It’s a challenge to eat healthy when there is so much low-quality food readily available in our modern world. It only takes a single glimpse or thought of a sweet treat or salty, savory snack for a ravenous craving to kick in.
Over time, binges, if not controlled, can lead to weight gain, fatigue, muddled thinking, and moodiness, to name a few.
A balanced meal, according to acupuncture and Chinese medicine, consists of foods that represent all five tastes–sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and pungent. Each taste corresponds with a specific organ channel. By understanding their connection, you can move toward maintaining a healthy appetite.
The five tastes are:
Pungent
Associated with the lungs and large intestine, pungent tastes include the dry, hot taste found in garlic, ginger, and onions and help the lungs properly circulate energy throughout the whole body.
Sweet
Sweet tastes are associated with the stomach and spleen. Fruits, sweet potatoes, and some vegetables like carrots aid in digestion and reduce the toxicity of all foods.
Sour
The liver and gall bladder are associated with sour tastes. Sour foods, like pickles or vinegar, help your body metabolize fats better.
Bitter
The bitter taste found in dark chocolate, radish, and bitter gourd removes excess heat from the heart and small intestine helping them function better and pacify negative emotions.
Salty
The salty taste associated with the kidney and bladder has a big impact on moistening hard bowels and regulating their movements.
Curbing your cravings takes knowing which system is out of whack. If there is intense hankering for sweet and salty, this implicates the spleen, stomach, kidney, and urinary bladder. The desire for rich, fatty foods can be traced back to the liver and gall bladder.
Since the spleen and stomach are associated with obsession, which can certainly be the case in an inability to restrain oneself from devouring all cookies and chips in the kitchen, these are usually the culprit behind every craving. An acupuncture treatment typically includes points to help bolster a sluggish spleen and other lagging organs.
To learn more about using food as medicine and how to address your food cravings call for an appointment today!
If you are looking to improve your diet and get your health on track, talk to me, an FUNCTIONAL NUTRITIONIST for the past 30 years! about a course of treatment that can help you get back into balance with your diet. It’s never too late to start making progress in the right direction.
