mollyfamwatIf you want to start taking more berberine naturally, rather than inside of a supplement, you need to be willing to expand your palate to try some brand new foods. Berberine is able to provide a lot of benefits for your body, to fix problems such as high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and diabetes and the lowering of blood sugar. It’s been around since the early days of ancient chinese medicine, and it’s started to become a good modern supplement as well.
Still, it is easier to eat as a supplement than as food, but if you really want to try, then here are some interesting berberine rich foods that you can add to your plate.
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The European Barberry
Barberries, particularly the European variant, are high in berberine, and they can be eaten just like every other berry. Many Middle Eastern cultures dry the berries out and use them as an ingredient called zereshk. They have a tart and slightly sweet flavor and you can eat them raw, in jams, dried, or as a garnish or component inside of rice dishes or salads. Traditionally due to their tartness, most of the time people are using a sweetener or some other flavor to stop them from being insanely sour.
One of the biggest ways that Middle Eastern dishes use barberries is inside of various rice based dishes, such as rice pilaf. In fact, Zereshk Polo or Persian rice pilaf, is a barberry rice that is delicious to eat and also very interesting to look at whenever you cook it correctly. Additionally, they can also be used in couscous, desserts, chicken salad, and also jams and jellies.
They can also be made into a tea or a juice as well, and many people eat them and compare the taste to unsweetened dried cranberries as well. They can be found inside of a lot of eastern dishes, and if you like dried cranberries, then you might like the barberries as well! It’s the perfect way to get a lot of berberine very quickly.
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The Oregon Grape
Along with another tart fruit comes the Oregon Grape, a dark blue berry that is very very tart. So if you can’t handle bitterness you might want to find a way to eat these berries that doesn’t consist of popping them in your mouth and chewing through the pain. Still, they can be mixed with sweetners, such as with other berries, or inside of an Oregon grape jelly.
They can also be made into an oregon grape curd as well, although for most curd recipes you need to use the berries around mid to late summer, because they are the juiciest and you can get the best amount of juice from one cup. As the weather creeps towards the first frost, the berries still keep their taste but do get less juicy and you will require more berries to get the same amount of juice.
Finally, they can also be used for a tea, but you’ll be using the bark or the roots of the oregon grape plant rather than the grapes themselves. It’s pretty delicious whenever you find a way to balance both the sugar and the sweetness, and with a bit of testing you will be getting berberine inside your diet and enjoying it too!
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Goldenseal
Goldenseal is a herb that is in the same family as the buttercup, and it is easily one of the most common herbs to get in the Western world. It is available inside of several forms, including capsules, lotions, drops, sprays, eyewashes, and even feminine hygiene products! Granted, if you want to incorporate them into your diet, then you need to be drinking either an alcoholic tincture with the goldenseal in it, or to consume it as a tea.
For the tinctures, you can take a dosage of 0.3 ML to 10 ML for three times a day, or you can seep two teaspoons for the herb in a cup of hot water for 15 minutes. It’s a great way to get your berberine, and you can easily make it a ritual in the morning to improve your health. Because who doesn’t like a cup of tea in the morning?
Incorporating These Foods Into Your Diet
As you can probably tell, Berberine isn’t a type of supplement that is found in most foods, so if you want to increase the supply you have naturally you are going to have to get creative. However, if you can handle tart foods and a bit of thinking outside the box whenever it comes to cooking, then you can easily eat the berberine benefits.
Besides, it is more fun to eat your supplements, especially if you can find recipes that you enjoy both cooking and eating!
Wesley_Hornbeck
mollyfamwat
