Basic Food Combining Principles

[sosiesmom]

Where can I find some basic, simple rules about proper food combining? I've been raw for almost 3 months and feel ready to take this next step. Thanks!

[sport]

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 combing, the rules of which are briefly explained below:

The Basic Rules for Proper Food Combining

1. Eat acids and starches at seperate meals. Acids netralize the alkaline medium required for starch digestion and the result is fermentation and indigestion.

2. Eat protein foods and carbohydrate foods at seperate meals. Protein foods require an acid medium for digestion.

3. Eat just one kind of protein food per meal.

4. Eat proteins and acid foods at seperate meals. The acids of acid foods inhibit the secretion of the digestive acids required for protein digestion. Undigested protein putrifies in bacterial decomposition and produces some potent poisons.

5. Eat fats and proteins at seperate meals. Some foods, especially nuts, are over 50% fat and require hours for digestion.

6. Eat sugars (fruits) and proteins at seperate meals.

7 Eat sugars (fruits) and starchy foods at seperate meals. Fruits undergo no digestion in the stomach and are held up if eaten with foods that require digestion in the stomach.

8 Eat "all" melons alone. 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. Desert the Deserts. Eaten atop of meals they lie heavy on the stomach.

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 other protein) are to be used as the protein, tomatoes may be used in this salad), two non-starchy vegetables and a protein.

sour apples, beans, peas, cereals, honey, 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.

[sport]

OK. I finally found the link to that article. I was not able to copy across the chart so I went looking.

http://www.empiricalhealth.org/foodcomb.html

[alex]

A good section on food combining rules can be found in Natalia Rose book: The Raw Food Detox Diet. Excellent book!!


alex

[Davylp25]

Okay these posts get more confusing...

Can we get lists of what is considered PROTIEN, ACIDY FRUITS, ETC... That would be so much easier when talking about food combining... Are proteins considered nuts and seeds? What is Sea weed considered? etc

[Gosia]

Sure, here it is:
http://www3.telus.net/public/a4a48320/combinations.html

Gosia

[lissomllama]

While I eat pretty much mono and keep like things together and some of the food combining principles make sense to me, not all of them do. Saying something like "eat proteins and fats separate" seems a little strange to me because nuts (what we mainly think of as a fat) contain both fats and amino acids and in fact, every fruit, vegetable, nut and seed contains protein in some amount so essentially, even eating just a banana is 'going against' one or more food combining principles. I find it best to eat as many things as you can alone and when you feel you need to eat more than one thing together, I would only worry about the most basic ones like: Eat melons alone and Eat fats and sweet fruits alone (although nuts for example, are technically considered a fruit and going by the theory that all things in existence are composed of the same things in different concentrations suggests that even a grape has some tiny, negligable amount of fat in it, just not in a patricularly measurable amount that would really matter in food combining). I think that most long time raw foodists eventually progress to simple, whole, mono eating because they realize that for each food item, the body needs a slightly different internal environment to properly digest the food and disperse its nutrients to the right areas so even if you are food combining, it will never do your body as well as if you were eating mono. This is a huge step and can usually only really occur when most cravings and temptations are no longer a problem and the only reason to eat becomes to provide your body with what it needs. Until you reach that point in your raw journey, just enjoy eating what you enjoy together and maybe observe some of the simpler food combining prinicples. These are all just my feelings and opinions and I hope it doesn't upset anyone. I just felt like sharing how I see things in this department. I may not be a "raw guru" and I haven't even been doing it for a year yet but my body has already told me to go mono after almost 3 months of being at 100%. I've progressed VERY fast through the beginning stuff and my last leg seems to be becomming fully mono and then I'll probably remain that way from then on.