Food as Medicine:  Try bitter foods

Winter is a time to cook food slowly. It brings the energy of the food deep within, where nourishment is needed to keep you warm. Slowly  cooked meals like soups, braised dishes, and roasted root vegetables help to warm your body and restore moistness.
 
Bitter foods are also appropriate in winter since they cool the exterior of the body and bring body heat deeper and lower. Foods in this category include lettuce, watercress, celery, oats, quinoa, turnips, and yams. A bowl of warm oatmeal, cooked slowly, is a perfect example of a good winter food.

Chinese medicine also embraces the bean -- especially the dark/black colored one -- as a highly beneficial food for the kidney-adrenal functions. And seaweed is also a wonderful food to support your kidney energy throughout the winter months.

In this colder season, when our vitality has a tendency to wane, we can help to support it by not only eating proper foods but also by avoiding toxins, limiting the amounts of sweet-flavored foods, and eating moderate amounts of dietary protein to nourish the kidney energy and improve vitality, resistance to disease, and longevity. 

Some of these vitality enhancing foods include:  micro-algae (chlorella, spirulina, wild blue-green) fish, liver, kidney, bone and its marrow, cereal grass, almonds, milk, clarified butter, nettles, royal jelly, bee pollen, black beans, millet, wheat, black sesame seeds, chestnuts, mulberries, raspberries, strawberries, and walnut.