It looks like "miracle fruit" will be taking another lap around the Food Trends track. Miracle fruit, a.k.a. Synsepalum delcificum, pops up in the media every year or so as a possible "diet breakthrough." The fruit in question is a somewhat tart-tasting West African berry that has a remarkable effect on those who chew on one or two: for the following hour or so, it makes anything sour taste absolutely sweet, and many things that taste sweet taste even better.

The miraculous berry's active ingredient is "miraculin," the PR-conscious name given to a protein that binds to the taste buds and tweaks the tongue's "sweetness" receptors to kick in when anything sour is tasted.

©CalorieLab

Engineering sweetness

The notion of a simple food item that can make sour or minimally sweetened food items into calorie-free alternatives for diabetics or dieters or the simply sweet-toothed is, of course, pure catnip to entrepreneurs, and several have tried to cash in on the miracle fruit. Alas, the fruit itself is rather delicate, and only truly at home in tropical climates.

©CalorieLab

Researchers have tried to genetically engineer other, hardier plants into producing miraculin, from tomatoes to tobacco to yeast, and have succeeded somewhat with lettuce, but have been stymied in marketing it as a sweetener because of FDA regulations requiring years of costly and time-consuming tests to approve food additives. A Japanese horticulturist has come up with a dose of miraculin in tablet form, but at $3.50 each, they're simply not competitive with existing sugar alternatives.

Nonetheless, miracle fruit has been appearing in the news again, which means that one or more would-be miraculin moguls will surely try to somehow make a buck turning the sour into the sweet. The advice from here to such persons: don't waste your time.

We don't really need more sweet stuff

Forget the miracle fruit. There are simply too many drawbacks. For one thing, it can completely screw up an otherwise pleasant dining experience. The problem is miraculin's Midas Touch: it makes a number of foods taste sweet that truly shouldn't, and if you consume those foods after chewing a miracle berry, expect some sensory weirdness.

Cheese, they say, tastes like it was covered with powdered sugar, and rich stout beer tastes like a milkshake, and a bratwurst with spicy mustard tastes ... well, you don't want to find out.

For another thing, the berries go bad within one or two days after picking, so you almost need your own bush.

But more to the point, the miracle fruit just doesn't make much sense as a serious, groundbreaking diet aid, for several reasons.

* We already have products that make foods taste sweet without an iota of caloried sweeteners. They have not solved the obesity problem.

* A dill pickle, eaten after chewing some miracle fruit berries, will still not taste like, nor satisfy one's desire for, a jelly donut, scoop of rocky road or slice of pecan pie. It is the specific taste and texture of most calorie-intense items that makes us crave them.

* And miracle fruit is not just useless, but utterly irrelevant if your dietary weakness involves nachos, cheeseburgers or pork rinds.

What is really needed here is some fruit - or vegetable, bean or root - that can make various fattening food treats taste unpalatably ghastly. If you must seek a dietary miracle, work on producing something that can:

* Make chocolate taste like axle grease
* Make whipped cream taste like Vaseline
* Make onion rings taste like head gaskets
* Make potato chips taste like cigar ashes
* Make bacon taste like sweat socks
* Make Oreos taste like potting soil

Or just cut to the chase. Instead of trying to make sour things taste sweet, simply give us a berry that makes all sweet or oily/salty snack items taste incredibly, and inedibly, sour.

Of course, that won't win you the Nobel Prize.

Getting dieters - and those who need to - to actually chew such a berry, however, just might.