Food Combining 101
What is Food Combining?
Food Combining + Body Ecology
The process of digesting each meal takes a great deal of energy, so you want to increase your ability to digest or your “digestive fire.” But what happens if your digestion is not working properly, like so many Americans today?
The undigested food stays in your digestive tract and putrefies, creating a toxic environment that makes your blood more acidic and allows yeast, viruses, cancer cells and parasites to grow inside you. In essence, your inner ecosystem is damaged, and you are more prone to illness.
Proper food combining is a system of eating foods that combine together efficiently to assist digestion so that your digestive tract does not have to work so hard to give you the nutrients you need for energy.
1. Eat Fruits Alone on an Empty Stomach
Fruit after a meal. Natural Hygienists have known for a long time that fruit doesn’t combine well with other foods. The reason is that fruit contains simple sugars that require no digestion. Thus, they will not stay for a long time in the stomach. Other foods, such as foods rich in fat, protein and starch, will stay in the stomach for a longer period of time because they require more digestion. So if you eat fruit after a meal, the fruit sugar will stay for too long in the stomach and ferment. Lemon and lime juice can be eaten with animal protein for flavor and to enhance digestion as they are very low in sugar.
2. Eat Proteins with Non-Starchy Vegetable and/or Ocean Vegetables
When you eat proteins like poultry, fish, meat and eggs, your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid and the enzyme pepsin to break down the food in a highly acidic environment. When you eat starches like potatoes or bread, your stomach secretes the enzyme ptyalin to create an alkaline condition.
If you eat proteins and starches together, they tend to neutralize each other and inhibit digestion. The poorly digested food travels through the digestive tract, reaching the intestines, where it putrefies and causes your blood to become acidic. It also provides a welcome environment for disease-causing pathogens!
To keep this from happening, avoid combining proteins and starches (including grains, rice, and starchy vegetables, like potatoes) in the same meal. Instead, have non-starchy vegetables and ocean vegetables with your protein meals to achieve optimal digestion. Taking digestive enzymes can also help the body to better break down protein at each meal.
Non-starchy vegetables include: leafy greens, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, bok choy, cabbage, celery, lettuces, green beans, garlic, fennel, onions, chives, turnips, sprouts, red radish, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, beets.
Non-starchy vegetables and ocean vegetables digest well in acid or alkaline environments, so they go with anything: proteins, oils and butter, grains, starchy vegetables, lemons and limes, and soaked and sprouted nuts and seeds.
In the kitchen: Pair poached fish with stir-fried vegetables, roasted chicken with a leafy green salad and/or a non-starchy vegetable or vegetable soup. Or try a salad that has veggies that are steamed and chilled (broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, plus a variety of raw veggies like shredded carrots, cucumber or yellow squash), with a lightly grilled salmon and a lemon-garlic dressing.
3. Eat Grains and Starchy Vegetables with Non-Starchy and/or Ocean Vegetables
Starchy vegetables include: acorn and butternut squash, lima beans, peas, water chestnuts, artichokes, and red-skinned potatoes, quinoa, rice, etc.
The basic principle behind a food combining diet is that different foods require different pH loveless to digest properly, and they have different transit times in the GI tract. And the belief is that eating certain food combinations - specifically, protein rich foods combined with carbohydrate rich foods - these combinations are harder to digest, which supposedly decreases nutrient absorption, and also the combination of the foods supposedly would cause food to sit longer in the GI tract, which could promote gas, bloating, and the buildup of toxins from food not moving through quickly enough.
Three different types of food:
Acid
Alkaline
Neutral
Food combining suggests that combining foods like meat, fish and dairy with alkaline foods like potatoes and rice would lead to a buildup of toxins. Some people even suggest that the reason this would occur is because these foods require different types of enzymes that end up canceling each other out when used in the same meal.
So, there are four common rules in food combining, depending on which food combining diet you’re looking at. Number one is to always eat fruit - especially melons - on an empty stomach, or at least twenty minutes before eating anything else. Number two is to eat starches alone, or with cooked non-starchy vegetables. Number three is to eat meat, dairy, fish and eggs and other high-protein foods alone or with cooked non-starchy vegetables. And number four is to eat nuts and seeds and dried fruit with raw vegetables.
