Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 17, Verse 9

The foods that are bitter, sour, saline, excessively hot, pungent, dry and burning, are liked by the Râjasika, and are productive of pain, grief and disease.

Real intensity in flavor is named here as matching the real restlessness of the mode it comes from.

Foods that agitate the palate are tied directly to a mode already described as agitating the mind. The connection between what's eaten and what's felt is drawn plainly.