Flavors… a centerpiece in every recipe, it is rare for someone to eat a food when the flavor is off-putting.  More than nutrients, whole food flavors also give us an idea of freshness and nutrient-density.  However, artificial additives, preservatives, sodium-preserved foods, and added sweeteners have confused us when it comes to the flavors we need and how to enjoy all of them.

Since the 1500s, it has been easy and low cost to obtain sugar through trade or purchase, making sweet foods a regular part of many generations.  Because sweeteners are so easily obtained all year round, and they’re added to everything, most of us don’t recognize how sweet natural foods really are.  Even honey and maple syrup don’t require the effort it once took to harvest these sweeteners.  For generations, we’ve been adding sweeteners to foods that naturally are tart, savory, or bitter.  We’ve also been selecting or growing produce that is grown for its sweetness rather than nutrient-density.  Most of us find the bitter flavor so unpalatable we can barely handle a few leaves of dandelion greens without it being covered in gravy, drenched in dressing, or blended in a smoothie.

Sweet is necessary.  Our brain, and other vital organs, need sweet foods for energy, even though sweet energy is short-lived.  We usually desire sweet foods because we subconsciously know we need these foods for survival.  If we are raised to eat sweet and savory foods, but don’t have bitter foods a regular part of our meals, it will become very difficult for us to want to add these in regularly as adults, and even harder to digest them.  These sweet cravings perpetuate a cycle that causes hormonal imbalance, mood swings, low immunity, and the basis of microbial imbalances.

Then, the sweeter the foods are that we eat, the more we need them.  Not only do these sweet foods change our microbiome to crave sugar, but we stop being able to taste, and appreciate, the natural sweetness of leafy greens and unseasoned foods.  The more preserved and processed our foods are, and the less bitter flavors we eat, the more sugar we need add to make foods palatable to our sweet-trained minds.  This makes us miss out on many other flavors (nutrients) as well.

A wonderful sister to sweetness is salty.  This flavor enhances all the other flavors, making us want to eat just a little slower and just a little more.  It also encourages us to drink more so that we stay hydrated.  With adequate hydration, the nutrients we consume has the opportunity to get to where they need to go.  But, if we are missing the bitter fiber-rich whole vegetables that increase digestive enzymes, we’ll have a really hard time digesting the bigger nutrients, from foods like meat, that these salty flavors are making taste so good.

Umami (meat-like flavors) provide rich minerals, if we can digest them.  Whether it is protein and B-Vitamin rich beef, or immune-supportive antioxidant-rich mushrooms, we know brightly colored natural whole foods are our most nutrient-dense foods. The foods with a natural umami flavor are often brown.  If you’ve ever watched a child scribble with all the crayon colors, you can tell why these foods are often our most nutrient-dense foods.  Food colors tell you their nutrients.  But we can’t access these nutrients without a healthy microbiome.  This leaves our digestive system in an overly-acidic state, and our body low in nutrients, despite the nutrient-dense food we’re consuming.

Sour foods in large amounts have this same effect.  Sour and tart flavors, like lemons and berries, are usually loaded with antioxidants.  But, sour is something we can only handle in small amounts unless it’s mixed with sweet, which may make us eat too much.  Sour goes well with bitter by stimulating digestive fluids from our mouth to our stomach.

We don’t need much bitter flavor, either.  Chew, slowly, a small handful of seasonless bitter vegetables (dark lettuce, celery, radish…etc.) while preparing a meal and lay out the same for starving husbands and children.  Serve broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, or collards with every meal.  Bitter whole foods first in a meal tell nourish your kidneys and stimulate bile and stomach acid.  They add prebiotic fiber to your digestive system to feed the good bacteria to begin digestion, which prepares your body for the heavier nutrients later in your meal.  They coat the digestive tract to help reduce blood sugar spikes and prevent acid reflux as they work to heal the microbiome. Eating whole bitters just 10-20 minutes prior to the rest of any meal is a good habit for us all, and especially if you plan to eat dessert!