SWEETEN your season’s eatings with this bitter ‘bark trick’
By now, you’re probably putting the finishing touches on your Christmas menu…
Or getting together that perfect recipe for your family’s famous side dish.
Between all the casseroles… roasts… pastries… and cakes…
You’ve got your digestive system working in OVERDRIVE!
But you DON’T have to turn down any of those holiday treats…
As long as you add something else to your holiday buffet.
It’s a special type of wood – but not the kind you’ll find in your yule log.
Here’s how it can OFFSET some of the culprits behind an upset stomach!
A toast to better digestion
The bitterwood tree is a shrub from South America whose medicinal qualities were first discovered in the 18th century by Graman Quassi.
Quassi himself was a former slave from the South American country of Suriname who spent his days as a freed man working as a healer.
He used this tree’s bark to ERADICATE parasitic infections, like malaria… by making it into a bitter tea!
The scientific name for it… Quassia amara… pays tribute to Quassi and refers to its bitterness with the species name “amara,” which is a play on the Spanish word for bitter, “amargo.”
Bitterwood bark is sometimes referred to as just “quassia” or “amargo.”
It’s been used in the folk medicine traditions of South America… Central American countries like Costa Rica… and several Caribbean islands.
But it also has a surprising role in MAINSTREAM culture.
Legend has it that its bark extracts are used as an ingredient in the notoriously “secret recipe” behind the widely used digestif cocktail ingredient known as Angostura Bitters.
The bark gets its distinct flavor profile from its content of bitter principles, a.k.a. amaroids.
The most profound one in quassia bark is known as quassin… which was first described in the 1800s and first isolated in 1937.
Turns out, it’s one of nature’s MOST bitter substances!
Like many bitter herbs, it can AID digestion and CALM stomach upset.
And modern research has revealed that it works primarily by BALANCING stomach acid and gastric juices, like bile.
But that’s not all…
Because it can also help STIMULATE your appetite… and RELIEVE constipation!
Even better, it can PROTECT your digestive tract by FORMING a mucus-based barrier – one that helps INHIBIT the formation of peptic ulcers.
In Jamaica, they’d fashion bowls out of quassia wood so that its bitterness would work its way into every food they ate out of them.
But traditionally, medicine men soak quassia wood chips in hot water to make a bitter tea.
You can find quassia wood at your Latin American specialty shop or online.
You may also be able to find quassia supplements… possibly labeled as “cuasia” or “cuassia”… in capsule or tincture form at your local health food store or online.
To tamping down digestive troubles,
Melissa Young
P.S. There’s another type of low-alcohol bitters that I’ve shared with you before right here in eAlert that’s GREAT for digestive issues. Find out what this “bartenders’ secret” is by clicking right here.
