Show HN: Hack your tastebuds to make eating healthy easy | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hack your tastebuds to make eating healthy easy

4 pointsDgetman11 comments

Hi HN!

My name is Daniel and I'm the founder of Miracle Nutrition. We make eating healthy easy and enjoyable by enhancing the taste of nutritious foods.

Junk foods have been weaponized to taste amazing and be addictive. This has led to an obesity epidemic with 39.8% of American adults afflicted. Although 63% of Americans say they try to eat healthy most or all of the time, 85% admit they give in to over half of their cravings for indulgent foods. Diets suck and often fail because people are unable to find changes that they enjoy and can incorporate into their lifestyle.

I’ve created a next generation sweetener. It doesn’t just sweeten food, it removes the unpleasant tartness and bitterness that makes a food an acquired taste, allowing you to discover the natural flavors that were previously masked. Its unique mechanism provides it advantages over any other sweetener: 1) It has no bitter/chemical aftertaste 2) It requires only a single serving irregardless of the quantity of food in your meal 3) There is a uniform effect- no stirring necessary 4) It gives you the power to target the individual, not the food for everyone at the dinner table.

Check out this incredible behavioral transformation: <https://youtu.be/fLmeCbotvYI>

I started working on this when a fun experiment with my nephew revealed interesting implications. We started off with lemons and strawberries but when offered Greek Yogurt he replied, “I refuse to eat Greek yogurt. It makes me gag.” As the yogurt hit his lips, he patted his belly with delight and exclaimed, “Wow this tastes like a milkshake! More please!” From that moment, I realized that this compound could be harnessed to create lasting behavior changes in a way that positively benefits one’s health.

HN, I’d love to hear all of your feedback and advice. What are some interesting use cases you can think of? Do you know anyone who would benefit from trying out my MVP? What’s the best way to get it out there into people’s hands?

How is your product different than mberry or any other miracle berry available on e.g. Amazon? (Or fresh ones, which are hard to get in many places but e.g. used to be available in many fine food stores in Manhattan)?

Your description sounds exactly like these.

Excellent question! This is what my whole business is about!

While the efficacy is the same, the difference is in the timing. In my testing those pills take ~10 minutes to dissolve, maybe 5 minutes if you are rolling it around on your tongue...for the entire 5 minutes. As a novelty food, it does the trick, but when you're rushing to get your kids to school or in a hurry to get yourself to work you don't have those 5 minutes to get it dissolved before breakfast (assuming your child even has the patience!) You can check the full video in the description but my product takes 30 seconds - 1 minute to dissolve. That's a 10 fold difference. Not only is it convenient but it is also effortless to coat your entire tongue - the surface area does it on its own.

The pills also have a chalky texture and a raisiny taste that not everyone enjoys. While I am still working on the flavor, i have received great feedback saying that it "tastes like a healthy fruit roll-up".

In terms of the fresh fruit, it is highly perishable (rots in <24 hours). It is also very inconvenient. It has a very large pit and the flesh is hard to remove from it. Also you have the problem with variability in fruit size. My product is standardized so you always know what you're getting.

Is this approved by the FDA? Is this patented?

I'm very skeptic. Chemical compound name, or it didn't happen.

Miraculin. It naturally comes from the miracle berry and is proven to be safe by several studies. It's been used by Western African tribes for centuries to improve the flavor of their otherwise bland cuisine.

Check the video. A kid can't fake those reactions.

I watched the video. Clicky: https://youtu.be/fLmeCbotvYI

It doesn't look fake, but I watched too many ads in my life.

I found more info in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum

That's the one! It's really interesting, there was a company in the 70's trying to do what I am doing but aspartame was coming out at the same time. Searle found it so threatening, they did some dirty work to sabotage the company and get ahead.

N00b question but, why does my link not hyperlink :P Plz halp

The links in the submission text are not clickable. It's one of the 100 tricks that use HN to encourage some types of submissions and encourage other types.

For example, the idea is that most people should post the URL and then add a comment, instead of posting a personal opinion with a link at the end (like some posts in Slashdot).

But the post where the submitter is the author are sometimes an exception. I think it´s fine what you did here.

In some cases the mods press the magical button to make the link clickable. The exact conditions are not clear, it's part of the secret sauce. Perhaps it's automatic, perhaps it is manual, or perhaps it is a combination like "when the post has at least 20 upvotes but less than 3 flags, or when a mod mark it manualy".

Ahh ok. So let's say the HN gods don't bless my post with a hyperlink, what's the best way to do it? Should I put it in the comments?

Main reason I avoided the comments strategy was I felt it'd get lost in the sea and then people wouldn't know what the author's post is all about.

I think that what you did is fine.

It is usually best to write a short blog post about the product and post it as a link and add a comment explaining that you are the author. It is not necessary, we would have guessed that you are probably the author, but it's a nice detail.

Reading all the thread again, for someone like me that didn't know about the "Miracle Fruit", the name of the company "Miracle Nutrition" sounds like snake oil sold by an informercial at 3am. (I think I just ignored it the first time I read the post.) If you make a web page or blog, you should explain the origin of the name and some references to the use of the fruit.

> It requires a single serving regardless of the quantity of food

I'm not sure if it's even possible to make a pitch more unrealistic. This is simply physically not possible so who are you trying to fool exactly?

I appreciate your skepticism. It certainly sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately I only had 2000 characters to get everything down but happy to clarify any questions you have.

Instead of a chemical that directly activates sweet receptors like other sweeteners, this protein binds to your sweet receptors for 30-60 minutes and activates it in the presence of acid.

I'd be happy to send you samples to see for yourself in the return for feedback on my MVP :)

Edit: I'm also backed by Pioneer so hope that makes it look a little more legit

https://pioneer.app/blog/meet-the-pioneers-take-4/

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