Eating with the Season: Spring Detox, Bitter Greens, the Liver, and Our Digestion

Our bodies are designed to eat with the seasons.

Chinese Medicine teaches us that eating foods that are fresh and in season helps bring our bodies and our digestive systems into harmony with our environment. As the seasons shift so should our diets. In the West, we are used to being able to access a wide array of fruits and vegetables at any time of the year, but that doesn’t mean we should be reaching for those foods all the time. One of the best ways to find out what foods are seasonally available in your bioregion is to shop at a local farmers market. Challenge yourself to choose foods that may be new to your palate to sample the energetics of the season.

Wild foods are a great source of seasonal flavors! 5 flavors of wild greens and blossoms pictured above: spicy and sweet spearmint, sour sorrel leaves, sweet violets and dianthus flowers, salty nettles, pungent ramps, and bitter and spicy arugula⁠

In the Spring we find lots of bitter and pungent greens like arugula and dandelion. The bitter flavor stimulates the liver’s production of bile to support the breakdown of fats and gently detox our digestive system. The bitter flavor supports our digestion by increasing stomach acid and digestive enzyme production, so we can digest our food more effectively.

Eating seasonally allows us to get a wide range of flavors in our diets because, ideally, we want to be eating a balance of foods that are sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy, or pungent. Too much of any flavor can throw our digestive harmony out of balance and can cause things like heat or cold or dampness to accumulate in the system and obstruct our digestive function. ⁠

Before you prepare your next meal, sample each ingredient on its own and see if you can identify all the flavors in your food!⁠

If your body needs a little extra boost in the Spring, we love the Daily Detox Formula from SOL Nutrition.