Never Be Sick Again (18 page)

When we are young, our digestive systems are working at peak performance and indulging in digestive indiscretions may be possible. As we age, digestive capacity diminishes. Forcing the body to digest incompatible foods results in improperly digested food that produces dangerous toxins. Also, undigested food deprives us of essential nutrients.

Food combining principles are important because each food category has different digestive requirements. The requirements for proteins and starches are radically different; if you eat them both at the same time you cannot digest either one well. Proteins digest in an acid environment, whereas starches digest in an alkaline environment. Your digestive system has the ability to create either environment, but cannot create both at the same time. Instead, combine proteins or starches with vegetables, which are highly nutritious and combine well with either one.

Fruit has special digestive requirements and should be eaten alone. Fruit is easy to digest and is meant to pass through the digestive system quickly. If not, such as when combined with protein or starch, the fruit sugar ferments in the stomach, often manifested by bloating and gas. If sweet and acid fruits are to be eaten together, eat the acid fruits first. Melons should be eaten alone or combined with other melons because they take even less time to digest than other fruits and should pass quickly through your digestive system in order to prevent sugar fermentation.

To learn about food combinations that work well together and those that do not, consider a few simple food categories: proteins, starches, vegetables, and three kinds of fruits (sweet, acid and melons). Remember these simple rules:

Vegetables with proteins, okay.

Vegetables with starches, okay.

No protein with starch (avoid meat and potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs, fish and rice, etc.).

Eat fruit alone. (Acid fruits with nuts and seeds, okay. Acid fruits with sweet fruits, okay, although acid fruits should be consumed first. Eat melons alone, except with other melons.)

Not certain which of your favorite foods fall into which categories? Here are examples:

Many of our traditional meals are comprised of wrong combinations. What we think of as a “good meal” is typically a harmful combination of starch and protein—meat and potatoes, a burger and fries or a cheese pizza. We make the problem worse by accompanying meals with sugary drinks and desserts; these combinations cause the food to ferment and putrefy in the digestive system (and the protein/sugar combination also results in the formation of harmful AGEs—as described in the sugar section of the Big Four).

Learning how to apply proper food combinations to your diet can help your health, as it did for Andrea. Her high-profile career was interrupted when chronic fatigue and an autoimmune syndrome called lupus overwhelmed her. Before she came to see me, Andrea had been sick for five years and had exhausted all the remedies that modern medicine had to offer—with no help.

I encouraged Andrea to keep a food diary so that we could track what she was eating. The diary revealed that Andrea's diet consisted of a lot of processed junk (“make-believe” food). I taught her how to shop for “real” food and suggested special vitamin supplements. Within one week this woman— who had been chronically ill for five years—was starting to feel much better. She gained more energy and more mental clarity, and she began to have hope. Then she reached a plateau and seemed unable to make further improvement.

I suggested that Andrea prepare another food diary, this time looking at the combinations of foods she was eating. We found out why her recovery process stalled. Andrea's meal choices were causing maldigestion and creating toxins that were inhibiting her recovery. For example, she had gone out to a Sunday brunch and ate a breakfast consisting of a vegetable omelet (protein and vegetables, okay), hash-brown potatoes (starch with protein, not okay), toast with jelly (starch and sugar with protein, not okay), and a fruit cup (fruit with other foods, not okay). Combining egg protein with the starch of bread and potatoes was bad enough; the fermentation caused by combining that with sugar from fresh fruit and jelly made things worse.

By maldigesting her food, this meal was not supplying Andrea with the nutrition she thought she was consuming. At the same time her choices were creating toxins that were poisoning every cell in her body—certainly not what she had in mind when she ordered brunch. At another meal, Andrea had a sandwich made of organic, whole-wheat bread, organic turkey and organic lettuce. While definitely better than the breakfast, combining starch (bread) with protein (turkey) just does not work. I knew how important it would be for her health if she had a good understanding of basic food-combining rules. I taught her the simple rules of food combining:
vegetables with protein, okay; vegetables with starch,
okay; no protein with starch; eat fruit alone.

Andrea put these simple rules to work. Her health continued to improve, and she went into complete remission of all her chronic health problems—something she had been unable to do even with good food and supplements alone. Proper food combining was critical to this woman's wellness process, which is no surprise, because improper food combining causes disease.

It's All in the Technique

When you eat cooked foods, eating something raw first is
best.
Cooked food appears to be so alien to the human system that it can provoke an immune response, as if you are being exposed to a virus. Scientist Udo Erasmus, author of
Fats and
Oils,
wrote:

[W]hen cooked (or dead) food is eaten, a defense reaction occurs in the tissues of the stomach and digestive tract. This reaction is similar to the reaction we find in infections and around tumors and involves the accumulation of white blood cells, swelling, and a fever-like increase in temperature of the stomach and intestinal tissues. [As a result, we] experience tiredness after the meal. The same reaction takes place when half the food is eaten raw, but the cooked part is eaten first. When the raw part of the food is eaten first, however, this reaction does not take place.

Chewing your food also is important. The style that many people use is “chomp, chomp, gulp—down the hatch!” Lack of proper chewing can cause maldigestion and contribute to disease. Many of our modern foods are easy to gulp down, requiring little help from the teeth (because of excessive cooking, processing and fat content). By contrast, real foods (whole foods and especially raw foods) tend to have more texture and fiber, and require more chewing. If you want good nutrition to support good health, you need to eat real food and you need to chew it well.

First, your teeth physically mash food into small particles. Then, your saliva combines enzymes with food as it is being chewed and helps to break down and digest it. The purpose of chewing is not simply to break the food into small enough chunks to swallow, although many people eat this way. The purpose of chewing is to assist the digestive process by grinding your food into small particles and coating them thoroughly with the digestive enzymes in your saliva.

There is an old saying: “Drink what you eat and eat what you drink.” Solid food should be chewed thoroughly enough that it becomes liquid before you swallow it; liquid foods (such as juices and soups) should be “chewed” so that the enzymes in your saliva have time to work on them. Nutrition starts in your mind and in your mouth. Eat your food with the intent to nourish your body, rather than merely to fill the void in your stomach.

Rethink “Acid Indigestion”

After leaving the mouth, the chewed, enzyme-coated food moves to the stomach and triggers the release of hydrochloric acid and other digestive chemicals that further break down the food before it moves into the small intestine. In fact, until sufficient hydrochloric acid is present and food breakdown takes place, food does not leave the stomach. If undigested food sits in the stomach too long, it forms toxins and poisons you. Adequate hydrochloric acid is critical in the digestive process.

People often think that indigestion is caused by “too much acid”—commonly called “acid indigestion.” While in some rare cases this diagnosis is valid, the overwhelming majority of acid symptoms originate from the opposite problem—too little hydrochloric acid. As a result, the food does not digest properly and remains in the stomach too long, whereupon the food rots and becomes acidic. Rotting food, not excessive digestive acids, causes an acid burn feeling.
Deliberately taking
antacid tablets before you eat, to prevent acid indigestion,
is not a good idea.
It only makes a bad situation worse. The best remedies for acid indigestion are to pay attention to basic food combining principles and to chew your food well. Supplementing with digestive enzymes also can be helpful. (Note: Supplementing with hydrochloric acid tablets is also possible, but this much more aggressive measure requires education and careful monitoring.)