo. Customers eat the berry and for the next hour, enjoy a “flavor-tripping” experience as sour turns to sweet in their mouths until the miraculin dislodges from their tongues.
So consuming the berry before you eat a sugar-free dessert will provide you with your ‘sweet fix’ but many believe that the full potential of miraculin has yet to be explored. Cantu has spent the past eight years working on a way to actually integrate the berry powder into foods so it has the same effect, starting with a doughnut.
However, this isn’t as easy as it might seem. Both refrigerating and heating miraculin causes the protein to activate, so its taste-twisting properties are sapped long before you sample the food. Cantu’s task has been to try and create a heat-stable form of miraculin, in order to cook with it.
But if you’re expecting to be able to buy miraculin flavored doughnuts anytime soon, then think again.
The idea of introducing the miracle berry into food as a sugar replacement was actually first conceived almost 50 years ago by an entrepreneur called Robert Harvey who began to create a range of sugar-free products coated with the berry extract. Initially, his company Miralin appeared destined for instant success.
However, things were about to change rapidly. The sequence of events which ensued would not look out of place in a Hollywood film. Harvey began to suspect that he was being followed on the way home from work; then one night in the summer of 1974, he reported that his office had been raided and his files stolen.
Shortly afterwards, the previously supportive FDA declared that miraculin was an additive, meaning that the berries could not be sold as a sugar substitute without further testing. Harvey suspected foul play. He suggested that the FDA had been pressured by the powerful manufacturers of sugar and artificial sweeteners, keen to quash this new challenge to their business, something both parties denied.
“For the FDA to overturn the ruling, as far as I understand it, would require years of testing and a large amount of money, which it was not possible for Harvey to raise in the poor economic climate of 1974,” explains Canadian author Adam Gollner, who chronicled Harvey’s story in his book, The Fruit Hunters.
And so for the next 30 years, the berry was largely forgotten, knowledge of its existence preserved only by a small group of fruit enthusiasts—until Cantu’s new venture.
more
The 'Miracle' Berry That Could Replace Sugar - Atlantic Mobile
Over the past 30 years, global obesity rates have more than doubled, and behind the stark statistics is a simple truth about human nature. Most of us are bound by our innate desire for foods high in both sugar and fat, and given the opportunity to consume in excess, we will.
The values of healthy eating have been extolled for decades, but with little effect as the junk food industry has boomed. But perhaps the way forward is to work with our cravings, rather than attempt to deny them. For many, the Holy Grail of food research is to create a dessert free of both sugar and artificial flavoring that tastes as good as the real thing. The owner of a new coffee shop in downtown Chicago believes he has finally solved the puzzle.
Homaro Cantu believes the answer to one day eliminating sugar from our diets lies in a protein known as Miraculin. Miraculin is a taste-modifier, one of only a handful of such naturally-occurring molecules in the world. It is found in the berries of a plant known as Synsepalum dulcificum or, colloquially, the “miracle fruit,” which grows in parts of West Africa.
In 1725, the French explorer Reynaud Des Marchais was astounded to find that the locals regularly consumed the berry to improve the taste of bland or sour breads.
The surface of your tongue is covered by a multitude of different receptors to detect tastes from sweet to umami. Just like sugar and artificial sweeteners like aspartame, the miraculin in the berry binds to your sweet taste receptors, but far more strongly.
The acid present in sour foods sparks a chemical reaction that causes miraculin to temporarily distort the shape of these taste receptors, enhancing them and making them so sensitive that the powerful sweet signals they are sending to your brain completely drown out the sour ones.
So far, miracle fruit has largely been used as something of a fine-dining gimmick at high-end restaurants from New York to Tokyo. Customers eat the berry and for the next hour, enjoy a “flavor-tripping” experience as sour turns to sweet in their mouths until the miraculin dislodges from their tongues.
So consuming the berry before you eat a sugar-free dessert will provide you with your ‘sweet fix’ but many believe that the full potential of miraculin has yet to be explored. Cantu has spent the past eight years working on a way to actually integrate the berry powder into foods so it has the same effect, starting with a doughnut.
However, this isn’t as easy as it might seem. Both refrigerating and heating miraculin causes the protein to activate, so its taste-twisting properties are sapped long before you sample the food. Cantu’s task has been to try and create a heat-stable form of miraculin, in order to cook with it.
But if you’re expecting to be able to buy miraculin flavored doughnuts anytime soon, then think again.
The idea of introducing the miracle berry into food as a sugar replacement was actually first conceived almost 50 years ago by an entrepreneur called Robert Harvey who began to create a range of sugar-free products coated with the berry extract. Initially, his company Miralin appeared destined for instant success.
However, things were about to change rapidly. The sequence of events which ensued would not look out of place in a Hollywood film. Harvey began to suspect that he was being followed on the way home from work; then one night in the summer of 1974, he reported that his office had been raided and his files stolen.
Shortly afterwards, the previously supportive FDA declared that miraculin was an additive, meaning that the berries could not be sold as a sugar substitute without further testing. Harvey suspected foul play. He suggested that the FDA had been pressured by the powerful manufacturers of sugar and artificial sweeteners, keen to quash this new challenge to their business, something both parties denied.
“For the FDA to overturn the ruling, as far as I understand it, would require years of testing and a large amount of money, which it was not possible for Harvey to raise in the poor economic climate of 1974,” explains Canadian author Adam Gollner, who chronicled Harvey’s story in his book, The Fruit Hunters.
And so for the next 30 years, the berry was largely forgotten, knowledge of its existence preserved only by a small group of fruit enthusiasts—until Cantu’s new venture.
more
The 'Miracle' Berry That Could Replace Sugar - Atlantic Mobile
