Young dandelion leaves are a wonderful spring tonic as they offer lots of nutrition with a bit of bitter flavor. When your body detects bitterness, it helps stimulate lots of different stages of digestion, from increased saliva, which breaks down carbohydrates, to HCL in the stomach, to bile production and release, which helps to break down fats, to a variety of digestive enzymes. Many people are beginning to realize that the lack of bitter foods and drinks in our diet is an underlying cause for many of the rampant digestive issues we see today.
By UpstateNYer (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons