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Recipes with Molasses: Star Anise & Cinnamon Black Bean Chili with Molasses & Chipotle
Introduction
You'll feel warmed to the bone and relaxed after eating molasses. The gooey and thick nature of this sweetener gave rise to the famous phrase "as slow as molasses."
Molasses is not your average sweetener. Its sour and bitter undertones are in stark contrast with molasses' strong sweet taste, making it an attractive option for desserts and cookies. This contrast in tastes also gives molasses a more balanced profile as a sweetener, Ayurvedcally. An added bonus of baking with molasses is the rich, sweet aroma of caramelized (slightly burnt) sugar that will waft through your home as you cook with it. Pouring this dense, dark, sticky syrup resembles the spreading of thick, hot tar on a new road. While its dark color may be off putting to some, molasses hosts a number of unique benefits.
Molasses is made by boiling sugar cane juice and extracting the sugar crystals. There are several varieties of molasses, the difference being how many times it has been boiled. The sweetener has a dramatic history that you may not know about. In 1919, there was the Great Boston Molasses Flood. A distilling company was fermenting molasses into alcohol and their storage tank burst. This released a powerful and disastrous wave of thick molasses, traveling at 35 mph. The force of this wave was strong enough to demolish everything in its path, tearing down infrastructure, killing 21 people, and injuring many more. Locals in the affected neighborhood claim they can still smell the sweet, sticky molasses on a hot summer day, almost 100 years later.
Recipes with Molasses: Wild Persimmon Pudding
Build Strong Blood
Molasses's dark, earthy color is a sign that molasses is a strong blood tonic. Hot, liquid, and mobile, molasses shares many qualities of the warm blood circulating through your veins. Its bitter sweet taste benefits the blood by cleansing toxins and building strength. The bitter taste clears congestion, stagnation, and excess heat in the blood. It also helps purify the bloodstream by drying out digestive toxins (ama). The sweet taste builds, strengthens, and nourishes blood and plasma tissue, when taken in small quantities.
In excess, however, molasses can actually clog circulation. Molasses is considered an abhisyandi in Ayurveda, meaning a substance that causes secretions which clog the minute channels of the body. The signs of abhisyandi include increased Kapha dosha, heaviness in the body, along with watery, sticky corners of the eyes where sleep gathers in the mornings. For this reason, it is best taken moderation and when digestion is strong.
Mineral rich molasses is well known as a potent blood tonic. It has a particularly affinity for the blood (rakta dhatu) and can help restore strength in certain cases of deficiencies. Molasses is a rich source of iron, an integral component for the creation of new red blood cells. This iron content also helps maintain healthy levels of hemoglobin, which is responsible for transporting oxygen in the blood. Like maple syrup, molasses offers a richer nutritional profile than refined sugars.
The puckering sour taste of molasses increases secretions in the body, rehydrating the blood. It is also a source of electrolytes including magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium, and phosphorus.
Regulate Menstrual Cycle
Molasses also affects the blood by regulating menstrual flow. Its high iron levels can help reduce and prevent menorrhagia, or abnormally heavy or prolonged bleeding. Its iron content makes it a useful tonic for anemic women as a result of heavy menstruation. Molasses may also help encourage menses in scant conditions due to nutritional deficiencies in the blood. It is warming and mobile which stimulates a cold or dry body and increases circulation of blood. Its sourness and warmth ease circulation and tension in the uterus, and have a relaxing effect during menstruation, reducing cramps. A glass of hot milk with a spoon of molasses can also be used as a rejuvenative tonic for rebuilding the blood after a woman has given birth.
Reduce Anxiety
Sweet, heavy, and warm, molasses has a soothing effect on the nervous system. These hearty qualities pacify and warm a cold Vata constitution, reducing feelings of anxiety on a cold, rough, fall day. Molasses is also mobile, so if taken in excess, it may have the opposite effect. To avoid this, you can pair it with some stable, grounding foods like a bowl of warm oatmeal.
The secondary taste of sour stimulates the secretion of fluid in the body, countering the Vata dryness that can irritate the nerves. This warm, juicy effect adds a sense of comfort to a dry, Vata body that feels relaxing and grounding.
The sweet taste of molasses is naturally rewarding. It stimulates the release of serotonin in the brain, helping eliminate excess stress hormones and reduce anxiety. Eating large amounts of processed sugary treats will cause dramatic highs and lows with mood and should be avoided. However, small amounts of naturally sweet food can keep you feeling stable and happy.
Fire Up Metabolism
Most sweeteners have a cooling and suppressing effect on digestion. But molasses, similar to honey, actually stokes your digestive fire and warms up metabolism. Molasses is best for cold Vata types that need a little extra warmth in their diet.
The mobile quality of molasses means its warming effect is not just isolated to the digestive organs, but can spread throughout the body.
While most sweeteners are Kapha aggravating, molasses can be enjoyed occasionally by Kaphas as it is warm and bitter. It is too heating for Pitta types.
Recipes with Molasses: Barbecue Portobello Mushrooms
Soothe Tense Muscles
Soft, warm, and dense, a spoon of molasses is enough to make anyone slow down and relax. The heavy and warm qualities help relieve tension and relax the muscles, particularly in the colder months of the year. A little molasses can help reduce tightness, constriction, and tension in both vessels and muscles. A client who practices yoga felt these effects in their body, The magnesium content in molasses helps support proper nervous system functioning, keeping nerves, blood vessels, and muscles relaxed. It also helps relieve muscle cramps and spasms, including menstrual cramps.
Effect on Digestion
How molasses affects your digestion is dependent on your unique body type, or constitution. The sweet, sour and warm, molasses is particularly beneficial to a cold, dry Vata type, as it moistens the digestive tract and stimulates digestive strength. Bowel movements will be more satisfying given the mild laxative effects of molases. The sour taste of molasses stimulates the secretion of saliva which can help hydrate a dry, Vata digestive tract.
Kaphas will benefit from the warm and bitter qualities of molasses, but it may be too heavy and sweet for some, weighing down already sluggish digestion. The heat of molasses will likely overstimulate and irritate a Pitta digestive tract.
Most people experience improved elimination with molasses, as it acts as a stool softener and promotes regular bowel movements. The sour quality softens the stools, while the sticky quality and astringency leads to better stool formation.
The warmth of molasses also relaxes the colon for easy elimination.
Conclusion
Molasses is one of the rare sweeteners that can actually stimulate your digestive fire. Its bitter and hot qualities help lighten the load on digestion when enjoying a home baked sweet treat, like gingerbread cookies. Molasses has a certain depth that most other sweeteners can't offer. Its sour tastes make this thick, dark, syrup a particularly useful addition to a Vata diet. Best known as a nutritive blood tonic due to its rich mineral profile, molasses can help restore deficient blood and add strength to the body. Heavy and warm, molasses will relax tense, tired muscles and ease anxious thoughts.
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AYURVEDA'S GUIDE TO VITALITY & WHOLESOME NOURISHMENT
Your Ayurvedic diet is tailored to your individual body and your specific imbalances.
With an Ayurvedic diet you feel joy and satisfaction because what you are eating truly nourishes and balances you.
Disease results from diets and lifestyles that are incompatible with your nature.
By eating a personalized diet matched to your body, you experience optimal health.
See How it Works.
Health Virtues of Molasses
Personalized medicine systems use biocharacteristics to classify the metabolic nature of food, hebs, lifestyle choices, indivdual constitutions, and disease.
METABOLIC NATURE / BIOCHARACTERISTICS
Metabolic Nature / Biocharacteristics
Ayurveda assesses metabolic imbalances through 20 main biocharacteristics
(vital qualtiies).
Aggravating them weakens your body and causes imbalance.
By knowing which biocharacteristics are habitually imbalanced in your body, you will be able to identify and correct metabolic imbalances before you get sick.
Every biocharacteristic has an opposite which balances it (i.e. hot balances cold).
You restore balance by favoring diet and lifestyle choices that increase the opposite biocharacteristic.
Taste is used to sense the most basic properties and effects of food.
Each taste has a specific medicinal effect on your body.
Cravings for food with certain tastes indicate your body is craving specific medicinal results from food.
Taste is experienced on the tongue and represents your body's reaction to foods.
Sweet taste causes physical satisfaction and attraction whereas bitter taste causes discomfort and aversion.
Kapha should use less sweet taste while Vata and Pitta would benefit from using more sweet taste.
One of the first signs of illness is that your taste and appetite for food changes.
The six tastes are sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent.
Do you crave foods with any of the tastes below?
Ayurveda is a metabolic theory of medicine that explains individual health, tendencies, and disease patterns through the concept of doshas, which can be understood as your metabolic patterns and tendencies.
Each dosha reflects a distinct metabolic nature and describes strengths & weaknesses in bodily function, and how these affect energy levels, digestion, susceptibility to disease, and many other tendencies.
Your metabolic nature not only affects your physical characteristics, but also influences your mental thought patterns, confidence, and enthusiasm.
Ayurveda balances these metabolic strengths & weaknesses to support your body's vitality and prevent recurrent disease cycles. This support is a critical aid, especially in chronic or incurable disease conditions.
The 3 metabolic body types
(doshas),
are Catabolic (Vata), Metabolic (Pitta), and Anabolic (Kapha).
Through dosha, Ayurveda empowers people to identify metabolic imbalances early, break repetitive patterns of disease, and cultivate habits that support long-term vitality and well-being.
Ultimately, these metabolic patterns also provide a framework for understanding yourself, including body, mind, and spiritual tendencies.
Ayurveda & Greek Medicine were the dominant form of medicine along the Silk Road from England to China and South Asia.
They work by assessing your metabolic type, patterns, and nature.
Greek medicine recognizes 4 metabolic temperaments, Melancholic, Choleric, Sanguine, and Phlegmatic.
Cold and dry with a slow, variable or erratic metabolism. Colicky, tense. Withdrawn, pensive, anxious, and hesitant. Analytical, intelligent, detail oriented and creative. Prone to ojas depletion, dehydration, an overactive nervous system, and depression.
Has a hot and dry metabolic nature. Enthusiastic, vibrant and bright. In excess burns up fluids and ojas, irritable. Corresponds to high bilirubin in the blood that irritates and heats up the body and liver.
A Phlegmatic has a cold and wet metabolic nature. The coldness implies a slow metabolism, the moisture that you are well-nourished. Phlegmatics tend towards sluggishness and thickened fluids, including mucus.
A hot and oily nature with a moderate metabolism and a well nourished body makes Sanguine individuals vigorous, vivacious, outgoing and generous, and prone to impulsivity and self indulgence. Bullish and intense when out of balance.
Medicinal Benefits, Uses & Herbal Actions of Molasses
Experiences are Personal
Experiences vary according to the person and constitution. Individual results may vary.
The list of herbal-actions below has not be approved by the FDA and should not be used to treat a medical condition.
A sialogogue increases saliva. Sour foods are often great sialogogues, and increase output of all exocrine glands. Salty taste is very moistening as well. Bitter, pungent and sweettastes also increase salivary output but to a
lesser degree. Astringents.
An herb that strengthens spleen function by improving strength of the blood. Spleen tonics Builds agni, brighten the person's appearances & firms up tissues.
An herb that produces more blood cells in the body, or otherwise improves blood cell quality or hemoglobin content. Helpful for anemia and other types of deficiency.
Molasses may temper these symptoms.
The suitability of any food for a condition is highly dependent on the individual.
Please see your doctor before using this food to treat a medical condition.
We will use this information to better predict food that helps you.
CONTRAINDICATED FOR THESE SYMPTOMS
Molasses may be harmful or contraindicated for these symptoms.
Note this is not a complete list of all possible contraindications.
Please see your doctor before using this food to treat a medical condition.
Herb Drug Interaction Risk
Here are some potential herb drug interactions with Molasses. Please see your health care provider for more information.
Muscle-relaxant: Do not combine muscle relaxants with antihistamines.
View other ingredients for Autumn-Winter
Molasses is recommended for Autumn-Winter. Check out these other Autumn-Winter foods here.
Eating Ayurvedically makes you feel nourished and energized. Food digests with ease when
right for your body type (dosha). Healthy digestion is seen as the cornerstone of well-being in
Ayurveda. Healthy digestion generally prevents illness. If you do get sick, a strong digestive fire
reduces the severity of illness and increases your resilience. It also improves your mood. Once
you begin eating Ayurvedically, you will feel refreshed, vital and strong.
John Immel, the founder of Joyful Belly, teaches people how to have a
healthy diet and lifestyle with Ayurveda.
His approach to Ayurveda is clinical, yet exudes an ease which many find enjoyable and insightful.
John also directs the Joyful Belly College of Ayurveda,
offering professional clinical training in Ayurveda for over 15 years.
John's hobbies & specialties include advanced digestive disorders, medieval Catholic philosophy,
& botany. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard University.
John, his wife Natalie and their 7 kids live in Asheville, NC
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* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The information and products on this website are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any
disease.
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