Bitter herbs provide exactly what we often lack in our modern diet - the bitter taste. It's not always pleasant, but well worth adding to your daily routine!
Perhaps our sugar consumption has outcompeted bitterness. We don't naturally choose the bitter taste and it's not that easy to find in the grocery store. Bitter flavors are found in leaves like arugula, spinach, endive. In the past, when we lived as gatherers, we ate a wide variety of wild plants. That gave us the bitter taste naturally. And that created a rich gut flora with a wide variety of microbes. Comparisons between the gut flora of modern humans and people who live in a more traditional way show that modern diets provide a limited amount of good bacteria in the intestines (unfortunately, it is no longer possible to watch the documentary from Vetenskapens Världs on SVTplay "The Gold in Our Guts" but there are shorter clips ).
Today, it is trendy to use wild plants in cooking and it allows us to take advantage of a wider range of bitter flavors and nutrients. It is exciting to spice up a salad with dandelion root and top it with sorrel. Burdock root is a delicacy, and there are many more roots to discover.
For the bitter taste to have an effect, we need to experience the bitter taste in our mouths. So you shouldn't mask the taste with something sweet. If it's difficult to absorb the bitter taste in food, you can take it in the form of tincture drops. Örtfabriken's Happy Bitters contains several of the most important bitter herbs and is an easy way to add these to your diet daily. The drops are taken before meals or, if necessary, afterwards. It's like Swedish drops in a modern way.
Try adding a couple of bitter herbs to a glass of water or juice, mineral water or a cup of tea. Or drop them directly into your mouth.
