Optimizing digestion is key when looking towards vitality, health, energy, balancing blood sugar, and stabilizing metabolism. if you have gas, bloating, acid reflux, or ulcers, it’s likely that you are not following the proper food combination. In this article, I will share with you the keys to proper digestion by combining foods so you can digest, absorb, utilize, and eliminate what you eat.
Maintaining a Proper Digestion
Proper digestion is essential for maintaining good health and vitality, and food combining can play a significant role in achieving this. Food combining is the art of pairing foods that are easily digestible together, while avoiding combinations that may cause digestive distress. This practice has been used by many cultures throughout history as a way to promote optimal digestion and overall wellness.
When it comes to food combining, there are some general guidelines to follow. For example, it is best to avoid combining proteins with starches or fruits with other foods. Instead, proteins should be paired with non-starchy veggies or low-sugar fruits like berries, while starches can be combined with non-starchy vegetables or healthy fats like avocado or nuts. When done correctly, food combining can help alleviate digestive discomforts such as bloating, gas and indigestion.
Food Combining Rule #1: Do Not Combine Proteins with Carbohydrates
When you eat protein, which is acidic, your body needs alkaline enzymes to break it down. When you eat carbohydrates that are alkaline, your body needs acid enzymes to break them down.
When you combine ACID enzymes and ALKALINE enzymes, they will normalize each other (simple chemistry), stopping digestion and allowing the food to sit in your digestive tract to ferment and even to putrefy! Fermentation in your digestive tract produces alcohol, which deregulates energy levels, causes acidity, mucus production and congestion, and inflammation.
A burger and fries is a perfect example of this combination.
Food Combining Rule #2: Eat Fruit and Melons Alone
Fruits and melons digest quickly. You don’t want to put a fast-moving digester behind a slow-moving digester (protein) because you will hold up the process. Fruit is a better appetizer than it is a dessert. Even better, eat fruit on an empty stomach before meals and you reduce your cravings for sweets later! Melons are best eaten not in combination with anything else. “Eat melons alone or leave them alone.”
Food Combining Rule #3: How To Eat Vegetables
Vegetables can generally be combined with either starch (potato, grains, corn, etc.) OR with proteins (not just animal products, proteins also include nuts and seeds). Eating Vegetables with both protein and starch violates Rule #1!
Starches are very mucus-forming, hard to digest and act like “glue” in your intestines, we recommend that you minimize them anyway!
Food Combining Rule #4: More about Combining Fruits
There are 3 categories of fruit and they don’t all mix well with each other for proper digestion. Acid fruits are citrus, pineapples, strawberry and sour fruits. Sub-acid fruits are apples, cherries, grapes, and mangos. Sweet fruits are bananas, dates, figs, and raisins.
The general rules with fruit:
- Mix acid and sub-acid fruits
- Mix sub-acid and sweet fruits
- DO NOT mix acid and sweet fruits.
You can find more extensive lists and visual charts online.
