Black Foods: nourish the Kidneys and the Adrenals. Now we all know blackberries but I am including blueberries, eggplant, red cabbage, black mushrooms like Shiitake mushrooms and brown seaweeds. In Chinese Medicine the kidneys represent your core and essence so we really need to be conscious in adding some black foods to our diet. They will keep us looking young and healthy. An easy way to get your greens and blacks into your diet is to have a scoop of “Greens” powder every morning. It has a lot of green vegetables and several different seaweeds which will help your kidneys. But remember “You cannot out-supplement a bad diet.” It is the food you eat that turns into energy. It follows that if you are eating healthy food, you will have good energy or Qi. If your diet is poor, so will your energy be. Like Adelle Davis (one of the founders of this nutrition) said, “You choose life or death with every bite that you put into your mouth.” I like to say the more colors you add to your plate, the longer you will live.
Now concerning the 5 fl avors: Sweet, Salty, Sour, Bitter, Pungent. Each of these nourishes a certain organ, and the more you add them to your diet, the more that organ will sing. Here in the United States we usually only enjoy and indulge in two fl avors. That is why we have so many people suffering with diabetes and high blood pressure. The fl avor that nourishes the pancreas is SWEET. A little bit of raw honey in a cup of tea
will nourish your pancreas and stomach while a lot of sweetness will hurt your pancreas and cause it eventually not to work. Some of us are trying to get our sweetness from our food—while it would be healthier getting it out of your life and the loving relationships you have nurtured. Try to fi nd sweetness in life and not in your food.
SALT Y is the other taste that Americans
have overused. Now this taste is VERY important to the body because it stimulates the kidneys and the adrenals and, as I stated before, they are your essence and core in Chinese Medicine. This fl avor is so essential that countries have fought over it! Natural salt is full of all the minerals the body needs and all the minerals are in the right proportions to run smoothly. The problem is that some chemists decided to put together sodium and chloride (without all the other minerals) and give it to us in a cute container with a girl holding an umbrella. This combination is pure poison to the body. It causes infl ammation, swelling and high blood pressure. A natural salt like Himalayan Sea Salt or Celtic Sea Salt are completely balanced and they nourish the body without causing infl ammation or swelling. Our bodies are like batteries; we need salt to cause the current to fl ow.
CAUTION: Some people opt for Gatorade for vital nutrients—but it is full of sugar and some lovely color dyes that can cause allergic reactions like coughing,
itching or hyperactivity. All the color dyes are a by-product of making high fructose corn syrup, so you are getting red dye and genetically-altered corn in one gulp of Gatorade! It might be why so many children are hyperactive.
Next is SOUR which nourishes the
liver and gallbladder. An easy way to make sure that your liver is happy is to wake up and have a nice cup of hot water with lemon. This will get the gallbladder to release bile and get the whole digestive tract working fi rst thing in the morning. A cup of coffee will send your liver into shock and hyper- drive. If you add milk and sugar, the body is trying to wake up and you have just kicked the liver with the coffee, coated your lungs in a cold pasty fi lm and sent your pancreas screaming for help. No wonder we are all exhausted by 3pm and we need another pick-me- up. Other foods that are sour are pure cranberry juice, sauerkraut, vinegar, kombucha (a fermented drink) and grapefruits.
Fourth is BITTER, an interesting fl avor that we Americans don’t use enough. This taste helps to break things up and drain, like the green foods. Many of our green foods are bitter like dandelion greens, kale, watercress, arugula, collard greens. I love all of these. If you don’t have the time to cook these great vegetables, you can juice them and get them in your diet fi rst thing in the morning instead of that sugary cup
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