The Bitter Taste – and Why We Need It
We all know about the five “tastes” – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, or savoury, but do we know that it’s important for health and digestion to have a balance of all 5 tastes or flavours? Unfortunately our modern diets are overloaded with sweet and salty and lacking in bitter.
Bitter foods and herbs have important roles to play in our health, specifically in stimulating the correct functioning of our digestive systems. The reason we began to avoid bitter foods has its roots back in the days when early humans were experimenting with different foods. Poisonous plants, or those that had unpleasant side-effects, were those that tasted bitter or pungent. We learned to be cautious around these foods and herbs.
Conversely, sweet foods weren’t poisonous, and were also only available at certain times of the year e.g. at fruiting time, so we valued those foods and wanted more of them.
This was fine when we lived in balance with nature, and sweet foods weren’t readily available, but with modern processing of foods, sweet tastes are on hand whenever and wherever we want. This has led to an imbalance in our tastes, and triggered many modern-day problems such as poor digestion, indigestion, bloating, liver problems, unhealthy microbiomes and subsequent chronic diseases such as arthritis, diabetes or kidney problems.
So how do bitters work?
It is thought that the bitter taste on the tongue receptors stimulates the release of gastric acid, readying the stomach to receive food; and release of digestive enzymes, thus enabling food to be more fully digested in the small intestine. They also stimulate the release of bile which is necessary for fat digestion.
Many bitter foods are high in fibre, helping to stimulate peristalsis in the intestines, and also contain sulphur compounds which are used by the liver’s detoxification pathways. Herbs used to support the functioning of the liver are bitter e.g. milk thistle, dandelion root.
Bringing back bitters
Because we are lacking in experiencing the bitter taste, we need to teach our palates slowly. Add bitter greens to a salad – some rocket, radicchio, young dandelion leaves (unsprayed of course!), parsley, young kale leaves, puha or watercress. Begin your main meal with a small helping of this to stimulate your digestion.
It is interesting to note that lettuce used to be very bitter, but the bitter taste has largely been bred out of modern day lettuces! Try and source some heirloom varieties to grow in your garden.
Coffee and dark chocolate are bitter tastes. Usually we have these with sugar added to make them more palatable, but try gradually weaning off the sugary versions. When you can drink and appreciate black coffee, and 85 or 90% dark chocolate, you’ll know you’re well on the way to having a more balanced taste of life.