Healing with Food Update

Three Secrets to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth

Accompanying recipe: Coconut Macaroons

Would you like to enjoy a reasonable amount of holiday sweets? Here are three tips to curb sugar cravings plus a great cookie recipe.  Then, you can enjoy a fine cookie, and stop after one or two. That spells real pleasure.

When a meal satisfies, we rarely nibble between meals. When, however, we skip a meal, or eat refined sweets that are empty of other nutrients, then, predictably, we feel empty and reach for something to fill the hole. Poor quality foods can’t deeply satisfy.

1. Your first step in freeing yourself from sugar cravings (and to help prevent diabetes) is to, as your mother admonished, eat three good meals a day. Enjoy freshly prepared, delicious foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

2. To reduce your cravings for sugar, increase naturally sweet foods in your diet. Cultivate the habit of reaching for a lush local pear rather than a stale and sugary energy bar. It’s doable.
     Good-for-you sweetness include:
        Sweet Vegetables: yams, winter squash, corn,
        Fruit: all fresh and dried fruits
        Natural sweeteners: honey, unrefined cane sugar and maple or agave syrup
 
3. Lastly, to decrease you sweet tooth, eat more bitter foods. That may sound counterintuitive, but it works. Here’s why.

Bitter foods are, compared to other traditional cuisines, underused in the West. When a meal lacks a bitter flavor tone, sweet cravings escalate. This is according to both Traditional Oriental Medical theory and my own kitchen experience. Try including a little bitter—like more parsley or collards—and track your results.
 
Or maybe you’ve avoided collards due to their bitter tang. Try this. Sauté an onion and carrot until they soften; then add the collards and salt to taste and lightly cook. The sweet tasting finished dish will contain a bitter note but, overall, be deliciously satisfying.

Foods with a Bitter Flavor (Note some are a blend of flavors; vinegar, for example, is both sour and bitter.)

Grains: amaranth and quinoa.

Vegetables: alfalfa sprouts, asparagus, bitter melon, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, celery, dandelion greens, endive, frisee, lettuce, parsley, scallion, Swiss chard, turnip

Fruits: papaya and citrus peel

Nuts:  almonds and walnuts

Other foods: white pepper, vinegar, green and black tea.

May you be well nourished!

Rebecca Wood