Double Take - Edition 9 - By Leanne Rhodes

Tasting eyes

MEANING: Peeling away the layers of deception in order to savour God’s good flavour in its pure and true form

Take 1:
I have to admit that I have a rather strange quirk... for some reason my brain has decided that tea only tastes good when it comes from a mug with a white interior! I know that this sounds strange and people have told me more than once that it’s a little crazy so I have taken the time to try and and understand this oddity in character. It’s interesting that what I have discovered has allowed me deduce that I am not completely off my rocker!

It turns out that sight has been scientifically proven as having an effect on your perception of taste. Taste is more accurately termed “flavour” as it is the perception of stimuli received from the mouth, the eyes and the nose. Dana Small1, a neuroscientist at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Yale School of Medicine explains an experiment conducted by some French researchers. They made “a white wine red with an odourless dye and asked a panel of wine experts to describe its taste. The connoisseurs described the wine using typical red wine descriptors rather than terms they would use to evaluate white wine, suggesting that the colour played a significant role in the way they perceived the drink.”

In another example, consider eating a steak dyed green, or a blue pancake? When dye is added it doesn’t affect the actual flavour of the steak but try and eat it... I can guarantee most of you won’t be able to bring yourselves to do it and those of you who do will not enjoy it half as much as a regular brown succulent-juicy looking sirloin!

This brings forth the question: why does sight have such a profound influence on taste? One theory as discussed by G Fields 2, from NEWTON, suggests that our previous experience affects our perception of flavour. “For example,” he states, “we remember that when bread goes bad, it will often have a green fungus growing on it. What if you dyed the bread that same colour in spots? Because of your past experience with bad bread, you would see the dyed bread as "bad", even though it is only dye, an therefore it probably would taste different to you.” This also explains why children are more open to strange coloured and unusual looking food – their “taste memory” has not been conditioned through multiple experiences and they are therefore more open to sampling it.

Take 2:
There is a passage in the Bible that says “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34 v 8 NLT). This has always confused me. How can you taste God? I can understand seeing God, because I see it in His creation, His people and by reading His Word. In my mind’s eye, I imagine the stories of old! However, when I saw how closely taste and sight are bound in producing flavour, a doorway to a whole new way of seeing God opened up to me and I came to realise...how you see God affects His flavour in your life!

So if you see a God as angry and ready to zap you with a lightning bolt you may experience Him like a really hot Durban curry. If you see Him as someone who doesn’t care and has ignored you your whole life, His flavour to you might be the sharp bitter zest of a ruby grapefruit. On the other hand, if you are going through a rough time, His presence may be like the comfort of a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

We need to keep in mind that our previous experiences affect our tastes today and this is also true with our perception of God; just as a harmless dye in regular tasting food puts you off a perfectly good meal so our images of God are often tainted by our past. In the past you may have come to know God as leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. So now when you are faced with anything bearing those characteristics (the same dye) you immediately react as if it were that past situation.

The Psalm encourages us to “taste and see” that the Lord is good. If we were to switch those two words around to read “See and taste that the Lord is good” we can capture even more of its meaning. We are encouraged to modify our sight in order to taste His nature properly.

If we ask God to open our eyes to His true nature and not what we have created, we can expect Him to take us on a whole new journey down the aisles of an eternal all-you-can-eat buffet. Then we will taste the Lord and know that He tastes GOOD.

References:
Dana Small April 2, 2008 Scientific American:How does the way food looks or its smell influence taste? http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-how-does-sight-smell-affect-taste
G. Fields: Sight and Food Behaviors 12/12/2004 http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01724.htm
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