But the taste...
Sigh. This may be the single most common complaint for every American herbalist. No way to make it pretty, some
of the things I recommend taste pretty foul. We work with capsules when we can, and when we can’t, I bring out the
General: Hold your nose and get it down. We are not children; we are adults with a condition that requires serious
herbal medicine. Our ability to rise above the need to have everything taste yummy is what separates us from the
animals. Nike said it best: “Just do it.”
For meals, though, we need to be compassionate and realistic about dietary changes. It is an integral part of daily
life, after all. We cannot reasonably expect someone who has lived for years on fast food and take out to be happy
with the prospect of shopping for and preparing their own meals. I fall short here quite a lot. Gradual, workable goals
allow everyone to become comfortable with lifestyle changes, without alienating their inner 4-year-old (you know,
the part of us that just wants to watch cartoons, eat pizza every night, and party like it's1999). Make friends with
your inner hedonist: it is vital for learning to eat kale, or take those nasty herbs.
One example of this can be seen with a patient I had last year. To keep it simple, I asked him to eat just one green
thing a day, just one. This was something he could wrap his mind around – felt manageable. At first, it was the
lettuce inside the burger. But he began to bring awareness to what he was eating – he noticed it for the first time in
his life. As he shared this with his friends, they were included in the process, giving him a hard time if he had not
eaten something green at a meal. Gradually one green-thing-a-day morphed into an entire serving of veggies, then
shopping for them and planning for them. I knew we had struck pay dirt when his mother proudly informed me that
he ate broccoli for breakfast earlier that week.
While even I am not that devoted, it illustrates the point.
There’s nothing exciting about gradually rebuilding health and life through a return to “basics.” No time-streams to
cross, no imperial fighters to dodge. There’s nothing magical about twice-weekly visits for bodywork that can be
expensive, herbs that taste like dirt, being forced to eat gross vegetables that nobody likes unless covered with a
thick cheese sauce. We haven’t even gotten around to the importance of fiber!
But by taking the small step of acknowledging that food is medicine, and that we increase the body’s healing
potential by choosing food with qi in it, we can make a giant leap on the road to recovery.
You can contact me directly at jmoffitt@acunut.com.
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medicine, but will interest his patients in
the care of the human body, in diet, and in
the cause and prevention of disease."
Thomas Edison
