Unlocking Secrets of Sour Flavors with Something Found in Your Ears

nytimes.com

13 pointssohkamyung3 comments

It's interesting to me that they don't mention Miraculin, which has long known to cause sour things to taste sweet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraculin

edit: I didn't find any nice connection between Otopetrin and Miraculin in the literature either... possibly because miraculin operates on the tongue's sweetness detectors which then override the sour taste like sugar in lemonade.

Would it be possible to make low-calorie soda by simply adding Miraculin to carbonated/acidic water ?

It takes 30sec to 1min for Miraculin to "bond" to your tongue, but generally yes people do exactly this and you can find the book on Amazon. The advantage is that the effect lasts an hour or two, but comes with the problem that it costs $0.5-1.0 for each effect. You can find that in the same store.

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