We can remember the flavor of a food we enjoyed ten days ago. If we eat it again, we can perceive the same taste once again and experience the same enjoyment, because its taste is now familiar. However, the tongue’s taste cells are not the same as the ones that existed ten days ago. Every day our taste cells come into contact with acidic foods that are hotter or colder than the body’s temperature. Hot tea, an ice-cold fruit juice, thick coffee, or bitter grapefruit juice all damage these cells to some extent. But by His will, new cells mature in the taste buds to replace those that have completed their life’s work.
Even if people are unaware of them, these processes occur so quickly that the taste cells we use at dinner are not those we use at breakfast. And yet we do not imagine ourselves to be eating that food for the first time. We never confuse an apple’s flavor, because every new cell contains exactly the same knowledge as the old cell. In fact, all of our cells are constantly being renewed, and yet one’s nose never changes shape and one’s hair never changes color. New cells never install themselves in the wrong place, and thus everything always retains the same shape.
If the old taste cells were not renewed, we would be unable to taste anything. A delicious meal or a piece of wood would taste the same. We would forget what sweetness was and be unaware if a piece of food were poisonous or rotten, for only specially created taste cells can initiate this superior process and blessing. In fact, Almighty Allah, the Creator and Lord of all beings, has created these cells with a perfect memory and a sublime renewal system. This and thousands of other similar blessings are His gifts, for He is generous to His servants, forgives unrequitedly, and is all-compassionate:
Praise be to Allah, to Whom everything in the heavens and on Earth belongs. Praise be to Him in the Hereafter. He is the All-Wise, the All-Aware. (Surah Saba’, 1)
