Bitter Herbs and their action

Bitter herbs have a long history of traditional use for helping the digestion, they not only promote healthy digestion, but work across the whole system releasing, clearing and assimilating our foods. It is not just a taste, but an action. Bitter foods can be simply introduced into the diet by incorporating some leafy green vegetables into meals, today, this is easier than ever before, as you can buy a mixed leaf salad from supermarkets.

Jim McDonald proposes that bitters are a necessary ingredient in the diet to balance the system, and their exclusion is responsible for many of the long term chronic illness we see today, they help us to excrete more digestive juices so that food can be assimilated more easily by the body. In my experience, most of us can benefit from taking bitters every day. 
One action I have found they have on the people I treat, is that they reduce that 'sweet tooth' that is so common. By taking bitter food it seems to balance the requirement for sweets, and I often prescribe them for people who are over run by the desire for sweets.
An easy way to include bitters in the diet, is to include leafy green vegetables in the diet, spinach, watercress and rocket are some of the common bitters. Others include dandelion, burdock, gentian and artichoke.

For a really good and well written article on bitters, see Jim McDonald's article on Bitters, http://www.herbcraft.org/bitters.pdf