Mixing your whites in with the colors: Food Combining
| image courtesy of Thedailygreen |
When you do the laundry, do you mix your whites with colors, cottons with synthetics, wash everything cold or hot and spin it all bone dry? We have so many different fabrics and our washing machines have so many different cycles, it’s hard to know where to begin! The same could be said about how we combine the foods that we eat. Every book you pick up seems to define food combining differently. So I am going to try and demystify and simplify things and tell you why it is important to give it a try – food combining, that is. With the laundry you are on your own!
Ok, why should you eat certain foods by themselves, or with some, and not all? Put it this way, different kinds of foods have different digestive enzymes. Whenever many ingredients are eaten all together in one meal, the body gets confused. It runs around in circles not knowing which food to attack and work with first. End result: rotting, half digested food in an exhausted body. Short term – minor stomach upsets; long term – major health problems and body organ shutdown: “I’m on strike!!” If birds are smart enough to know not to eat worms at the same time as berries, then so should we be. (Ok, substitute meat of your choice for worms!)
Rule # 1: The less we eat (and can still be running on 100% energy when we need to), the longer we will live. That means that unless you have low blood sugar problems, you don’t need those in between snacks, or even 3 big meals a day. However, although eating only one meal a day is excellent for spiritual awareness (good for disciplined monks), and some of us do very well on two meals a day (vegetarians), the largest number of people find it more practical to eat three times a day. Regardless of which category you might fit in to, all food should be consumed preferably before 7 pm. Why? Because the liver’s cycle of peak activity is between 1 and 3 am. In order to function properly and purify our blood, as many hours as possible are needed for digestion of food before products of assimilation reach the liver. Ideal times for meals are therefore:
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Breakfast – between 7 and 9 am.
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Lunch – around 12 noon.
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Dinner – at least 4 hours after lunch, and preferably before 7 pm.
Rule # 2: Begin the day with a morning ”elixir” as the morning is the best time to cleanse the body after the longest period (sleep) without food. This will help if you have been combining your foods incorrectly. Make sure your drink is at least at room temperature – remember your kidneys don’t like ice. The purifying properties of drinks are given below in order from less to more cleansing:
warming teas (eg ginger, cinnamon, spearmint)
vegetable broth (cabbage, parsley)
micro-algae drink
water
vegetable juice (carrot, celery)
fruit juice
barley-wheat-grass juice
root teas (eg dandelion, chicory)
flower teas (eg chamomile, red clover blossom)
Rule # 3: Proteins are the foods that need the greatest amount of stomach acids to digest and should be eaten at the beginning of a meal. That means eat animal products, legumes, nuts and seeds first. If you are going to eat starches mixed with proteins (eg beans and rice), use at most a one (beans) to two (grain) ratio. Salty foods (eg miso soup) are eaten first of all as salt is the flavor with descending (yin) energy which stimulates gastric juices to prepare them for other foods. Eat proteins with generous amounts of green (non starchy) vegetables cooked or raw, to aid digestion.
Rule # 4: Ideally eat only one starch at one meal. Two may be tolerated but it is then better to use one grain (eg rice, wheat, rye, oat, barley, millet, corn) and another starch in vegetable form (eg potatoes, carrots, beets, winter squash). Eat green vegetables with starches.
Rule # 5: Use fats and oils (eg butter, ghee, cooking and salad oils, cream) sparingly. They don’t mix that well with proteins but they do OK with starches and acid fruits (see below).
Rule # 6: Fruits are simple creatures. Don’t mix them with anything. If you must, eat them at the end of the meal (the sweet flavor is ascending in energy), with a green salad separating them from the starches/protein. Fruit is however quite partial to lettuce or celery which aid its digestion. Preferably just end the meal with the salad and save the fruit, cooked or raw, for a separate small meal. Don’t drink fruit juices between meals without waiting at least two hours after a starchy meal, or four hours after a heavy protein meal. An exception to the Eat fruit Alone rule is acid (sour) fruits (strawberries, lemons, tomatoes, pineapples, kiwis, etc). These are friendly with fats/oils and even the high-fat proteins such as yogurt, kefir, cheese, tahini and nuts. A little dish of strawberries with yogurt or cream will do nicely!
Rule # 7: Drink milk alone. You don’t feed a baby milk with other foods. It’s a meal in itself.
Rule # 8: Melons are eaten alone because they digest faster than anything else. If you eat them with something, you will cause fermentation.
Rule # 9: One pot meals. Traditionally these are good for healing if prepared correctly. If they are cooked slowly in a pot with plenty of water, then pretty much anything goes. As Ayurvedic doctor Robert Svoboda says …..”the various foods have settled their differences in the pot, fought out whatever needed to be fought out, and come to some conclusion, which you then consume.”
The Golden Rule: The more unhealthy you are or the sicker you feel, the more simple your meals should be. Remember when you were a child and were satisfied with just one or two different foods at a time. As we age, our digestive systems – like our washing machines – don’t function as well. So follow your instincts and bon appetit!!!
More information on food combinations can be found in “Healing with Whole Foods” by Paul Pitchford.
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