CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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The Miracle Fruit Taste Trip

Saturday, January 17, 2009

this entry brought to you by modest mouse, "dashboard"


Have you heard about Miracle Fruit? It's this fruit that comes from West Africa that you eat. It actually has a chemical reaction to your tongue, greatly enhancing your receptors of the flavor "sweet". Once you've eaten it, everything that you taste afterward, for up to three hours, will taste like candy. Lately this has been catching on, and people in the states have been throwing parties where everyone gets together, eats the fruit, and then chows down on various foods that have been set out for them, experiencing new taste sensations.

As soon as I heard about this I knew I had to get my hands on them. But the fruit itself costs nearly 100 dollars to import, which is, for obvious reasons, outside of our budgetary prospects. Until, that is, I found it on thinkgeek.com in tablet form. I pounced on the opportunity and for 15 dollars plus shipping and handling, had a packet of Miracle Fruit tabs sitting in my hands.



We each took a tablet and let it sit on our tongue, as per the instructions. The tablets tasted tart, like a mild vitamin. We rolled it around our tongue, trying to get every single part of our tongues exposed, but when it was all done, I'd wondered if I'd gotten ripped off. There's no indication that it's working. I was expecting a tingling sensation of some sort, or perhaps a permanent sweet flavor on my tongue, but neither I nor Michelle felt any different. Nearly expecting that it wasn't working, we went in to start tasting.

Concentrated Lemon in the little lemon shaped bottle: I let Michelle taste first, and she immediately reacted, completely taken aback. The miracle fruit with the concentrated lemon juice tasted like lemonade-- but not ordinary lemonade. Ordinary lemonade is mostly water, so no matter how strong it is, it's flavored water. This was juice, and was thick, and because of its flavor, it tasted like lemonade syrup. The miracle fruit was definitely working.

Concentrated Lime from the little lime shaped bottle: Out of everything I tried, the lime juice had the most intense reaction. It was unholy. I squealed with horror after drinking it, unable to breathe, almost choking. If you could imagine the sweetest thing you've ever had, this is sweeter than that by a huge factor. You could literally make a cup of syrup made from half a cup of water and half a cup of sugar, and still not have it be this sweet. I drank down a lot of this over the course of our taste trip whenever I tasted something that had little or no taste difference, just to make sure it was still working, and each time I felt more and more like it was making me nauseous, yet I wouldn't describe it as unpleasant-- it was like the closest thing something sweet could get without actually being unpleasant, but still being so agonizingly sweet it caused a physical reaction each time. I could not possibly describe a sweeter taste, it tasted like something designed to kill a man with sweetness.

Tabasco Sauce: ....Actually, I take that back. Tabasco sauce is like a nuclear weapon, and we completely regretted drinking it a mere third in our list. Tabasco sauce tricks you, and you go into three stages, all within about a second. Initially you taste sweetness, so you drink back much more than you know you logically should drink. Then you are overcome with the absolute unholy sweetness that punches you in the mouth, and then there's the Tabasco part, which tastes like burn. Both Michelle and I were doubled over. Tabasco sauce is horrendously sweet with the miracle fruit, and then it just burns, the way actual Tabasco sauce does. It's like what vanilla extract would taste like in the pits of hell. If you buy miracle fruit, you are going to want to try this, it's a necessity, but for the love of all that is holy, try this last. It took us minutes to recuperate.

Mustard: Surprisingly tasty, actually. It tasted exactly like honey mustard. At this point we were starting to see a pattern. Everything doesn't exactly explode into taste sensations like we'd originally heard. Things, mostly, just get sweeter, and various things taste much sweeter than other things. The mustard, after having gone through the one two punch of lime juice and Tabasco sauce, was downright pleasant.

Mayonnaise: If you can get past the idea of eating mayonnaise straight from a spoon, it tasted like coleslaw sauce.

Spicy Mustard: A funny thing happened. On the tip of your tongue it tasted like powerful honey mustard with no horseradish, but as it slid across the tongue towards the back, where the miracle fruit touched the least, the horseradish returned. So it was like honey mustard with secret horseradish.

Egg Nog: Absolutely no effect, which didn't surprise me, because nog is based on milk, and milk is a base. So it made sense that there was no difference.

Lays Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips: If I didn't see the bag and was just eating potato chips, I would assume there was no difference. But when you knew what flavor they were supposed to be, it tasted like a barbecue sauce flavor-- not an extremely strong barbecue sauce, but a definite barbecue flavor.

Chile Limon Lays potato chips: Ordinarily I go crazy for these chips-- they're so delicious. With the miracle fruit, I can't describe what I tasted-- it just tasted wrong, and actively unpleasant. I strongly disliked it.

Soy Sauce: Soy sauce had an interesting reaction to the miracle fruit, and was virtually the only thing I tasted that didn't get sweeter. Somehow, the soy sauce became intensely stronger, like it had been brewed for a whole year longer than usual. It tasted powerfully salty. With that said, while Michelle found it horrific, I kind of liked it-- not that I would drink it straight like that again, but it wasn't an unpleasant taste.

Worstesher Sauce: This was one of the bigger surprises for me. It tasted a lot like a meat drink. Imagine going to a foreign country, like, say, Japan, and you find it on the shelf and you ask your friend, what's this? And they tell you it's a beef soft drink. You can't stop yourself from buying it, and once you try it, you can't imagine drinking it beyond the novelty of drinking a beef soft drink-- but you have to admit, it's actually really yummy, and delivers exactly as promised. That's exactly what worstesher sauce tasted like. It was sweet and smooth, and tasted like meat.

Zesty Italian: Like a homemade Italian dressing where the recipe calls for several teaspoons of sugar.

Red Wine Vinegarette: Like a particularly smooth, sweetened wine, like pink champagne without the bubbles. While the word "wine" is right in the title that shouldn't be too surprising, it was surprising. This was something you could drink with party guests or at a wedding. Delicious.

Diet Coke: It didn't taste like regular Coke exactly, more like a lesser cola, like a Shasta or RC. But the surprising part was that it did not taste like Diet.

Black Coffee: Interesting, because it didn't really taste like sweetened coffee, but it tasted smoother, with the acridity removed. Yet it obviously didn't have any creamer in it. It was an interesting sensation because it tasted strong, like black coffee, burned like hot coffee, but didn't have that bitter black coffee texture. When we added creamer it tasted like normal coffee with cream in it, only with a teaspoon of sugar, which we sort of expected.

Sour Patch Kids: Tasted like gummi candy minus any sort of sour on it. Although that seems a little predictable, it is strange to feel the flecks of "sour" and have them taste exactly like sugar until they hit the very back of your mouth where there is no tastebuds effected by Miracle fruit, so it switches back to sour right before going down your throat.

Grapefruit: The grapefruit had a miraculous change, because it sweetened, like the other fruits, but, like the coffee, it completely removed the bitter flavor. It didn't taste like an altogether new substance or anything, but it was as if this normal grapefruit sitting on our counter from the local grocery store that we had purchased was absolutely the best goddamn grapefruit ever. It was as if there was some secret garden of grapefruit tended by monks who come from a long line of monks who do nothing but tend these grapefruits, and somehow it made it all the way to your grocery store. It didn't just taste like grapefruit with sugar added on top of it, it tasted as if the fruit itself had come from somewhere civilized man rarely gets to see. It was a goddamn spectacular grapefruit.
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with love from CRS @ 6:05 AM 

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