So far, miracle fruit has largely been used as something of a fine-dining gimmick at high-end restaurants from New York to Tokyo. Customers eat the berry and for the next hour, enjoy a “flavor-tripping” experience as sour turns to sweet in their mouths until the miraculin dislodges from their tongues.

So consuming the berry before you eat a sugar-free dessert will provide you with your ‘sweet fix’ but many believe that the full potential of miraculin has yet to be explored. Cantu has spent the past eight years working on a way to actually integrate the berry powder into foods so it has the same effect, starting with a doughnut.

However, this isn’t as easy as it might seem. Both refrigerating and heating miraculin causes the protein to activate, so its taste-twisting properties are sapped long before you sample the food. Cantu’s task has been to try and create a heat-stable form of miraculin, in order to cook with it.