I tasted lemon, radish, and almond.
Before trying miracle berries, I had very positive associations with lemon. My mom uses a lot of lemon when making Egyptian-style lentils, a comfort food for me as my mom is half Egyptian. Also sometimes I eat just lemon and salt, which I learned from her. Recently when returning to visit the small town in Florida where I grew up, my mom and I stole some tangerines from a neighbor’s tree that was overflowing with fruit. We both enjoyed them. Then later we heard from another neighbor that nobody every picks from that tree because the fruit is too sour!
I didn’t have strong associations about radishes except that they are fresh, sharp, and certain varieties are referenced in jokes from particular anime I really like. I like almonds but had no strong feelings, just some minor associations with luxury, elegance, water wastefulness, and nutritional value.
Tasting miracle berries was disappointing. I was just waiting for the effects to wear off. Lemons were disgustingly sweet which went against all my personal, familial, and cultural associations with them. Radishes were fine. Almonds were blissfully the same. I felt like miracle berries might be popular because sweet is a popular flavor, and was again reminded that my food preferences are non-normative here for better or worse.
During a one-time occurrence of these perception changes, I sought to maintain my prior associations with lemon because the associations are related to my identity. If the perception changes from miracle berries occurred only rarely, I would probably try to avoid eating lemons during that time in order to preserve my prior associations. If lemons always tasted so sweet, then I’m sure my mom wouldn’t like them and so my associations of them would have been different from the start. I’d probably associate them with fruity candy which I’ve always thought was kind of gross.