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2009-03-05 12:45:09
It is commonly believed that the human stomach should be able to digest any
number of different foods at the same time. However, digestion is governed by
physiological chemistry. It is not what we eat that is crucial to our health,
but what we digest and assimilate.
Digestive enzymes
Digestive enzymes are secreted in very specific amounts and at very specific
times. Different food types require different digestive secretions.
Carbohydrate foods require carbohydrate-splitting enzymes, whereas protein
foods require protein splitting enzymes, etc. It is the knowledge of the
digestive process that has led many health practitioners to promote efficient
food combining, the rules of which are briefly explained below:
1. Carbohydrate foods and acid foods should not be eaten at the same meal. Do
not eat bread, rice or potatoes with lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruits,
pineapples, tomatoes or other sour fruits. This is because the enzyme, ptyalin,
acts only in an alkaline medium; it is destroyed even by a mild acid! Fruit
acids not only prevent carbohydrate digestion, but they also produce a
fermentation. Oxalic acid, for example, diluted to one part in 10,000
completely arrests the action of ptyalin. And, there is enough acetic acid in
one teaspoon of wine vinegar to completely halt salivary digestion. Dr Percy
Howe of Harvard Medical School states:
"Many people who cannot eat oranges at a meal derive great benefit from eating
them fifteen to thirty minutes before the meal". Herbert Sheldon, author of
'The science and fine art of food and nutrition' reports: " I have put hundreds
of patients , who have told me that they could not eat oranges or grapefruit,
upon a diet of these fruits and they found that they could take them. Such
people are in the habit of taking these foods with a breakfast of cereal, with
cream and sugar, egg on toast, stewed prunes and coffee, or some similar meal."
Tomatoes should also never be combined with starchy food as the combination of
the various acids in the tomato, which are intensified on cooking, are very
much opposed to the alkaline digestion of starches. They may be eaten with
leafy vegetables and fat foods.
What all this tends to mean is that people who say they cannot eat oranges or
grapefruit as it gives them gas, could be blaming the fruit, when the problem
may lie with the escape of starches and the bodies release of pancreatic juice
and intestinal enzymes to break them down.
In cases where there is hyperacidity of the stomach there is great difficulty
digesting starches. Fermentation and poisoning of the body occurs along with
much discomfort. This is because the digestion of carbohydrates (starches and
sugars) and of protein is so different, that when they are mixed in the stomach
they interfere with the digestion of each other. An acid process (gastric
digestion) and an alkaline process (salivary digestion) can not be carried on
at the same time in an ideal way in the stomach. Before long, they cannot
proceed at all , as the rising acidity of the stomach soon completely stops
carbohydrate digestion. The highest efficiency in digestion demands that we eat
in such a way as to offer the least hindrance to the work of digestion.
2. Do not eat a concentrated protein and a concentrated carbohydrate at the
same meal. This means do not eat nuts, meat, eggs, cheese, or other protein
foods at the same meal with bread, cereals, potatoes, sweet fruits. Cakes, etc.
Candy and sugar greatly inhibit the secretion of gastric juice and markedly
delay digestion and if consumed in large quantities can depress the stomach
activity.
3. Do not eat two concentrated proteins at the same meal. Avoid nuts and meat,
or eggs and meat, cheese and nuts, cheese and eggs, meat and milk, or eggs and
milk or nuts and milk at the same meal. Milk, if taken at all, is best taken
alone. The reason for avoiding eating these combinations is because each
protein requires a specific character and strength of digestive juice to be
secreted. Eggs require different timing in stomach secretions than do either
meat or milk.
4. Do not eat fats with proteins. This means do not use cream, butter, oil, etc
with meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, etc. Fat depresses the action of the gastric
glands by delaying the development of appetite juices and inhibiting the
pouring out of the proper gastric juices for meats, nuts, eggs or other
protein. Fats may lower the entire gastric tone more than fifty per cent.
5. Do not eat acid fruits with proteins. This is to say, oranges, tomatoes,
lemons, pineapples, etc., should not be eaten with meat, eggs, cheese or nuts.
Acid fruits seriously hamper protein digestion and results in putrefaction.
Milk and orange juice, while by no means an indigestible combination, is far
from a good combination. Orange juice and eggs form an even worse combination.
6. Do not consume starch and sugars together. Jellies, jams, fruit, butter,
sugar, honey, syrups, molasses, etc., on bread, cake, or at the same meal with
cereals, potatoes, etc., or sugar with cereal, will produce fermentation. The
practice of eating starches that have been disguised by sweets is also a bad
way to eat carbohydrates. If sugar is taken into the mouth it quickly fills
with saliva but no ptyalin is present which we know is essential for starch
digestion.
7. Eat but one concentrated starch food at a meal. This rule is more important
as a means of overeating than as a means of avoiding a bad combination. While
overeating of starches may lead to fermentation, there is no certainty that the
combination of two starches will do so.
8. Do not consume melons with any other foods. Watermelon, muskmelon, honeydew
melon, cantaloupe and other melons should always be eaten alone. This is
possibly due to the ease and speed in which melons decompose.
9. Milk is best taken alone or let alone. Milk is the natural food of the
mammalian young, each species producing milk peculiarly and precisely adapted
to the needs of its young. It is the rule that the young take the milk alone,
not in combination with other foods. Milk does not digest in the stomach, but
in the duodenum, hence in the presence of milk the stomach does not respond
with its secretion. The use of acid fruits with milk does not cause any trouble
and apparently does not conflict with its digestion.
A suggested combination of meals is included in the following plan of eating
three meals a day :
Breakfast
Fruit. Any fruit in season may be used. It is suggested that not more than
three fruits be used at a meal, as, for example, grapes, well ripened bananas
and an apple. It is well to have an acid fruit breakfast one morning and a
sweet breakfast the next. In season breakfast may be made of melons. In the
winter months, one or two dried fruits such as figs, dates, raisins, prunes,
etc., may be substituted for the fresh fruit.
Lunch
A large raw vegetable salad of lettuce, celery, and one or two other raw
vegetables plus avocado and alfalfa sprouts or nut and seeds. As an
alternative, a vegetable salad (omitting tomatoes), one cooked green vegetable
and a starch.
Dinner
A large raw vegetable salad (if nuts or cottage cheese are to be used as the
protein, tomatoes may be used in this salad), two cooked non-starchy vegetables
and a protein.
Fat meats, sour apples, beans, peanuts, peas, cereals, bread and jam, or hot
cakes and honey or syrup, are notoriously slow in digestion and are frequent
sources of discomfort and putrescent poisoning.
If the body s reserves are carefully hoarded they will carry us well beyond the
hundred year mark with youthful enthusiasm and zest. Their depletion is one of
the most common calamities of modern life. The alkaloids and alcohols, with
which gastro-intestinal decomposition charges our bodies, rob us of our
reserves, greatly weaken our vital resistance and sooner or later produce a
state of physiological collapse.