Why do we have to encourage our children to eat bitter vegetables? We don’t LOL. At least I never found the reason to … until today.
Children naturally have strong digestive systems and can handle almost everything!
Unless we are talking about special needs children, like my kids, who have digestive issues.
DOMINO BENEFITS OF BITTERS
Apparently, bitter foods stimulate the vagus nerve. That’s the long highway of nerves from the brain to the digestive system.
The bitter taste in the mouth sends signals to the stomach to produce more stomach acid, which improves the digestion of food, especially meat. Increase stomach acid, in turn, stimulates the secretion of bile and pancreatic juices, which are needed for efficient digestion in the small intestines. All of these processes are important for the proper digestion and absorption of nutrients from food. Furthermore, bile secretion stimulates the muscular movements of the digestive tract, making sure that wastes move along and are eliminated efficiently.
WHAT ARE BITTERS?
Bitter gourd (ampalaya) is an obvious example. Other mild bitter are salad leaves. Stronger bitter leaves examples are kale and arugula. Sprouted greens are also great bitter foods.
Bitters have so much more benefits than those listed above. Keep posted for more information.
HOW DO I KNOW IT WORKS
Whenever I implement dietary changes or try natural treatments, I always want to know if what I am doing is working and if it’s worth continuing. I mean why ask a child to eat bitters if there are no benefits whatsoever?
The best way to check how well our digestive health is doing (other than getting lab tests) is by checking what comes out from the other end. Poop should have a nice texture and should be dark in color. Pale 
means the liver is not producing enough bile. That not only means that the above domino benefits have not occurred and digestion is inefficient, it also means that the liver is not efficiently releasing bile, which also contains wastes and should be eliminated.
My child had pale . After researching and implementing various changes to improve bile production, poop color finally improved when we added the last bit of the puzzle: bitter sprouted broccoli with all meals!
I am so thankful that life-changing health improvements are simple and yet so effective.
God is good! Everything we need, we already have!
