Swallowing a bitter pill

I had, for the longest time, avoided certain foods. Uncooked Spinach? Nope. Ginger? Nope. Peeled Grapefruit ? Not going near it. 

Recently,  I stumbled upon the discovery that what linked these things were that they were similar in taste, ie, something akin to bitter. It became more obvious that a pattern was emerging- anytime anything bitter or acrid was in something- I had to "cut" it with something sweet. (Eg, espresso- only with milk or chocolate. Or both.)  Then for reasons I can't remember, I started to wonder why I disliked these tastes.

As I am pathologically inquisitive, I looked it up on Google and found the top page links (for bitter tasting foods) to be on Ayurvedic approach to foods. I found that my body type would be called primarily Vata. (Click this link, it gives you your proportions. Very cool.)

For Vata body types (thin), three tastes are aggrevating to the system: bitter, pungent and astringent tastes, especially if taken out of balance. That would explain why I intuitively shied away from foods that contain these things. But as I am prone to do, I had taken this to an extreme. I avoided bitter, pungent and astringent tastes altogether. (Ayurveda suggests for each meal one should try to incorporate all six tastes for optimum health.)

I realized this might be something to address. So I did a trial run of bitter/astringent/pungent foods, basically everything I didn't "like." In the morning I ate a half a grapefruit (with a spoon to minimize the bitter peel), and when I made my morning shake, I added some spinach.  The next time I went to eat sushi, I made sure I ate some ginger. For tea, I started drinking Yerba Mate. Quickly I noticed that the "unsavory" quality of these things was falling away, as if the present experience had short circuited all the childhood dislikes.

I noticed also too that I started to really look at some issues in my life, that were, well, bitter. I started to journal on these topics and realized that they weren't so scary or depressing after all.

How amazing- I faced some of my issues simply by changing my diet!

Remember, you are what you eat. If you are missing one or more of the six tastes, it probably has a reflection in your life. Even more so, maybe trying those things may open up some doors that were previously closed in your life. 

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HealthAndHappinessClub/~3/WmfKnQkTzCU/swallowing-a-bitter-pill.html

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