Flavor Chemistry

I am (7/8) a food scientist, and one of the quintessential demonstrations that we present at community events is the color/flavor swap: we dye the color of beverages to hues that aren't true to their flavor identity. For example, a grape-flavored beverage would be dyed orange, and a lemon-flavored one dyed blue. Research has shown that most people incorrectly identify those grape flavors as tangerine because of their color. Likewise the lemon flavor is perceived as blue-raspberry. 

Why does this happen? Well, flavor perceptions, like many of our experiences in life, are largely psychological.

What does this have to do with the bible?

1 Corinthians discusses some of the "ethics" associated with eating (or not) foods that have been sacrificed to idols. Many of the people who lived in Corinth at the time Paul wrote this letter were worshipers of false Gods, namely Baal. This emblem of Canaanite mythology required some stringent worship rituals, such as temple prostitution, human sacrifice, and special preparations of different foods. A big question that members of the Corinthian church were struggling with was whether or not to consume meat that had been sacrificed to Baal and other idols. (After the religious animal slaughter, the meat would either be consumed immediately as part of the ritual or sent to local butcher and sold.) 

Paul's answer was pretty simple: Baal isn't real, so it doesn't really matter if the food was sacrificed for some (false) religious purpose. A worship act by someone else regarding this meat doesn't change the fact that it is edible food, provided by the one, true God. (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)

An analogy can then be drawn to the flavor "trick" I described above. Dying lemonade blue doesn't make it have a different flavor, it just changes the perception of the beverage. Sacrificing a cow to Baal doesn't change the truth that cows make darn good burgers, but the idol-worshipers perceive those sacrificed cows differently. All perceptions aside, though, nothing has changed about the meat (or the lemonade) because Baal doesn't have any real power. False idols change our perception of the world around us but they don't change what is intrinsically true about the environment. 

In this way, flavor chemistry (and 1 Corinthians 8:4) can be a sort of "litmus test" for whether something is biblical or not. Prayer is a real connection with God that works powerfully in the lives of believers. Prayer can change water to wine (or grape kool-aide to orange juice, in theory.) Prayer is from God. In contrast, abstaining from alcohol can be a good way to avoid drunkenness, but there's a difference between drinking and drunkenness. Therefore, completely abstaining doesn't change either the person or the beverage. It's merely a practice of religion, which isn't necessarily bad. However, as Christians, it's easy to invent religious practices that we deem spiritual, and then legalistically attempt to hold others to those standards. Dress codes, birth control usage, and attending church every week are only a few examples. In reality, though, these practices involve a balancing act between heartfelt worship of Jesus and exercising God-given freedoms. Just as we know it isn't a sin to skip church (though we are encouraged to regularly meet together in worship,) it can be a stumbling block to a new believer if we miss a Sunday service. For the sake of being cognoscente of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to be aware of these ideas as well as the misconceptions surrounding them. If having a beer will cause our neighbor to fall back into alcoholism and again denounce God, we should abstain. But if not, Paul says, enjoy the freedom to indulge. 

Food science is fun, and also can be insightful to the realities of the spiritual realm. Just as food dye doesn't change much about a beverage other than its color, it's important to remember that our behaviors and attitudes towards God don't change what is true about Him or His creation.