shelley
Editor in Chief
Joined: 23 Dec 2004
Posts: 6967
Location: Southern California
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 Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:11 am Post subject: Food Combining - Busting Myths and Underscoring Facts |
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A request was made for a list of what foods to combine/not combine. Please DO feel free to make requests like this, I like to know what people want to read! 
First of all, please know that the whole concept of food combination rules in terms of what we can eat together and what we cannot is a fad for the most part. The rules are not backed by solid research, and is countermanded by centuries of cultures who “break the rules” and still manage to thrive. Moreover, none of the food combination gurus can agree with each other about what is proper and what is not. A lot of the facts cited are based on solid research, but the "rules" are conjectured from these facts, they are not themselves well tested. But we do have some food combination rules passed down in Ayurvedic medicine, which has proven that if you know how to observe things carefully, you can discover true laws of balance and chemistry without today's version of lab science.
Why is it sometimes just a fad? Because the issues are overstated. See, the stomach has acids that are a MILLION times more acidic than water. And if it were deadly to eat meat and potatoes, we wouldn't have populations surviving in Ireland, Scotland, or here in the US. Is there a problem with eating meat and potatoes in the same meal? Yes, a bit, which I’ll explain. You can decide for yourself whether the risk is as high as Dr. Shelton claims it is.
Moreover, it is impossible to find anything in Nature that is not a combination of things. With a few obvious exceptions, there's really nothing that is "all starch" or "all fat" or "all protein." Everything in nature is a combination of varying proportions. So why is it okay to eat a single food that is a combination of proteins and starches, but not eat different foods and get that same combination?
Here is what Dr. Shelton says: "There is a great difference between the digestion of a food, however complex its composition, and the digestion of a mixture of different foods. To a single article of food that is a starch-protein combination, the body can easily adjust its juices, both as to strength and timing, to the digestive requirements of the food. But when two foods are eaten with different, even opposite, digestive needs, this precise adjustment of juices to requirements becomes impossible."
Okay, can someone explain to me why this is considered logical? Let’s see… if I eat a legume, which is a combination of protein and starch, the body can digest it just fine. But if I eat a piece of chicken and a bite of potato, which offers the same combination of proteins and starch, suddenly the body is at a total complete loss? Both are foods, both are chewed, yet suddenly the body is stupid?
Now it is true that starches and carbs are digested first by enzymes in saliva that tend to be more alkaline than acid, and it is conceivable that once these enzymes enter the stomach they would reduce stomach acids. So it would be smart to reduce starches and simple carbs when eating meat and even smarter to keep our portions of meat small if we want the typical dinner of a portion of meat accompanied by two or three sides.
Dr. Shelton also says to never eat acids or vinegar with protein, including lemon juice and apple cider vinegar, because it will stop the production of stomach acids. But the documentation I’ve read says that these gently spur stomach acid production, and there is a wealth of data supporting the benefits of ACV on digestion, arthritis and rheumatism, illnesses that are greatly exacerbated by low stomach acid production.
It is certainly true that if we eat legumes with sugar we will fart due to fermentation, which is why baked beans are the magical fruit while Kichadi, which is rich in beans but has no simple sugars and pairs them with carminitive (gas relieving) spices in addition to overnight soaking, gives us much less gas.
But either way, protein digestion will result in gas and that is not necessarily fermentation, it is merely the nitrogen atoms that make up all forms of protein. Once the proteins break down the nitrogen is released as a gas. Same with sulphur-rich vegetables. They cause a sulphurous gas that is not at all due to fermentation.
When I was in a K-8 elementary school, I had a genius science teacher all through 5th through 8th grade, and the school I went to put a lot of money into science. It was great. We had bunsun burners, goggles, the works. Then a couple of kids broke into the school and burned it down. Oops. The rest of my 7th grade year was spent sitting in school buses parked in the parking lot until bungalows could be built. No writing assignments that semester! LOL!
Anyway, one of the experiments that I'll never forget was playing with HCL, which is Hydrochloric Acid, the stuff in our stomachs. We threw smashed seashells into a WEAK solution of it. They bubbled and dissolved in TWO SECONDS.
So HCL, enzymes in the stomach and saliva reduces everything but indigestible fiber into a paste. It is then passed along in small packets to the small intestine, where it is flooded with alkaline and base compounds that neutralize the stomach acids and support the enzymes secreted by the pancreas. Bile salts are released to break down fats. The small intestine is approximately 22 feet long and has a wrinkled surface in order to increase actual surface space so it can absorb everything and send it to the liver or lymph, with only fluids and fiber remaining to go on to the colon. By now we're talking about the MOLECULAR level of things - you no longer have a combination of things, you just have individual, discrete molecules.
The stomach must be as acidic as battery acid, and some of these acids must go into the small intestine in order to signal it to release bicarbonate and enzymes for complete digestion. If the acids are missing from the paste (chyme), then the small intestine is not signaled to digest foods. Thus, having low stomach acids compromises two important stages of digestion. One misguided health practitioner, a fruitarian, keeps talking about having an “alkaline stomach” and how you must have one or die. Again, bullocks. The only people in the world with alkaline stomachs are dead people. And since stomach acid production reduces as we age, this is one of the real reasons why we get sicker as we get older and why we must take care of the power of digestion.
Since the average transit time of a meal is 24-36 hours and we eat 3 or more meals a day of hot and cold foods that have very different transit times in and of themselves, no matter how you eat them you can be sure that they all find each other and combine in the night when digestion slows down. After all, are you having 3 or more bowel movements the following day, or just one or two? If the stools are textbook perfect, obviously you handled your food combinations well. So don’t let others create a problem where none exists.
Proteins and fats in combination need at least 3 hours worth of stomach time. Complex carbs need about the same amount of time, simple carbs need much less, especially tropical fruits and melons. Fat all by its lonesome tends to go right into the small intestine immediately, especially when combined with fruit. The stomach doesn’t do all that much with fat, as bile is required for breakdown and bile is only released into the small intestine.
So why did the fad get started? Because people were looking for reasons why we started having so many problems with our foods and digestive systems. The reasons why are very simple: we’re more sedentary, eat way too much in a single serving, snack all day so the stomach never truly empties, and eat too many phony, processed, killing foods. But that doesn’t mean we have to start doing what has never been done by any culture in the world and make a fetish out of our meals.
What Lowers Digestive Power (short list):
What really disrupts the digestive process are the following:
1. Drinking a lot of fluids with the meal so that the stomach acids and enzymes can’t do their job. If you eat soup, accent the foods and reduce the broth, or make a meal out of broth by making it egg-drop soup and save your veggies for another meal.
2. Eating a lot of raw tropical fruits and melons, which have a very high water and sugar content and move to the small intestine very quickly, either with or in close proximity to anything else. They tend to glom on to whatever else is in the stomach and drag it with it. Robbed of stomach acids, the combo of fats, proteins and sugars end up fermenting in the small intestine, causing flatulence and over time, dysbiosis. Since a meal high in protein and fats stays in the stomach for up to 3 hours, wait that long before eating fruit. This is the only modern food combination rule that is backed up by recommendations in ancient cultures. Ayurvedic medicine includes this rule for good digestion.
3. Eating a lot of high-fiber foods whole and raw.
4. Constantly eating highly processed or refined foods and sugars with little to no nutritional value. This causes a deficit of nutrients because it takes nutrients to digest food. Calories without quality leads to obesity, cellulite, diabetes, caries, reduced metabolism, reduced friendly microbes, clogged bile ducts, Ama and degenerative disease.
5. Age. As we get older, we tend to produce less stomach acids.
6. Skin Food deficiencies so we are unable to manufacture stomach acids. Mineral deficiencies so that we are unable to produce enough sodium bicarbonate in the small intestine. Friendly microbe deficiency. Insufficient bile production.
Thus, the one food combination rule that totally makes sense is "eat melon alone." If you want melon, eat it as a fruit meal or as a snack, don't eat it as dessert after a meat and potatoes meal.
The unbreakable rules are: never eat until you feel over-full and never drink large amounts of fluids with your meals. If you only eat the amount of food that you can cup in both hands, and drink only one small cup of digestive tea, you can digest practically any food and any combination. If you add something to increase stomach acids with your high-protein/fat or dairy-rich meals, that will go a long way to ensuring you don't suffer fermentation. So if in doubt about digestion, keep things simple and portions small.
What I call the real rules of food combination are the ones that make things easier to digest, and support the digestion and utilization of nutrients. Here are my food combination rules, some of which can be found within the texts of Sally Fallon and Weston A. Price, etc.
Food Combining For Ultimate Digestion, Energy & Absorption
1. Eat vegetables and mineral-rich foods with oils so you can absorb and utilize all of the nutrients. Plants tend to have pre-vitamins that must be converted to be real nutrients; for instance, beta-carotene does nothing by itself, but once converted by bile salts it becomes Vitamin A, a crucial nutrient.
2. Eat oils with protein so you get a good energy source. It’s like rocket fuel in comparison to just eating the low-premium petrol of simple carbs.
3. Eat your beef with a green salad or basic veggies to offset what happens to animal fats when broiled or grilled.
4. Eat “mono meals” when the meal is either high-fiber, high fat, or high in fruit. For instance, if you’re going to indulge in a very rich food like quiche, just eat the quiche. Make it a vegetable quiche and eat nothing else with it but tea. If you want a salad, eat a very large salad with just a little bit of meat and leave it at that. If you want to eat fruit, eat a whole bowl, by itself or with yogurt/kefir, or spice it up with some ginger juice and mint leaves and leave it at that. If you want a cheese omelette, have a cheese omelette. Make it a big one and say good-bye to the toast, potatoes or cling peaches.
5. Grate, blend, shred or ferment your raw vegetables. Carrot strings rather than carrot sticks.
6. Enjoy your iced, very cold treats alone or better yet, with something hot. For instance, have your ice cream sundae with a cup of ginger tea. That’s actually two combinations, as explained in the next point:
7. Enjoy your sweet dairy treats with a mucus buster like ginger tea. Enjoy savory dairy meals with something hot and spicy. For instance, if you wish to make a cheese omelette or a Denver with both cheese and ham, then you’d best spice it up like mad with Tabasco, green chili peppers, red pepper flakes, or other pungent herbs.
8. Enjoy simple carbs, foods that affect glucose levels quickly and bring on sugar blues, in very small amounts or combined with something that slows them down such as fiber, protein and fats. Nuts are great for this if you can digest them.
More on Fruit:
You cannot treat all fruit the same way. There’s really no comparing a watermelon with an avocado, yet both are classified as fruit. Technically, so are cucumbers, bell peppers and zucchini, since they are the seeded part of the plant.
Avocado and coconut can be eaten with just about anything. They are rich in good fats, enough to be the only fat in the meal, so if you make them part of an already high-fat meal keep it simple and small.
Green apples, kiwi, grapefruit, lemons and limes have fruit acids that greatly aid digestion. Pineapple does too. Pineapple is rich in bromelain, which digests protein, which is why it’s okay to have pineapple with meats as in chicken teriyaki. Oranges, although citrus, are much sweeter so best eaten alone. Do not combine acid fruits with dairy unless the dairy has been fermented (cottage cheese, crème fraiche, sour cream, soft cheeses, hard cheeses are okay, a tall glass of milk is not.)
Pears, blueberries, sour cherries, cranberries, lingonberries and pomegranates are astringent fruit. They are very low in sugar. They make great savory sauces. Once cooked, which breaks down what few sugars they have, they are okay to combine with meats.
Watermelon, honeydew, canteloupe, durian, jackfruit, lychee nuts and their hybrids are high-sugar fruits that rot the fastest and combine the poorest with other types of foods and even other types of fruit.
Many cultures combine papaya and mango with protein and do fine. Find out what your tolerance is. I do great with these fruits as salsa for fish and shrimp tacos. Just don’t eat them while they are still green.
Bananas are the very slowest fruit to digest. If you wish to enjoy bananas with other fruit, best to use just half of one in a smoothie or slice them up thin in a fruit bowl. Because bananas are so slow to digest, they can easily be combined with cereals so it’s interesting that most cultures have naturally gravitated towards doing that.
Tomatoes are intensely acidic and so it’s not always a good idea to concentrate them into tomato sauces. If you can tolerate it then it’s fine, not everyone can. Eaten raw, they are fine to combine with other foods (apart from milk) as their acids aid digestive power.
More on Vegetables:
Not all vegetables are created equal either. The potato gets a bad rap, but really its only real fault is how dry it is. That makes it hard to digest. This is easily solved by adding a fat, whether its sour cream, crème fraiche, or butter. You cannot digest the long starch chains when this veggie is raw. Just try eating a raw potato, chances are you’ll cramp up bad. Boil or bake and then you can combine it just fine.
If you plan on having meat and potatoes, best to make garlicky mashed potatoes or wasabi mashed potatoes to increase digestive fire. Parsnips, rutabagas and sweet potatoes aren’t as dry but still do better with oils in order to convert their pre-vitamins into usable vitamins.
Carrots are so tough they are best juiced, cooked or shredded/grated.
Beets are very high in sugar, which makes them a great foil for bitter greens like spinach or kale.
Onion juice is so strong it’s hard to handle unless it’s been cooked.
Root vegetables have very different nutrients than the rest of the veggie plants. Try to have both root veggies and “above the ground” veggies in your diet every week in good combination.
More on Dairy:
Since cheese and most dairy is rich in calcium, it can be hard to digest because calcium lactate and calcium carbonate will neutralize stomach acids the same way a Tums will. Definitely add acids to the meal, like lemon, fruit acids or vinegar, to the meal when it is dairy rich, unless it is milk.
Milk will curdle when hit by strong acids. Adding lemon juice to boiling milk is how you make cheese. But that’s no fun when it happens in your tummy! Because milk is meant to feed infants and give them everything they need to grow, milk is a highly complex and complete food. It’s mostly ruined by pasteurization and homogenization and becomes a poison to most people. It’s better to have cultured milk (kefir) at that point. If you want to keep milk in your diet in order to get enough calcium, drink it alone.
If you want to have milk and cereal, go for it if you tolerate it okay. Just be sure to start out with a good grain. It can be ground but shouldn’t be highly processed (flakes and O’s are highly processed). Substitute regular milk with rice milk or almond milk if you have problems with this combination.
Certain body types stop making the enzymes that digest milk sugars and milk protein, but that is the only difference between people who can drink milk and people who are lactose intolerant.
Some food combination faddists say you cannot eat cheese and fruit, but qualify that with a “but some people have adapted to things like cottage cheese and pineapple.” Well that’s just bullocks. It’s like they are saying that some people have traded out their stomachs for a better model.
You can easily combine cottage cheese and pineapple because pineapple is highly acidic and has enzymes to digest the proteins in the cottage cheese. Plus, the cottage cheese is already pre-digested. It’s a cultured, fermented food so the proteins and sugars have already been digested for you. All cultured, fermented foods are pre-digested and so can be combined with just about anything.
Green apples and cheese are a great combination. If you want to just eat slices of cheese, have them slices of green apple. The malic acid ensures complete digestion.
In Conclusion
If anyone can give me good solid evidence (clinical trial white papers) that supports Dr. Shelton’s or other food combination guru’s claims I will most gladly read them. In short, I do agree with Dr. Shelton on these points thanks to my own observations:
*Eat melon alone
*Drink large amounts of milk alone, preferably raw, organic, unpasteurized.
*Eat your decadent desserts as a meal in and of themselves rather than immediately following a regular meal. It won’t be nutritious but won’t cause as many problems.
*Constantly eating high-protein/high-sugar/high fat combination meals like hamburgers, fries and a coke, is insane. Western eaters need to learn to accent vegetables.
*The Rule of 4: When in doubt, have 4 or fewer ingredients (not counting spices) in your main meals.
*When you abuse your digestive power you feed your illnesses, pathogenic bacteria and yeast, and create toxic acid by-products that overwhelm the paths of elimination.
Last edited by shelley on Wed Apr 06, 2005 2:26 am; edited 2 times in total |
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jules
Researcher
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 59
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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shelley, nice to hear your side of the story when it comes to food combining thanks!
in the beginning it sounds like you debunk the whole she-bang, but then when you read the rest of your essay, your personal food combining guidelines actually do match up with the many that have turned up in my research beyond the 'melon alone' rule. there are many sides to the story of food combining besides Shelton.
in my research, i've been frustrated with the lack of good information that isn't biased in one way or another. and it is hard to find some that really gets down to the nitty gritty, like specifying between the use of sprouted grains/legumes vs unsprouted, or milk vs. kefir, or whole egg vs. yolk only, dried vs fresh, raw vs cooked, in terms of food combining, these are actually big differences as you know. like you, the way many of these guys put the information across is shady but i think its mostly due to misunderstanding, underdeveloped understanding, or misuse of language. what you and 'they' say (give or take a few details) really seems to boil down to the same handful of ideals.
"First of all, please know that the whole concept of food combination rules in terms of what we can eat together and what we cannot is a fad for the most part. "
"But that doesn’t mean we have to start doing what has never been done by any culture in the world and make a fetish out of our meals. "
i know you lean towards ayurveda tendencies. i think it's great to look toward nutritional systems that have been tested tried and true for generations as sources of good information and inspiration. that said, i think alot of the way different ancient cultures handle the art of food combining simply seems to be embedded silently and unconciously in the way they have learned to prepare and combine their food in the most common recipes. those recipes which we refined over many generations by listening to the ways their tastebuds and bodies react to those concoctions, there were probably some bad ideas back there but those recipes didnt stand the test of time. in the modern american world, we dont really have that kind of unified hand me down food tradition to rely on. they've had centuries to experiment with kichadi, we're still young, naive, and learning that cheeseburgers are a bad idea. so to me, it seems like guys like Shelton were kind of trying to rediscover an old science that hasn't been put into modern terms and modern books very well yet because it hasnt been explored with modern tools. they were just breaking the ice!
as you state, yes, there are many opposing views regarding food combining which disagree with eachother completely, but what argument doesnt have more than one side? it doesnt mean that they are all wrong, or that any one is completely right. give our culture a few more hundred years or so, and we'll find our own good way of explaining food combining the way we 'explain' things nowadays with modern science.
one point i noticed off the bat though was in regards to fermented dairy combining well with everything. this is something i have tried to research myself when i began making kefir, the first re-introduction of dairy into my diet in three years. the most information with specific regard to fermented dairy and food combining i could find were the ayurveda references to the use of yogurt. i really had a hard time finding 'food combining concious' recipes that combined the fermented dairy with anything else. all of the ayurveda references seemed to only use it in the lassi, to be used as a digestive aid, only with the lunch meal (in the middle of the day, which they believe is the strongest digestion time). they make it a point to say not to have any yogurt after the evening begins because you dont want it in your system when you goto sleep.
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keeping with the ayurveda momentum, here is the typical information i've found in most ayurveda resources :
The common fruit and yogurt "health food" is a good example of bad food combination.
Yogurt has a sour taste with thick , heavy and cold qualities. Fruit has sweet taste with light and roughness. While the fruit will be digested fast the yogurt will be digested slowly. This opposite digestive factor will cause fermentation and prevent the gastro-intestinal from absorbing nutrients.
How do you avoid this?
Avoid haphazard food combination. Allow the stomach to empty before putting more food into it. Eat the fruit first , 30 minutes later have the yogurt at room temperature. Ayurveda does not recommend food from the refrigerator to the your mouth. Cold yogurt causes increase in mucus production. Remember it takes about 3 hours for heavy food to be digested and pass out of your stomach. To test your stomach try the undesirable food combinations on an empty stomach. Eat your desirable food, followed later with your other favorite.
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INCOMPATIBLE FOOD COMBINATIONS
Milk Is Incompatible With:
# Bananas
# Fish
# Meat
# Melons
# Curd
# Sour Fruits
# Kitchari
# Bread containing yeast
# Cherries
Melons Are Incompatible With:
# Grains
# Starch
# Fried foods
# Cheese
Starches Are Incompatible With:
# Eggs
# Milk
# Bananas
# Dates
Honey Is Incompatible With:
# Ghee (in equal proportions)
# Heating or cooking with.
Radishes Are Incompatible With:
# Milk
# Bananas
# Raisins
Nightshades, (Potato, Tomato, Brinjal, Chilies) Are Incompatible With:
# Yogurt
# Milk
# Melon
# Cucumber
Yogurt Is Incompatible With:
# Milk
# Sour Fruits
# Melons
# Hot drinks
# Meat
# Fish
# Mangoes
# Starch
Eggs Are Incompatible With:
# Milk
# Meat
# Yogurt
# Melons
# Cheese
# Fish
# Bananas
Mangos Are Incompatible With:
# Yogurt
# Cheese
# Cucumbers
Corn Is Incompatible With:
# Dates
# Raisins
# Bananas
Lemon Is Incompatible With:
# Yogurt
# Milk
# Cucumbers
# Tomatoes
Grains with:
# Fruit
# Tapioca
this info pasted from:
http://www.niam.com/corp-web/foodcomb.html
and
http://www3.sympatico.ca/devan.nambiar/naturo.htm
heres a better ayurveda guideline table but i couldnt paste this one:
http://www.ayurveda.com/online%20resource/food_combining.pdf |
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