Do you prefer your coffee black?
Do you like the taste of bitter herbs?
Then—caution! You might be a psychopath!
A recent study published in the journal, Appetite!, suggests that a fondness for bitter food and drink may well indicate a connection with what psychologists define as “malevolent personality traits.”
You heard me correctly. Your enjoyment of a raw endive salad or—for that matter—most any bitter food or drink has been shown to correlate with psychotic behavior.
Those who took part in the study were asked to identify how much they liked food ranging from bitter to salty to sweet. Turns out those who demonstrated a preference for bitter food ranked high in aggression, sadism, and narcissism. Those who tended to crave sweets were the most agreeable. There you have it—scientific evidence that you are what you eat!
With due respect to what I am sure is solid research, I would suggest there is more to the story than what meets the taste buds.
In Mathew 15:11, Jesus made it clear, “It's not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”
I don't discount the research that links bitter foods to bitter attitudes. But clearly, there is more to the issue. And as always, Jesus throws a spotlight on the hard truth.
That uncomfortably bright light is seen in Luke 6:45: “The good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth what is good. And the evil man, out of the evil treasure, brings forth what is evil. For his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”
In the end, it's a whole lot more about what we put in our heart, than what we put in our stomach.
Maybe it's time we re-trained our taste buds. So what are you craving?
Source: Hemispheres Magazine, January 2016