Researchers have found that taste-related metaphors such as 'sweet' actually engage the emotional centers of the brain more than literal words such as 'kind' that have the same meaning. If metaphors in general elicit a similar emotional response, that could mean that figurative language presents a 'rhetorical advantage' when communicating with others.
Neural sweet talk: Taste metaphors emotionally engage the brain -- ScienceDaily
Journal Reference:
Francesca M. M. Citron, Adele E. Goldberg. Metaphorical Sentences Are More Emotionally Engaging than Their Literal Counterparts. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2014; 1 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00654
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