There is a plant native to West Africa that produces a fruit known as the taste or miracle berry. 

The berries, which contain a protein called miraculin, modify the sweet receptors of the mouth so that everything eaten tastes sweet.  Even the sourest of foods become sweet and delicious when eaten after chewing taste berries.

In Biological Psychology, J. W. Kalat, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC shares how he and a colleague once experimented with the berries by drinking straight lemon juice, sauerkraut juice and even vinegar.  As advertised, everything tasted extremely sweet.  However, professor Kalat and his friend somehow forgot how acidic these substances were and awoke the next day to find their mouths filled with ulcers! I personally need a ready supply of taste berries.  Not for sour foods, but for the sour taste I leave behind with words spoken unkindly. 

How wonderful it would be to render sweet the bitter, angry words spoken in haste.  Unfortunately, the tongue has no eraser and I do not have a pocket full of taste berries.

In another life I worked my way to middle management in Mary Kay Cosmetics and, sporting a red jacket, attended a convention in Dallas, Texas.  While there I was honored to hear Mary Kay Ash speak at what was to be one of her final public appearances.  She shared from her heart and the book of Proverbs how "death and life are in the power of the tongue".  She went on to say, "That is why I roll my words around my mouth and taste them before I speak".

There is indeed power in words.  If you do not believe that is true, just watch joy evaporate from the face of a child belittled by a parent or confidence wane in a spouse publicly humiliated.  Words, even when spoken in jest, either kill or give life with only a fine line separating the two.

Ask comedian David Letterman what happens when you stop tasting your words before you speak them and cross that line.  If you have not already witnessed his apology to the Palin family on television, it is available for replay on YouTube.  Watch as he tries to explain away the cavalier utterance of words once thought to be clever and entertaining.  They were neither.  And, like professor Kalat and his friend, the next morning David Letterman awoke with a mouth filled with ulcers of regret for the crude and acidic words he allowed to spill from his lips the night before.

Perhaps more than living by the age-old axiom, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all", it would be wiser for me to say what needs to be said but only after a thorough taste test of my words.

This caution is so much easier than damage control and much more readily available than taste berries.