Miracle Berry Tablets, aka mberry, allow you to take a flavor-tripping journey. This flavor-tripping journey begins by placing the tablet in your mouth and allowing it to dissolve on your tongue for 10 to 15 minutes. After it has fully dissolved, the receptors on your taste buds have been affected, allowing anything sweet, sour, savory or bitter to have a bit of a different taste.

How does it work?

According to the mberry website, “Miracle berries (Synsepalum dulcificum) contain miraculin that changes the way your taste buds taste foods.”  HowStuffWorks breaks it down a little bit more: “under the influence of miraculin, however, the sweet receptors start signaling and suppress the sour tastes. The miraculin rewires the sweet receptors to temporarily identify acids as sugars.”

Wanting a first-hand experience, we, the interns (aka: guinea pigs), at Best Food Facts volunteered to see just how altered our taste buds would be.

So, what all did we try?

• Sour Patch Kids
• Pineapple
• Hot Cheetos with Lime
• Pickles
• Salt and Vinegar Pringles
• Whipped Cream Cheese
• Nutella
• Jalapeno
• Strawberry
• Lemon
• Coffee
• Tequila

Wow – we were all blown away when the tablets actually worked. Lemons tasted like homemade lemonade, strawberries tasted like they had been rolled in sugar and the cream cheese might as well have been cheesecake. We were pleasantly surprised with the lack of heat from the jalapeno, and disappointed that the tequila tasted horrible. (Don’t worry, we’re over 21!).

Would we do this again? Absolutely. Did some of us already purchase the tablets to make our friends and family try? You bet. It was the best hour and a half of our lives.

Want to see our reactions for yourself? Watch the video:

The post Flavor Tripping: A Food Journey Without Leaving Home appeared first on Best Food Facts.

To test out our experiment, we ran to the local grocery store and picked up limes and lemons. We tested our fruit three different ways – whole, peeled and sliced. Each time, we noticed that the lemons floated to the top of the bowl while the limes stayed relatively close to the middle/bottom of the bowl. When we peeled and sliced the fruit, the separation just continued to grow.

What we found strangest, however, was that when we peeled the fruit the limes only continued to sink deeper in the bowl while the lemons began to sink a little bit further into the bowl, but remained close to the top. The phenomenon continued when the fruit separated further after they were sliced. We assumed this happened because the fruit was sliced, therefore making the individual pieces lighter.

Based on our observations, we wanted to know the science behind why this was happening. Why, based on our observations, were the larger fruits floating to the top while the smaller fruits were sinking to the bottom? Does it have something to do with the acidity of the fruit? The weight of the peel? Or just the overall mass? We asked Sarah Downs, RD, for an explanation.

So, why do lemons float and limes sink?

Sarah Downs, RD: “The reason limes sink and lemons float is due to density, or the mass per unit of volume. An object will float if it is less dense than the liquid it is placed in and will sink if it is denser than the liquid it is placed in. Lemons and limes both have densities that are very close to water, so you would expect that they would both float. However, limes are slightly denser than lemons, which is why they sink and lemons float.”

Intrigued? Check it out for yourself in the video below:

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