Ripley's Believes in Local Horticulturist

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Miracle Fruit

​The folks who bring you museums of the random, odd, eccentric, and generally unbelievable, also have a book. Ripley's Believe It or Not! Seeing Is Believing! (You know it's good if it has two exclamation points in the title.)

And the latest edition of that book, published earlier this month, honors the fruit (pun alert) of one local man's labor. Curtis Mozie, a 65-year-old Fort Lauderdale man, has spent more than a decade cultivating the West African berry known in the U.S. as "Miracle Fruit." And now Ripley's is writing about it.

An excerpt from the book:

"Known also as the miracle fruit, the berry of Snyespalum dulcificum creates a chemical reaction that raises your sense of sweetness, making lemons taste like candy, beer taste like chocolate and hot sauces taste like donut glaze. The effect lasts for about an hour. The berry is native to West Africa, but is now being harvested in South Florida, where a single berry sells for $3."

That's right, rub the fruit on your tongue and everything sour tastes sweet. When I visited Mozie's house, I tried it with a pickle and a lime. Both things tasted like pure sugar. Mozie says he's working with researchers at the University of Florida right now, and there are other studies being done to learn the effect of miracle fruit on chemotherapy patients.

Mozie says he is the only commercial grower of miracle fruit in the state and indeed the largest in the country. And though he's received his share of press through the years, "It's still not as much publicity as miracle fruit should be getting," he says. "If you ask 20 people, maybe one in 20 has heard of miracle fruit. The way the news media is today -- when Michael Jackson died, everyone heard about it immediately -- people should know about the miracle fruit."

He says among other benefits, miracle fruit aids in weight loss. Most important, though, Mozie says that the berries could help society consume less sugar, an important issue in the days of morbid obesity and less-than-stellar health care.

So if you didn't know about miracle fruit before, you do now. Believe it or not.