KC--FoodforThought1

A couple weeks ago, the Fitness section of our newspaper included an article about spring cleaning. No, we’re not talking about scouring the cobwebs out of the corners and washing the dusty mini-blinds.

We’re talking about cleansing the internal organs of winter’s heavy accumulations.

One of the great things about eating with the seasons is that, in a happy coincidence, we end up eating what the body needs and craves at a particular time of year. Traditional cultures couldn’t stroll into a King Soopers all winter long to pick up a head of lettuce, broccoli or kale. So when spring came and green things began popping up from the brown earth, you can bet people got to pickin’.

As it turns out, those first greens were perfect organ cleansers and provided exactly the kind of fresh start that feels natural and right in spring.

These days, cooped up in our cubicles, we get cut off from the huge seasonal shift going on right now in the natural world. That makes it hard to tune into any seasonal callings your body might be sounding. The most we might hear is our stomachs pleading yet again for a bagel with cream cheese or a hot, salty batch of French fries.

It takes practice to hear what the body REALLY needs (as opposed to what it’s been conditioned to want by clever food ads.) To begin with, it might help to know what it SHOULD need, based on thousands of years of experience from native cultures whose attention wasn’t sidetracked by the siren call of TV, radio and magazine ads.

So our newspaper’s recent article, “Roots and Shoots, Start Your Spring Cleaning on a Cellular Level,” was welcome reading. It described several traditional cleansing foods like onions, garlic, burdock root and dandelion greens.

Where do we go with this information--file it away in the “Could Be a Good Thing to Do Someday” file? After all, we sure don’t have time for it now, right? No, we don’t have time, if we like slogging along with winter’s heavy burden pasted to our innards! And we certainly don’t have time, if we want to continue accumulating the toxins that lead to chronic disease down the line, which by the way would take a lot more time to cope with and manage.