Can you taste the words coming out of my mouth

How do those words taste coming out of your mouth? Usually spoken to you when you have to eat your words… like I was wrong, I am sorry or worse yet… the Bears still suck… but the truth is words do have a taste to them… its biblical.

 

Did you know that some people taste words? No, its true, I am not making this up. Now before you say “oh yea like a cake that spells your name” NOPE. I mean there are people in the world today that when certain words are spoken their brain causes their mouth to taste certain tastes… but here is the weird thing… If I say Banana you don’t taste bananas… it could actually be any key word that triggers the phenomena - for example every time you hear the word gymnasium your brain would tell your taste buds that you taste tomato soup - that would suck if you hated tomato soup. This actually has a scientific name… ready for this one? 

Lexical gustatory synesthesia… That makes me taste alphabet soup… JK

But this was first recorded in 1907. It has now been studied  by Neurologist Julia Sinner of the university of edinburgh. The case study was called “The taste of words on the tip of the tongue”. Now only 10 people in Europe and the United states have this condition… but how freaky! 

Here are some of the examples these ten people had:

the word Castanets tasted like tuna fish

Hearing the name John made one taste cornbread

Another name William made someone taste potatoes

and still another when hearing tomato would taste bananas… well at least they are both in the fruit family. 

 

But what’s even more insightful is that the bible tells us our words can taste… good, salty sweet or even bitter 

Your words are like salt

Col. 6:4 Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.

 

Prov. 16:24 Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

 

Prov. 4:20My son, pay attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21Do not lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. 22For they are life to those who find them, and health to the whole body.…

 

And James 3:10-12 says our words can be bitter or sweet depending on our heart.

 

The truth is our words have the same type of response as Lexical gustatory synesthesia

What I mean is - when we go to open our mouth to speak in certain situations people around us are already expecting what to taste.

We all have had the person, boss, father, mother etc… that when they start to talk you can already taste the foul terrible taste. It just is an immediate reaction. You know its going to taste bad, so you already taste it before they even finish their first sentence.

On the other hand we have people that speak into our lives even when we do deserve harsh tasting words… but they do so in such a way that it tastes good, it brings healing and it nourishes our soul to seek God more.

Lets be there person who speaks words of great taste and humble pie - our world needs it more than ever!