Made with love, is something you might find written next to a meal, sweet, or snack. Most often made by someone’s loved one to enjoy and share with others.

It’s a strange expression though isn’t it? Love is not an ingredient you can buy at the store. It is also not something you blend into a batter. You cannot sprinkle it on top of anything. Yet somehow, we can faintly detect that it’s there in our food.

The culinary field is one of both art and science. A cook is as much a chemist as they are a sculptor. Science is the pursuit of knowledge and truth, both can only be discovered not invented. Art by contrast is the field of creating things from other things, to express emotions in a relatable way. Any cook is both the chemist and the artist, a wonderful blend.

So let’s take a closer look at “made with love” and see if we can prove it.

What is flavor? Why do we taste? A simple check of if something is poison to us or not does not need to be so varied. So for arguments sake lets say bitter is for bad, and sweet is for good. Why do we then have sour, savory, salty, creamy, and nutty? An argument can be made for a more diverse sense of smell (and our sense of smell is more diverse) but why do we have such variation in flavor? It serves no evolutionary benefit to our species.

On top of this mystery, why do combinations of flavors often taste better than one alone? Sweet and salty, savory and creamy, sweet and sour, bitter and sweet, nutty and savory, the list goes on. There is something irrational about it. Combinations should overwhelm yet they harmonize. It’s almost like flavor is connected to the creative side of us, yet is repeatable and measurable like the science side.

Yet all flavors and combinations were there from the beginning, we don’t invent them we discover them. On top of this, combinations of flavors are also found naturally. Let’s take one example, the peanut. 

Peanuts (when roasted) are savory, creamy, nutty, and salty all on their own. Yes we add salt, but if you cut out sodium from your diet even unsalted peanuts would have a bit of a salty flavor. People have been eating this food for hundreds if not thousands of years, yet alone it doesn’t compare to it’s combination potential in modern times.

A second example, chocolate. Yes chocolate is a modern confection, but people have consumed cocoa for hundreds if not thousands of years. We have been making bread for thousands of years too, so it’s not a far stretch that we could have been making a more modern form of chocolate for as long, the chemical process is similar (dry, crush, blend, bake). Cocoa is bitter, but has a mild sweet undertone. With modern chocolate we flip that and make it sweet with the bitter undertone.

Now we can trace back consumption of both these foods to eras past, yet together they make a near flawless combination in the modern day.  Chocolate covered peanuts are sweet, salty, creamy, savory, bitter, and nutty all at once. You can taste them all, not one aspect drowned out by the collective flavors. A simple but extraordinary combination, that existed undiscovered for thousands of years. 

Our senses are how we experience and process information about the world we live in. So flavor is too information, but what does it inform us about? Well, good, bad, chemical properties, and dare I say a hint of Love? Flavors like chocolate covered peanuts have existed from the start of it all, as such do they not point to something or someone who cares about us?

The experience of taste is without a doubt the closest we can come to a repeatable, measurable, and scientific way to show inteligent design to our five senses. If not a loving creator, why then would we have so many flavors? How do you rationalize the wonder of chocolate covered peanuts without a God? We eat because we hunger, we eat what doesn’t taste bad to us, so why then do some things taste so good that we can’t help but want more?