How The Five Tastes Calm or Energize Your Nervous System

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. Something I learned from diet culture was that the taste of sweet was "bad." If I craved sweetness then something must be out of balance. There was probably a period of time where craving sweetness sent me into a panic where I had to become a detective to understand why I wanted something sweet. Learning about the five tastes changed my perspective. We have 5 basic tastes that include sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory. Experiencing all five tastes can make a meal feel more satisfying and even regulating to your nervous system. Wanting to taste sweetness doesn't mean there is something wrong with you, but that your body is always looking for a balanced, well rounded eating experience. I chat about this and more today with a returning guest Michelle Brown. Michelle is a Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner and clinical herbalist with a degree in Botany. She also holds a certificate as a Mastery Level Biology of Trauma Advanced Provider. She works with clients from around the world to address anxiety, depression, fatigue and other chronic health issues from a root-cause, trauma-informed perspective. This approach addresses nervous system dysregulation and emphasizes the mind-body connection that allows true healing to happen. Michelle also teaches aspiring herbalists and holistic practitioners to master root-cause healing through her clinical herbalism program. We chat about the somatic experience of food, the five tastes and how they affect your nervous system, understanding sweetness and its role in nutrition, balancing taste for inner harmony, cravings as body communication, the connection between taste and emotions, and the importance of enjoying your meals. Ways you can support the Satiated podcast include: please leave a review anywhere that you listen to podcasts to help others find the show. You can also check out all of my affiliate links, join Satiated+, donate a few dollars to the show, and be able to Ask Me Anything each month, or check out working with me 1:1 or in any of my programs. I have self paced programs and my three month live Somatic Eating® Program which you can join the waitlist for now. The next class will be in October. All links are in the show notes. Now, welcome Michelle! I am really excited to have you back on the podcast today, and really curious about the new content we're gonna kind of explore. But for anyone who hasn't heard the last two episodes that we've done together, I just want you to reintroduce yourself and who you are and how you got into the work that you're doing today.

Michelle Brown 03:21

Yeah, well, thank you for having me again. It's always fun, and yeah, I know in past conversations we've had around food and the nervous system of course. I'm a functional nutrition practitioner and a clinical herbalist, so I like to bring kind of the herbal approach into it as well. And so I do work with clients around mood, nervous system regulation as a foundation, but I do have a lot of clients with chronic health issues, so autoimmunity, fibromyalgia, some of these things that we know now are related to nervous system dysregulation. So yeah, excited to be here.

Stephanie Mara 03:56

Yeah, I love your work and what you're blending all together because, especially what I've seen in the field of somatics, it's getting inundated with like it's just the body, or it's just this, or you just have to do that. Like kind of simplifying it the same way we do literally to anything that gets popular. There's more nuance and complication, and I know something that you are also into is getting into the taste of food, and I'm wondering if you can speak more to that because there is the embodied experience and the somatic experience and the nervous system experience of food. There's just so many different ways we can experience it, but we start experiencing food the moment. Well, not even the moment it hits our mouth, but even before it enters our body. Our body starts to respond that food is about to come in, but you know, the moment we put it in our mouth, we have an experience with it.

Michelle Brown 04:48

Yeah, it is such an interesting kind of somatic experience. You know, one of our five senses, and I think one that a lot of us have a really complicated relationship with, right? And I think it's interesting to explore it from that perspective. There are different ways of looking at it of course, you know, I, as trained as an herbalist, I've studied different herbal traditions or systems, like traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. And actually, you know, they weren't just herbal traditions; they were, you know, just healing traditions. Really, they took into account food and your daily routine and things like that, but they all use this kind of energetic approach to understanding how all of these things-food, herbs, our daily routine-impact our body. And you know, the taste of different foods or herbs was a really important concept in these traditions, and it's something I think that we've kind of lost touch with in our modern society, and so we kind of complicated our relationship with some of these tastes and what they actually can do for us on a visceral somatic level. It's really a fascinating kind of way of looking at this topic.

Stephanie Mara 05:56

Yeah, absolutely agree with that. You know, before we pressed record, I was relaying that I was really excited about this conversation, and that we were going to talk about taste because one of the papers I just wrote for my PhD, it kind of started to just get curious about the experience of vibration in food, and found some really neat research where basically they had people eat certain foods and then notice the vibratory feeling of that food, and then they tried to like have them have a subwoofer watch on their wrist, where they tried to find what is the same vibration that they were experiencing with that food. So they found there was a certain like hurtz to like sourness and umami and sweetness. And the interesting thing that I found was that there's a certain hurtz in the body that activates our sympathetic nervous system. So I started to be curious about like, oh, what is it about some foods that maybe are like upregulating or downregulating, or it's not just we're choosing this food because we don't have any like willpower or anything like that. But there's something that that food is doing inside of our body, so I'm curious to hear more about your herbalist perspective of like the five tastes and what they do.

Michelle Brown 05:56

Yeah, that's a really fascinating study. I'd love to look at that because it's interesting to me how I mean food or really just everything that we come in contact with in terms of our nervous system, but it's acting on all these different levels. You know, we could talk about the phytochemistry, which is really informing the taste of foods. I don't know if we want to get into that conversation. Probably a little nerdy, but I do think it's interesting how every taste has a different, what I would call an energetic type of impact on the body, and all our traditional herbal systems are based on energetics, and that's a really actually key concept of understanding how herbal medicine works. But again, this applies to foods and even you know other things we can be doing in our day to day life. And it's a really actually simple concept when we talk about energetics. I think sometimes it has this woo woo component for some people, but really it just means that you know that whatever we're eating is having some type of psychological or physiological effect on the body. So you know, foods can be a certain taste, like sweet, for example, can be warming or moistening, right? Or sour foods are cooling. They're they may be more drying, for example. And so we're if we can match those energetic patterns to the needs of the body. That's where we're bringing our body back into energetic balance, which is again really the goal with herbal medicine. But as someone who studied traditional herbal medicine and you know has this kind of nervous system biology approach as well, it's interesting to me to kind of make this aha connection that when we're talking about the states of the nervous system, we're really talking about energetic patterns, right? Where you know if you're in sympathetic dominant fight or flight response, it's a you know very high energy response, right? For many people, anxiety might show up. We can actually use taste, which we'll talk about once taste specifically. That can really help balance that energetic pattern of kind of sympathetic dominance or overwhelm or anxiety that can show up in the body. So all of these tastes have a different impact on the body. And when we, the idea in traditional medicine is that when we understand that we have all of these different tastes or flavors in in the diet, then that's going to help create energetic balance, and you know we one component of why you know we can talk about many reasons why people tend to be so dysregulated today. But just in our kind of modern society, at least here in the United States, you know we have a predominance of sweet and salty foods in the diet, and maybe not enough bitter or sour foods or pungent foods, or what we might call acrid foods, as well. So there are all these tastes that sometimes we're not really getting a balanced approach to, and that can actually lead to an energetic imbalance in our mood and in our energy, and even our cravings as well. So it is a really fascinating way. Looking at how taste can actually impact just how we're showing up in the world and our nervous system responses.

Stephanie Mara 10:06

Yeah, I love that you're even bringing in of the energetic qualities and what each taste can do because I find there's so much judgment around even your example of the experience of sweetness. You know, it's like, oh, I'm just, I'm always craving sweet foods, and people get down on themselves, and why can't I control myself? But when you look at it from your perspective of, well, this is a warming food, or it's bringing in moisture into your body. For me, it just totally shifts the perspective of like, well, what is it about this food that like you're needing more warmth, or you're needing more moisture? That like, are you eating too many drying foods? Are you living in a dry area? Are the events that are happening in your life very cooling, and you're trying to like warm things up? I'm curious if you could say more to that because that is really fascinating. And just coming back to that body is so much wisdom. It's why it's telling us to eat certain foods.

Michelle Brown 11:11

Absolutely. You know, when you think of the taste of sweet, I used to be in that mindset as well of like sweet foods are bad, right? Like if I could just stop eating sweet foods, that would be the the antidote to all of my problems, right? But from an Ayurvedic perspective, for instance, sweet foods are considered nourishing and grounding foods. And actually, I remember as I was studying, you know, traditional medicine, I read this article once on on this whole concept that we're talking about of how sweet foods aren't just the idea of it tastes good, but there's actually a even on a spiritual level a quality of things that are sweet, right? We we talk about experiences in life that are sweet, or someone has a sweet disposition, right? So we connect sweet with a good thing in in traditional medicine, and I would say that sometimes when we think again and of sweet in our modern way of thinking, we might be thinking of, you know, candy or chocolate or pastries or you know, again those kind of foods we sometimes put in that bad category. But in traditional medicine, you know, sweet foods were grains. The meats could be sweet as well as a little bit of umami flavor as well that we didn't really have a concept of until more recent times. But some of those foods that actually make up the you know the kind of the basis of the diet for many people are actually sweet foods, and I think it's interesting as well as we kind of consider that next to some of these other foods that aren't always as popular with people, like bitter foods or sour foods. How you know those are foods that we typically only need to consume in small amounts, compared to you know like bitter foods might be just like something we put like a on our salad dressing. We might have you know our salad. We might have a salad dressing with a little sour lemon juice, or we have some of those bitter greens in there. We're not really eating mass quantities of bitter foods for most of us. That that can be a little unpleasant, and I think there's a little bit of a parallel there as well between the majority of our experiences in life should be sweet, but we also need a little bit of that bitterness. Not a lot, but you know, it really helps understand you know this kind of concept of energetics as well. You know, if you think about like TCM, traditional Chinese medicine that's based on yin yang therapy, right? You all seeing that yin yang symbol. It's that idea of there's a dichotomy or a balance between everything in life, basically, right? For everything that we wouldn't understand heat if there wasn't cold, we wouldn't understand moist if there wasn't dry, and we really wouldn't understand sweet and really appreciate and enjoy it if there wasn't the bitter or the sour in life. So I do think it's a really interesting way of looking at this as well. I remember reading that and studying it and having kind of this aha moment of like, there's nothing really wrong with me because I like something that tastes sweet. That's not a bad thing. It's that's part of how we and you know we're made, and I think sometimes we you know kind of label it as bad, but maybe it's normal, right? It's it's a normal part of our our physiology and how we're designed to enjoy foods and seek out the types of foods, I think it's just been hijacked in our again our modern culture where you know food companies make these foods that are really sweet, really salty. Right? They really appeal to those cravings that we all are inherently born with.

Michelle Brown 14:38

That you know can kind of be hijacked, and then when they're out of balance, we start to crave more of these specific types of foods. So sweet, when we have enough of that, and it's in balance again, it can be building, nourishing, grounding, moistening, warming. But if we have too much, you know, too much grounding, right? Kind of a heaviness, a lethargy, if you will. From that energetic perspective, so we need a little salty, we need a little sour, and we need a little bitter pungent in there to help balance out those energetic patterns.

Stephanie Mara 15:09

You know, I'm always looking through a somatic perspective, and what you just described made me really think about. Ultimately, we go after, I know you know this too in nervous system work, we go after whatever is known because that's the safest thing in our body. So it makes me think about how are we feeling so drawn to eating one flavor or taste because that's the experience that we know that abundance of like that one state that that food produces, but what you're naming is like we need this balance. But if we don't know how to be with or feel into the safety and balance, and to actually like track ourselves and notice, like oh, I'm kind of starting to tip this way, I can actually bring in different activities, different foods, different things that might tip me the other way. Like I know I was never really taught that. It was something like over my years in learning somatics and nutrition and all these things about how to create balance in my body, but then feel comfortable with it. And I'm curious if you could maybe see more about that of like with the five tastes that you're naming, do we need a balance of them at every meal? Is it kind of tracking, oh, what do I need right now based off of the energetics that this taste will do for me?

Michelle Brown 16:59

Yeah, that's a great question because I do think we get kind of stuck in a certain taste that does, you know, it is giving information to our nervous system. I I had an eating disorder as a teenager. I think we, you know, talked about that in past episodes, and and was able to overcome that. But then, you know, years later, this is about eight years ago. I went through a divorce. I would find myself after you know I moved to a new home with my kids, and it was a stressful time in life. And I would put my kids into bed at night, and I would go into the kitchen. I would grab a jar of peanut butter and a bag of chocolate chips, and I would just start eating. And this was right around the time I was starting to learn all of these pieces of the nervous system, you know, understanding that I have now. And you know, I felt really guilty and like I couldn't stop, and all of those things, you know, go through our head at those times. But looking back on it now, I recognize that I was so anxious. I mean, in fact, you know, I was starting to work with a coach at that time who invited me to feel my feelings and you know really understand the difference between true hunger and you know I actually was feeling anxiety, like this pressure on my chest, right? But my only coping mechanism at that time was food because that was always the pattern that I had known since a young age. It was so interesting, though, now to think back on that and how I needed that grounding. I, you know, was so anxious. I was so energetically just out of balance, and and I needed something grounding. I needed something nourishing, and in that sense of you know, not that chocolate chips are nourishing, but you know, just that something to kind of give my system a little nourishment, if you will, to feel safe enough to relax and and just go to bed, even. And so, well, it's so fascinating how we can just gravitate towards certain foods when we are dysregulated, especially if that's been our, you know, kind of our pattern. I think chocolate is the perfect example. I know when I'm working with a new client, I always you know ask on my intake form, like, are there any foods that you find yourself kind of gravitating to or craving? And by far and away, chocolate is the top food, right? And it makes sense. I love chocolate as well. I enjoy it very much, and so I get that we can really crave that, and I think it's really interesting to look at chocolate and what it is and why it does that to us. Because yes, it's sweet. Obviously, even even you know dark chocolate has a little sweetness in there. Even the bitter alkaloids in dark chocolate. So bitter is, I think, kind of the antidote to some of that sweet craving. Sometimes I have a colleague actually. She's an herbalist I trained with who tells us the story of how I think she was like in college, and she was like, "Do you have this like chocolate bar a day kind of habit?" She had started trying to kick it, and she couldn't seem to quite you know let go of that habit, and finally just started drinking dandelion leaf tea, which is very bitter if you've never had it before, and for some reason, somehow that just kind of helped her like get over that. Needing that chocolate bar in the afternoon is a hiccup because I think part of it is that bitterness helps to regulate the nervous system. So bitter flavors, interestingly, in a way, have paradoxically in my mind, have an affinity for the nervous system. A lot of our nerving herbs, which are herbs that help calm the nervous system, like motherwort, which we can talk about if we want to dive into that. But it is a very bitter herb, and so it's really interesting to me how bitterness can really help kind of regulate the nervous system. And you know when we look at chocolate, has a lot of these bitter alkaloids in it. I mean, caffeine is a bitter alkaloid. Probably the number one kind of substance, if you will, that people reach for throughout the world is coffee, right? Or caffeine in some form, coffee or tea. That bitterness is a big part of it. Of course, we think about caffeine and how it impacts our nervous system and our energy, but I think part of it is just this like bitter alkaloids that regulate our system and help us feel more embodied. Chocolate has other compounds like PEA, which is a really really lovely molecule for kind of calming our mood and our nervous system, so it just has this host of different phytochemicals in there that are just like intoxicating, if you will, to the nervous system. And I think that's part of why people just love chocolate as much as we all do, or most of us do. And we can, you know, balance out some of those cravings with these other flavors. I, it's like, have you ever eaten maybe like eating too many sweets maybe the holidays or sometime around you know you're kind of overdo it and you're like I really just need something savory right like I just need to have a good like savory meal have some soup or some vegetables right if you've ever kind of had that experience I think that's our body intuitively kind of recognizing like we're out of balance here, need to bring in these other flavors, and you know the idea in traditional medicine is that we do have some of these flavors in every meal, and I think if you look at other traditions, even today, like this is really common. So you know, in in like Asian cultures or in India, there always have these like pickled vegetables or bitter greens, or like in Italy you might have like an aperitif, which is basically like a digestive bitter before a meal. Which, by the way, digestive bitters I think are a really lovely just way to not only kind of calm and regulate the nervous system, balance out the taste, but also help stimulate digestion. So, kind of what I love about this herbal medicine approach is like we can work on all of these levels through our herbal support.

Stephanie Mara 21:31

Yeah, it's so interesting. I was just thinking about how there is a digestive bitter that I like to take before most meals. So, as you were talking about that, I was like, "Oh, no wonder that feels so calming every time I take it before I start eating." And that can be from a you know somatic nervous system perspective. I'm guessing probably helpful as you go into a meal to utilize a specific taste like bitter to help go into a meal even in a calm, maybe more regulated place. And yeah, it's really interesting just to think about different cultures and how much like our culture, if you could say that, like, do we even have a food culture here? I feel like we just borrow from everyone else, but it's really one note. Like, rarely do you see, unless you bring a lot of conscientiousness to it in your own home, of like having a lot more diversity of taste in a meal.

Michelle Brown 23:03

Yeah, it is really fascinating. Yeah, I mean, in our culture, again, there's a lot of sweet, a lot of salty, you know, kind of thing. We have a lot of fast food culture, and in the U.S. and we think that kind of typical burger and fries type of meal, it's all very like carbohydrate rich, sweet flavors, very salty, and you know, even just having a meal like that, we could we add a little a salad with a little bitter, you know, dressing or a little bit of bitter greens or you know, lemon juice for a little sourness, or just take those bitter herbs before the meal to stimulate digestion and balance out those tastes. Like, there's a lot we could do. I think what I think really is kind of interesting, I'm kind of a K drama fan nerd, I guess, and so I love watching though these shows from other cultures because they'll either sit down to a meal, and I'm always like on the edge of my seat when they do because it's so fascinating to me to see how they'll call them side dishes, you know, in in their culture, and they have you know the kimchi and the the bitter greens, and it's just fascinating to look at how a different culture approaches food, and that's just normal, and for them as well to consume these different things with a meal, pickled foods, right? That are going to be sour and cooling and balance out the energetic kind of approach to a meal.

Stephanie Mara 24:18

Yeah, and I know that also, you know, in this realm of like taste, and that it can also inform us of like certain cravings that we have, of like indicating either you know when we crave a particular taste or flavor or kind of food. I know something that you talk to is like it can inform us of body communication of maybe like an imbalance or something that we're needing. Is there kind of a not that I like to simplify this, but like you know, if we are always craving a particular taste, like what do you sense or have you found in your work is like the body's trying to communicate to us?

Michelle Brown 24:58

Yeah, I mean, it could be a number of different things. Again, like we're talking about working on all these different levels-physiological level, the psychological nervous system level-and so you know there is kind of an idea that you know if we're craving a certain taste, it could be because we're missing certain nutrients. I hear this with chocolate a lot, by the way, as well. Like you've probably heard that, like if you're craving chocolate, you're probably low in magnesium. You're mouthing it as I'm saying it, and I mean there there may be some truth to that, but I kind of think it might be a little over exaggerated, oversimplified. You know, I notice that I don't really crave leafy greens when I am low in magnesium, which are probably a better source of magnesium. But it does, you know, kind of sound good. It gives us an excuse to eat more chocolate. But I do think there is some some truth to that. You know, I've had clients who this can be really interesting who are like vegetarian or vegan for many years, and then they're just like you know 5, 10 years later, they're like all of a sudden I've started craving meat. I just you know, all of a sudden smelled it somewhere, and I was like, I really want to eat meat now. I do think there can be a little bit of a like their body is telling them, you know, some of the nutrients that we get from animal products like vitamin B 12 or iron are much harder to get in plant products or plant based diet, and so I think sometimes it's like the body knows what it needs, and it just kind of overrides our idea of what we should be eating with just our own visceral kind of reaction to food. So I think on a physiological level, rather, there can be some connections there, but I do think a lot of it can just be this kind of energetic, kind of psychological side of things as well. I mean, again, how many of us reach for food when we're stressed, or had a bad day, or were tired? Even right there, there's such a an emotional component to food for so many of us. I mean, if you think about when we were babies and we cried, that you know we were given we're given the breast, we were given the bottle, right? We were given food basically, and by the way, which was sweet, predominantly as a taste to help calm us down, and so I think we all can connect with food on that level, and it can tell us a lot about what might be, you know, kind of missing from this energetic pattern on all these different levels.

Stephanie Mara 27:16

Yeah, it's interesting that you're pointing out also that the first kind of flavor or taste that we're introduced to is also sweet, and I am always so curious about our first initial experiences with food, like even what we're being fed when we're in the womb, and like how much we start creating certain somatic associations with it. That again, and I hear you describing this too, that there's so much compassion that we get to invite into these dialogues around food because if you're someone who's really drawn to sweet, there can also I feel like I'm curious to hear your thoughts too, be this somatic memory of like oh well when I was eating or consuming sweetness, I was being held, I was being attuned to, I was being cared for, and we remember that, and so it doesn't have to make logical sense why you want to keep eating food, specific foods like sweet foods, on a really stressful day. Your body just remembers, hmm, maybe this could help.

Michelle Brown 28:11

Yeah, I think that's true. You know, I've always heard that you know we sometimes will end up liking foods or craving foods that our mother ate when we were in the womb, and I don't know if there's been any research actually around that. I know people have given me examples of that. You know, my mother loved pickles, and now I I love pickles. And but you know, we have these taste receptors not just on the tongue, but we have like for instance bitter receptors in our digestive system, in our heart, even. So there's a little bit of to me as the you know nervous system biology piece, a little connection between how we can calm patterns. We can, in traditional Chinese medicine, we would call like a heart fire or disturb shin pattern, which would show up as like anxiety and maybe a racing heart when we feel anxious. And going back to mother wart, right? It's one of our best bitter nervings that has an affinity for the heart. So I use it with my clients who are anxious and kind of in that sympathetic dominant state, and they're also dealing with things like a racing heart or palpitations or you know chest tension that we sometimes feel as stress. And so it's really interesting to me that there is this connection between not just how something tastes, but actually how it's physiologically shifting even different organs in the body. Another good example is hops. Think of hops as being calming; it's a component of beer making, right? And so I think it's part of what gives beer. Obviously, it's alcohol, and alcohol in general can have that kind of energetic kind of effect on the body, calming the nervous system, but hops is a one of our bitter kind of nervings, very calming. One interesting connection between the bitter herbs and the digestive system as well, because it has that affinity. I mean, we use digested bitters to stimulate the digestive process, but it can help with like regulating our appetite. You know, right now, like GLP one agonist drugs are really popular, right, with people, and I think a lot of people are aware that there can be some unfortunate side effects with those. And there, you know, that's a whole conversation. I'm not, you know, bringing judgment to that, but I think we just want to consider like what is actually happening physiologically with, you know, whether we're having unwanted cravings or weight gain, but an interesting piece with hops is a natural GLP-1 agonist, and so you know they're really creating basically supplements to act, you know, in a similar form as these medications to help calm our cravings and help regulate our hunger and satiety signals. So there's so many different levels that these things work on that I think are really fascinating. The connection between digestion and cravings and the nervous system and our mood and all these things show up and we can work on all of them just through what we're choosing. And again, it doesn't have to be that we're eating a bunch of bitter foods. I'm not asking anyone to go out and just eat nothing but salads with bitter greens and sour, you know, dressings and things like that. We just need to add these as components to what we're already doing. Maybe taking an herbal tincture like the bitter herbs before a meal, or drinking that dandelion tea. I know at one point I was drinking peppermint tea in the afternoon that really helped me to kind of not need a snack in the afternoon like I had been, and so you know just a little bit of that connection between you know I think a peppermint actually a little bit of sweetness in peppermint tea, right? So you know is another way of kind of hitting that sweet craving without needing to reach for you know the sugar that I typically would have. So yeah, a lot of different ways that these can work on different levels of the body.

Stephanie Mara 31:49

Yeah, I love how you're going into all of these details. I'm curious what would be an example like if we wanted to build out a meal because I remember when I was also studying Ayurveda, it was like try to include all tastes at all meals. Like so often, I feel like people always crave sweetness after a meal because it's never a part of the meal itself, and it's like a taste that is missing and it's lacking. So it feels like the meal is kind of incomplete. So sometimes something I have suggested to people in the past is like, what if you start adding it as a part of your meal, so you can kind of experience all of the taste at the meal, and then notice how that feels. Do you still want a sweet experience after a really salty or bitter or pungent, you know, experience after a meal that's missing the sweets. But I'm wondering if you could describe, like, if someone wanted to see what it feels like to have a meal with all five tastes, what would that look like?

Michelle Brown 32:51

Great question, because I think you know we talked about you know how in general our society really emphasizes sweet and and salty foods, but I think on the other side of that, for those of us who have been in that you know I'm going to use health nut is the word you too focused on trying to be healthy. I know we might do you know we're trying in the name of health to eat only the healthy foods, right? The salads at every meal, and we're not really enjoying the sweet and the other flavors that could be balancing to the system, and so I think that's a good point. Like I remember one time this was when I was still like working outside the home, and I worked in I was actually working in a health food store at the time, so it was a recently grocery store, right? And it was it was cold in there, and I would eat in my office, but I would have I would just bring a salad every day. Thought I was being healthy, right, doing the good thing, and I would start using bitter herbs. This is probably around the time I was kind of starting my own herbal journey as an herbalist, and I would eat that meal, and then I would just sit there, and I would be so cold, I would like just be shaking, literally. And it finally dawned on me that you know I'm eating all these cooling foods, bitter foods, taking bitter herbs before a meal, and I'm kind of imbalancing my energetics with that, my energetic patterns. I needed more warming, kind of grounding foods, nourishing foods, especially for my kind of just body type. And so, I'm kind of a air type anyway, which is already kind of ungrounded. And so, you know, it helped me to start eating more warm foods, more nourishing foods, and so I think we, you know, kind of need to pay attention to the balance in our food. But again, that doesn't mean that you know we have to eat tons of bitter foods or sour foods or some of those foods again that not always our favorites. We just need a little bit. So maybe if we do have like that, you know, again, it's typical in many different traditions. Like I know, if you went to France to a nice restaurant, maybe a salad before the meal, right? So those bitter greens with a little sour, maybe lemon juice in the the dressing before you have your main part of the meal, which you know in many cultures is a grain or. Some type of animal protein, or even even vegetable protein, right? Beans or lentils, which can have a little bit of an astringent flavor as well. So you can get that from beans, but they do also have a sweetness to them as well. And so I think that's another interesting thing to note: is that foods can have more than one taste. You know, you talked about chocolate; it's sweet, but it's also bitter. That's another great way to think about it and get in these different tastes. And again, in a lot of cultures, they have what we might call side dishes, right? So kimchi in Korea or pickled vegetables in India, right? Things like that. You know, we put lime on our food, and you know, for Mexican food, things like that, so you can just add in these components, maybe even just in small amounts. I think that dressings and sauces are a great way to do that. I have in my metabolic reset membership, we do some things with you know blood sugar regulation, and one of the things I teach them is I call fatty sauces, and a lot of these are herbal as well. So you think of like a pesto, for example. It's got the olive oil, it's got the basil, it's got some salt in there. It's got you know you put parmesan in there for a little bit of that umami and and saltiness as well. And so that's a great way for, in my mind, for us to incorporate these different flavors without necessarily having to completely change our diet and not saying you need to go eat Indian food or Korean food all the time to get these different tastes, we can actually incorporate these into you know our own kind of repertoire of of how we're already eating just by adding in maybe sauces. I think those sauces as well really elevate the flavor of a food or meal, you know that's why I love herbs as well. Like we can do so much to add to the flavor and just enjoyment of a meal with these different flavors. And I think that really can speak to the satiety of a meal as well. You know, you ever have eaten something, you know, like you're hungry. You go to kitchen. There's not a lot there. You just eat something that's doesn't really satisfy you, you know. Like you did eat it in a sense, you're full, but you're still like, ah, that just wasn't it. I'm still hungry for something, you know. I still have a craving, if you will, for something to taste good. And when we hit all of those flavors in a meal, we can really bring in a lot of satiety with that as well.

Stephanie Mara 37:21

Thank you for naming all that. What it made me think of also is like how even diets, remember, like all the diets that I used to do in like my teenage years, they strip all of the satiety out of a meal. No sauces, no flavor, no no fatty components that bring that really grounding, regulating, satiating experience to a meal, where when someone gets out of a diet, it's like that's all that they want, which makes so much sense from what you're naming is you've basically eaten in a way that was so imbalancing for the sake of probably another goal of a body change, but it actually imbalanced your body. And what the body's trying to do when you're like, okay, I'm done with that, or like, kind of the body takes over and says, I need some balance here. Of course, it's having you crave all of these other foods and these other tastes and flavors because you haven't been eating them for maybe months and months and months at a time.

Michelle Brown 38:21

Yeah, it's interesting how in our culture we become so disconnected from just what we really want and even need. We're in the in this name of or for the sake of you know again like changing our body composition. Or I used to teach keto classes, and and I think the keto diet can be a great way to support your health. But I would tell my people in my keto group coaching programs, like there's no bonus points for starving ourselves. And what I meant by that is, you know, when they're trying to do keto or we might do a little intermittent fasting, so then they're trying to like, okay, I'm supposed to intermittent fast. I'm supposed to go these many hours. You know, they're kind of ignoring. Like, are you hungry? Do you need to just go ahead and eat something, and you know we're not just doing this for the sake of of doing it. We're actually achieving a balance in the body through regulating the metabolism. But if we're just kind of ignoring the signals that our body needs food, like we're not actually giving our body what it needs to find that balance, and that's really the goal. So I love in like French culture, right? Like the fridge are all about food and like food tasting good. And I wish that was part of our culture. I read a couple of books. One of the first books I read in my kind of nutrition journal, our journey was called French Kids Eat Everything, and it was written by this woman. She's an American, but she had married a French man, and and they had children, and they moved to France. And she was just her like experience of like seeing how different the culture was around food, especially with her children, and how they were just offered all different kinds of foods, and they were expected to try things, and you know they were expected to kind of sit down. And eat a meal without, you know, getting up and wandering off, like you know, eating, standing up, like you know, kind of sometimes do. And even the idea of you know when they ate and how they ate, and just even like she would say, her husband would always like set the table, and you know, like had to have a tablecloth and the good dishes, and like she never really understood that until she lived in France, but it was like part of the experience of eating, and I think that's true as well for really just enjoying food. I think sometimes when we're trying to just use food as like a tool and we're not really enjoying it, then it doesn't really satisfy us, and we we're going to continue to crave that experience. So maybe leaning into that and thinking about this food can taste amazing and wonderful and still be really good for you, right? We I think sometimes we have this idea that those really fun, yummy foods are the bad foods, right? And I think that is so untrue. And there are so many different experiences we can have around food and enjoy it and and still be so healthy. I mean, I definitely feel so much healthier eating a variety of foods, eating fats, eating all those veggies, right? That at one time were you know unappealing to me because I was so out of balance energetically in that area.

Stephanie Mara 41:15

Yeah, and I love what you're naming is also it's if we take the five tastes outside of food that what you were just describing of like the husband setting the table of like what a sweet experience to also like just create the atmosphere and the environment in a meal of like what is the kind of experience you want to have with food that includes where you're also eating it and how you're also eating it, which I find is not talked about enough. I know Ayurveda maybe talks about it a little bit of you know like you're talking about like sitting down to a meal and slowing down and probably chewing more and things like that. I'm curious if there's other pieces that I'm forgetting or missing there.

Michelle Brown 41:55

Yes, well there is a saying in Ayurvedic tradition that I think is a little dramatic, but they say that when you eat standing up, death looks over your shoulder, and it sounds quite dramatic, actually. But the idea that we're inhibiting your health when you're rushed and running around-in fact, that's one thing I, you know, often ask clients. And even if they're having like digestive issues, like, are you a fast eater? Like, do you sit down? Do you take time? Do you cheer your food? And so often, you know, people are eating rushed. And again, it's part of part of our you know modern culture. And we really have to kind of bring awareness to some of these patterns and really tune into what we're doing because it's so common and easy to get into those patterns. But one of the things I love from again all of our herbal traditions is it wasn't just about the food, but it was about like your daily routine was really important, and so just the idea of even eating on a routine when you're eating the noon meal was always the biggest meal in like Ayurvedic tradition because it's your digestive fire is the is the strongest right now you know again I know in our modern kind of culture we have different needs around when to eat, and so you know I'm not trying to make any hard fast rules about that, but I do just think it's interesting that you know when we have some routine and ritual even around food, when we sit down, we maybe it's just clearing the mail off the table and and the books, and you know just kind of creating an atmosphere of relaxation, and not you know, for me, if I'm sitting at a table and there's the pile of mail and the bills that need to be looked at, and you know, that's not a very relaxing meal. And so, you know, just the idea of like sitting down and enjoying and taking your time and and really enjoying the flavors of that meal and experiencing it, I think it can have a lot to do with even how well we digest that meal and and are able to utilize the nutrients from it. So definitely, that's a big part of traditional kind of understanding of healing and health.

Stephanie Mara 43:55

Yeah, thank you for bringing in those pieces because I find that we're not often taught around eating is still doing something. Like we're taught that eating is getting in the way of our life. Like you have to be doing all these other things while eating because you have to eat to live. So just get through it. And what you're naming is how important it is to sometimes create space in your day to pause, to slow down with the food, to enjoy it, to experience it, and that it can actually potentially regulate you, give you more energy, stabilize you, so that you feel like you go into the next things in your day maybe with more clarity and presence and embodiment is such an important piece that I find is not talked about enough. Like I know we're so focused often on like the what we're eating that the how is also just as important.

Michelle Brown 44:47

It really is. I mean, I can give it from that somatic perspective when we're just not even tuned into what we're doing. Yeah, we're not really experiencing it, and again, it can really impact our digestive function. You know. I always teach my clients that like digestion starts in the brain, right before like as you said earlier, before we even put the food in our mouth. Are you paying attention? Are you like experiencing the meal, the the sight, the the smell, the enjoyment of how that food is even preparing the meal, right? I know I heard it discussed how you know we live in like kind of a fast food culture. A lot of people you know do the drive-through, and again, I get that. I'm not putting judgment on that, but you know when we don't actually take the time to like prepare a meal and like actually experience that part of the meal, we we kind of miss out on like the way our brain is preparing and turning on our digestive function so we can properly enjoy and digest a meal.

Stephanie Mara 45:43

Yeah, well, I loved everything that we talked about today. As we move towards wrapping up, you've offered so many different things that people can play with, but I always like to give everyone like a baby step that they can maybe try out in their own life. Is there anything else that comes to you that when someone wants to play with maybe the five tastes of food or anything that we talked about that you might offer them.

Michelle Brown 46:05

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways we can do this, right? I mean, we're all eating every day, and so we have a lot of opportunities to really experience what happens when we taste these different flavors. And so, I mean, it could even just be the next time you sit down to a meal, just take the time to really notice what flavors do you actually experience in that meal. Can you name them? Can you name all five of the tastes? What might be missing? And then, if you want to take that further, especially if you're someone who has thought maybe like I don't really like bitter foods or sour foods, maybe try incorporating that into your next meal or you know, an upcoming meal, and see what that does for you. Whether that is taking digestive bitters before a meal, right? These are really inexpensive, like a tincture or a spray type of bottle where you just spray it on the tongue. The idea that you're actually tasting the bitterness is part of the experience. So this is the way you want to do it, instead of like maybe swallowing a capsule, like some people do with herbal medicine. And you know, if you don't have bitters, you could even just use something like apple cider vinegar. So you're getting a little sourness, and put like a tablespoon and a little bit of water before a meal. And again, this will actually help stimulate your digestive process as well. So maybe notice then after you do something like that, how your experience of that meal and digesting that meal can turn out, and then you know a lot of our spices and seasonings can be really helpful here. We talked about pungent, so ginger is one of our pungent herbs. I drink a cup of ginger tea with with most of my meals just to stimulate digestion, and the warmth is really grounding for me. So you know, to cook with some of these different spices and seasoning, garlic, chilies, things like that. Especially if you know you're kind of used to bland cooking, or you're not really used to playing around with spices, it's a really easy, affordable, and delicious way to experience these different flavors.

Stephanie Mara 48:00

I love all of those suggestions, and I absolutely love my bitters before meals. So I definitely recommend playing and trying with that. And I appreciate you also bringing in of like then notice how it feels, like bring it into your body of the somatic awareness of like, okay, I'm doing something, I'm trying something out. Let me pay attention to like how do I feel before, during, and after a meal, when I've invited this new experience into my body, so thank you so much for naming all that. And how can individuals keep in touch with you and your work?

Michelle Brown 48:31

Yeah, so I've offered a free guide that viewers can download if they're interested in learning more about herbal medicine and how to use that to regulate the nervous system. And then you can find me at my website botanacea.com.

Stephanie Mara 48:43

Yeah, absolutely recommend checking you out. And just thank you so much again for being here and sharing your wisdom.

Michelle Brown 48:50

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Stephanie Mara 48:52

Yeah. Well, to everyone who is listening, as always, if you have any insights or aha moments, email me at support@stephaniemara.com and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

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