What Flavor Is Your Favorite?

Sugar has a bad rap, but sweet-tasting foods can actually increase your life span if you eat them in moderation. Cereals, dairy, dried fruits, and of course natural sugars like honey and maple syrup are all healthy sweets that will build your strength and nourish you. Feeling irritable and overwhelmed? Eating something sweet will help calm you down and ground you. But watch out, sweet foods slow digestion, which is why eating too much sweet stuff can lead to weight gain!

Sour is associated with water and fire, and because it stimulates the thoughts and emotions, it is often the preferred taste of artists and spiritual seekers. Common snacks craved by sour lovers are lemons, pickled and fermented foods, tamarind, and wine. Careful not to overindulge in your sour treats: While a moderate amount of sour foods will stimulate your appetite and aid digestion, too much can make you aggressive and argumentative!

Salty foods stimulate digestion, cleanse the body, and help electrolyte balance and mineral absorption. Naturally salty foods--like soy sauce, miso soup, seaweed (nori), Spanish black olives, and snacks salted with sea or rock salt--are a good way to feed your salt cravings, but too many processed salty snacks, such as peanuts and chips, can be bad for the health of your blood and skin, and can cause you to be sluggish and irritable.

Bitter is the coolest and lightest taste, and is associated with the element of air. If you enjoy bitter foods, then you are probably calm, logical, and analytical. Ayurveda associates bitter flavors with mental and physical purification, and believes that bitter foods--such as green vegetables, teas, and turmeric spice--will free you from negative passions and emotions. Unlike with the other flavors, there is no harm in indulging your taste for bitter foods as much as you like. So grab some raw kale, and munch away!

Pungent is the hottest taste, a spicy, fiery flavor that enlivens digestion, increases appetite, heightens the senses, and (grab the tissues) clears the sinuses! If you love hot peppers, ginger, onions, garlic, mustard, and all kinds of hot spices, then you are a critical and clear thinker who finds it easier than most to understand and undertake complicated tasks. The only negative to too much spice in your diet is the tendency to be overly critical of others who just can't keep up with your high standards.

The most unusual of all the tastes, astringent is a cool, dry, and firm taste that appeals to people with the most precise and discriminating senses. Astringent foods--such as cranberries, pomegranate, beans and legumes, green grapes, and okra--will heighten perception and bring mental strength and clarity. Watch your diet if you are going into polite company, as too much bitter food will cause your digestive system to go into overdrive on gas production. Toot toot!