How it is grown
Non-GMO, organically grown, and picked ripe by hand. Nothing is sprayed onto the fruit and nothing is added after picking.
About
One small red berry, thirty years in the same soil
Miracle fruit has been a curiosity for two centuries and a crop in South Florida for three decades. Here is what it is, what it does, and what it does not do.
The product
What you are actually eating.
Synsepalum dulcificum
Miracle fruit is a small red berry native to tropical West Africa, where it has been eaten before sour food for generations. The plant is an evergreen shrub; each berry is about the size of a coffee bean, with a thin layer of pulp around a single seed. It is that pulp that does the work.
Miraculin
The pulp contains miraculin, a naturally occurring glycoprotein. It binds to the sweet-taste receptors on your tongue without switching them on, and simply waits there. When the pH in your mouth drops — which is what happens when you eat something acidic — miraculin changes shape and activates those receptors instead. Your brain receives a sweet signal from a sour food.
Nothing has been added to the food, and nothing has been added to you. The sourness is still there; you have simply changed how it is read.
The effect typically begins within minutes and lasts 30 to 60 minutes, though the duration varies from person to person. It fades on its own as saliva clears the protein away.
The story
Miracle Fruit Products is a veteran-owned grower, run by Curtis Mozie in South Florida since the late 1980s. What began with a handful of plants is now more than 100,000 trees on the same ground, tended by the same family.
For most of those thirty years this was a curiosity that people had to be talked into. The Wall Street Journal, NPR and The New York Times each came and wrote about it, and slowly the tasting parties found their way to us rather than the other way round.
Since 1987Growing in Florida
100,000+Trees under care
Veteran-ownedFamily run
What we can and cannot say
Trust matters more to us than a stronger claim would.
How it is handled
Berries are freeze-dried within hours of picking, which is what preserves the miraculin. Every box traces back to a harvest date.
The research
Published work has examined whether miracle fruit helps people whose sense of taste has changed during chemotherapy. Findings so far are early and mixed, and the studies are small.
Clinical supply
We supply researchers and care teams at volume with documented harvest and handling. Tell us what you need and we will quote it.
What miracle fruit does not do
It does not treat or cure cancer or diabetes. It does not replace chemotherapy, radiation or medical nutrition therapy. It does not guarantee improved appetite, weight gain or any clinical outcome.
Not a treatment for diabetes. Talk to your care team about how it fits your plan.
Everything published here is educational information about a food. It is not medical advice. If you are managing a health condition, your care team should be the ones to tell you whether this belongs in your diet.