Page 34 - Winter2010

Bitters: the Revival of a

Forgotten Flavor

by Danielle Charles-Davies, Clinical Herbalist

f all the flavors to grace our palate, there is per-
haps none as fascinating as that of bitterness. It

Ois a flavor that is universally despised—used lin-
guistically to characterize pain, harshness and things that

are extremely difficult to bear. Yet, it is also a flavor used
1
in cultures the world over to strengthen digestion, cleanse

the body and build vitality—in short, considered an ingre-
dient essential to good health. In fact, so many of the
2,3
plants humans have traditionally used to tonify and heal
the body are bitter tasting that we still today often rate the

strength and usefulness of our medicine by how terribly
bitter it tastes.

It is unfortunate, then, that our modern diet seems to be com-
pletely lacking in the wild bitter tasting plants our ancestors considered
so fundamental to their health. Many of the diseases riddling our mod-
4
ern culture—from indigestion and gastric reflux to metabolic disorders
ranging from elevated cholesterol to type 2 diabetes—seem to all point
back to the deficiency of bitterness in our diets, and the lack of the pro-
tection and tone it imparts to our digestion and metabolic functions. 5

34 Wise Traditions WINTER 2010

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