Taste the Five Phases
Flavor, taste and smell are really important aspects of herbal medicine. We use flavor and smell to accord with the Wu Xing or 5 Phases, which are associated with our internal organs and the body’s metabolism.
“Herbs Taste Bad”
The notion that herbal medicine tastes bad comes from two conversations.
The first occurs internally. Many people of color and indigenous populations have a history of using herbal medicine. When we are children our sense of taste is not refined yet. As children we are pure yang, yet have had very little experience with things in the world. My mom used to say in our dialect “you don’t know how to eat that yet” implying that my sense of taste had not had enough experience to understand the complexity of ginger or bitter melon. I did eventually learn to love ginger and I use it everywhere now! I didn’t, however learn to come to terms with bitter melon and that is a personal tendency of mine. I am extremely sensitive to taste and smell so bitter tastes are difficult for me to digest. As we experience life more, we begin to distinguish things differently. As children, we mostly decide if we like/don’t like (yin/yang), as we gain experience we begin to describe things by their attributes (wu xing/5 phases) because we have the vocabulary and experience to do so.
Externally, a second rhetoric arises is from anti-Asian bias or orientalism which deems herbal medicine as lowly, un researched, gross, exotic and weird. I’ve seen plenty of social media clips by people of European descent, ‘with the best intentions’ being offensive when talking about their fertility journey of drinking Chinese herbs, saying things like “it looks like dirt from my back yard” or “tastes like dirt”. This second rhetoric is harmful and should be interrupted, unpacked and ultimately stopped.
Herbal medicine is here to stay, as people continue to gain more mistrust of the healthcare systems, people will continue to seek their own solutions. The more knowledge we can give about herbal medicine the safer we can make it for everyone. The more respect we can give traditional practices the less harm we will cause to each other as well as encourage wider access to care for those who are purposefully blocked from healthcare. The pandemic uncovered a lot of the purposeful exclusion that occurs in trying to obtain healthcare and it is an important component of any conversation about alternative types of care that exist in the U.S.
What we have to understand is that using the rhetoric that herbs taste bad is harmful to many communities. Do some of my patients have a hard time taking bitter herbs? YES! You don’t have to like how your herbs taste, though most of my patients are pleasantly surprised that they do! However, we don’t have to treat herbal medicine with disrespect by making TikTok videos making fun of traditional medicines. There are already plenty of herbal companies that use this rhetoric to market traditional medicines to those who might not have the ability to fully respect the medicine.
The herbs you are prescribed, along with their properties and flavors are meant to treat an imbalance that is going on in your body! When you have a viral infection, bitter and cold herbs are often administered to combat the heat and stop viral replication. The taste that comes with your herbal formula has deeper meaning than you think!
Herbs and Spices Are Used to Season Our Food!
Ginger is warming. Mustard seeds are considered hot. Both have pungent and dispersing properties.
Don’t most of us use herbs and spices to alter the taste of our food? Salt can give depth to your food. Cardamom can disperse and lift a flavor. Peppers add heat! There are so many ways using herbs can change the way our foods taste, smell, how the food interacts with other ingredients and how it makes us feel while cooking and eating the food! This is why herbal medicine sits in a unique place in the West. It is much closer to nutrition and food therapy yet many people misconceive it to be supplementation. It is much more like using pharmaceutical medication than it is like vitamins. One main difference between herbal medicine and supplements are that herbs are digested as foods and therefore absorbed much better. Their properties are much more full and well rounded than vitamins which are isolated and manufactured. Herbal medicine has a long standing history which is also based in science. They are more organic than pharmaceutical medications because they come from nature/foods. Herbs should also be used with knowledge, experience and caution because some herbs or combinations of herbs can be toxic or inappropriate for certain situations.
In my clinical practice of Chinese Herbology, I rarely dispense raw herbal formulas because many New Yorkers are too busy to cook their herbs. I often dispense herbs as capsules and granules which allows for busy people to be easily compliant with their treatment plans. Granules do require tasting your herbs, BUT that also means your herbs are interacting with one another as a formula better and with your digestive system through smell and taste more comprehensively. With capsules, the herbs don’t interact with one another as a formula until they go into your digestive system. Many people ask - ‘which is more effective?’ In our modern lifestyles, taking your herbs twice a day or as often as prescribed is MOST important to how effective they will be. I also have many patients who don’t like swallowing capsules and opt for granule powders. Herbal prescriptions are individualized even down to what an individual prefers or what is most feasible in their lifestyle.
Flavors and the Internal Organs
Bok choy and other leafy greens are good for nourishing blood and the Heart
In Chinese Medicine we accord taste, flavors and herbal properties to the Five Phases which accord to the 5 major organ pairs. Flavors we tend towards, crave or dislike can give some diagnostic context. Generally, we should all have a little bit of each flavor. Though we might have cravings it is important that we don’t over do it. Having too much of something that is deemed as ‘healthy’ can still cause an imbalance. Many people think green vegetables are considered healthy foods, but imagine if your entire diet was the same type of greens all the time. This means there is no variety and no opportunity to taste the other flavors to feed your organs.
Foods and Flavors that accord to the Wu Xing
Liver/Gallbladder - Astringent and sour foods: sour plum, lemon, vinegar, kim chi, pickled or fermented foods.
Heart/Small Intestine - Bitter foods: leafy greens, bok choy, mustard greens, rhubarb
Seaweed can tonify Kidneys while the bland and subtle sweetness of rice is good for the Spleen.
Spleen/Stomach - Bland sweet foods like: yams, sweet potatoes, corn, rice, pearl barley
Lung/Large Intestine - Dispersing and pungent foods and spices: ginger, garlic, mint, radish
Kidney/Bladder - Salty flavors like: seaweed, animal products or meat, oysters
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Written by Dr. Emily Siy, DACM on 3/13/23
Check out my other blog posts about HERBS and find more posts about TCM THEORY.