{"id":4335,"date":"2025-01-10T07:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4335"},"modified":"2025-01-10T07:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:49:13","slug":"all-the-right-flavors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/10\/all-the-right-flavors\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Right Flavors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

What goes into the flavor of a great-tasting tomato?

That question is more complicated than it sounds.

Exquisite tastes are seldom straightforward things.\u00a0Summer-ripened strawberries, for instance, offer a symphony of about 600 distinguishable flavors.\u00a0Rich chocolate turns out to be a rock concert of more than 900.\u00a0And chocolate-covered strawberries? No wonder they\u2019re irresistible.

What most people call a \u201cdelicious tomato taste\u201d involves a delicate balance of sugars, acids, and \u201cvolatiles,\u201d or natural aromas.

But something dreadful happened over the past six decades in the world of commercially grown tomatoes.

The great taste that most of us associate with a late-summer, homegrown tomato has almost completely disappeared from stores.

Tomatoes are big business in Florida, accounting for something like 30% of the state\u2019s farm-grown fruits and vegetables.\u00a0The Sunshine State provides a majority of the so-called \u201cwinter tomatoes\u201d that are available year-round in cold-weather states.

But those fruits (yes, a tomato is technically a fruit) were selectively bred for shape, size, yield, shelf life, and the capacity to withstand being dropped 20 feet in a crate without being bruised.\u00a0And their flavor?\u00a0They taste a lot like wet cardboard.

Harry Klee, a professor who researches tastes at the University of Florida, points out that commercial growers literally bred the classic tomato flavor right out of their plants.

Klee is part of a group that has spent years trying to re-invent the tomato \u2013 to come up with a fruit that is red, round, resists bruising, can be enjoyed all year, and tastes fantastic.

That quest for flavor has led to a fascinating journey into the realm of biochemistry.\u00a0

At least 50 different genes affect a tomato\u2019s taste.\u00a0A great-tasting tomato needs just the right combination of sugars, acids, and about 15-20 volatiles, some of which are present at no more than a few parts per billion.\u00a0\u201cBut without them, a tomato will not taste like a tomato,\u201d says Klee.\u00a0

One of the volatiles smells exactly like Juicy Fruit gum.\u00a0Another is the key aroma found in roses.\u00a0Still another has the scent of freshly mown grass.\u00a0\u201cYou need the whole package,\u201d he says.\u00a0If just one of those flavors is out of balance, you won\u2019t be asking for cherry tomatoes on your salad any time soon. \u00a0

The same thing is true when groups of people get together to tackle worthy projects.\u00a0

Diverse ingredients all need to be present.\u00a0And the balance needs to be just right.

A great team needs a risk-taking entrepreneur.\u00a0But it also needs someone whose first instinct is to see what might go wrong.\u00a0There has to be room for the guy who always wants to know why.\u00a0And the person who is unusually sensitive to how the next decision is going to impact customers.\u00a0A healthy team is made better by the presence of a skeptic.\u00a0And an observer.\u00a0And people who are committed to work for a win-win solution.\u00a0And others who are ready to call the question.\u00a0

The apostle Paul used the metaphor of body parts \u2013 as in the Body of Christ \u2013 more than 30 times in his New Testament letters. Here\u2019s part of his most famous exposition, which is found in I Corinthians:

\u201cA body isn\u2019t just a single part blown up into something huge. It\u2019s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, \u201cI\u2019m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don\u2019t belong to this body,\u201d would that make it so? If Ear said, \u201cI\u2019m not beautiful like Eye, transparent and expressive; I don\u2019t deserve a place on the head,\u201d would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.<\/em>

\u201c<\/sup><\/strong><\/em>But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a\u00a0part\u00a0of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn\u2019t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own.<\/em>

\u201cCan you imagine Eye telling Hand, \u201cGet lost; I don\u2019t need you\u201d? Or, Head telling Foot, \u201cYou\u2019re fired; your job has been phased out\u201d? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way\u2014the \u201clower\u201d the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it\u2019s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes\u00a0no\u00a0difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower\u2026 If you had to choose, wouldn\u2019t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?\u201d <\/em>(I Corinthians 12:14-24, \u201cThe Message\u201d).

Unless all the right flavors are brought into the mix \u2013 the diverse aromas of human thinking and feeling and acting \u2013 the outcomes of a group\u2019s deliberations are likely to be bland.

It\u2019s a bit like a great-tasting tomato.\u00a0We need the whole package.<\/em>

No wonder God seems to take such delight in blessing different people with such different gifts to bless others.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here What goes into the flavor of a great-tasting tomato? That question is more complicated than it sounds. Exquisite tastes are seldom straightforward things.\u00a0Summer-ripened strawberries, for instance, offer a symphony of about 600 distinguishable flavors.\u00a0Rich chocolate turns out to be a rock concert of more than 900.\u00a0And chocolate-covered strawberries? No wonder they\u2019re… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[852,508],"class_list":["post-4335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-differences","tag-spiritual-gifts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4337,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions\/4337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}