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Food Combining

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.