Richadella dulcifica fruit contains miraculin

Richadella dulcifica is a fruit native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. Richadella dulcifica is called the miracle fruit. If you would like to learn about a natural sweetener without calories, see stevia sweetener information.

Red berries of a tropical plant called miracle fruit, Richadella dulcifica, reduce the sour and aversive taste of acids and add sweet and palatable taste. Richadella dulcifica has miraculin, a protein. The active substance was isolated in 1968 by Prof. Kenzo Kurihara, a Japanese scientist.

Cortical representation of taste-modifying action of miracle fruit in humans.
Neuroimage. 2006 Dec;33(4):1145-51. Yamamoto C, Nagai H, Takahashi K, Nakagawa S, Yamaguchi M, Tonoike M, Yamamoto T. Department of Behavioral Physiology, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, 1-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
Red berries of a tropical plant called miracle fruit, Richadella dulcifica, reduce the sour and aversive taste of acids and add sweet and palatable taste. To elucidate the brain mechanism of this unique action of Richadella dulcifica, we recorded taste-elicited magnetic fields of the human cerebral cortex. The initial taste responses were localized in the fronto-parietal opercular / insular cortex reported as the primary taste area. The mean latency of the response to citric acid after chewing Richadella dulcifica was essentially the same as that for sucrose and was 250-300 ms longer than that for citric acid. Since it is known that stimulation with acids after the action of miracle fruit induces both sweetness and sourness responses in the primate taste nerves, the present results suggest that the sourness component of citric acid is greatly diminished at the level of subcortical relays, and mostly sweetness information reaches the cortical primary taste area. We propose the idea that the qualitative aspect of taste is processed in the primary taste area and the affective aspect is represented by the pattern of activation among the different cortical areas.