Monday, August 20, 2007
Food combining - Good, bad or Fiction?
There's no good research evidence to support the practice of food combining. However, many people have found food combining to be essential in their overall health, and many healthcare practitioners continue to support this practice despite the absence of research evidence.
Sometimes proper food combining just means avoiding extremes.
For example, some food combining advocates recommend eating protein alone or carbohydrates alone rather than protein and carbohydrate together. However, this goal is essentially impossible, since most vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes contain both proteins and carbohydrates. You would have to eliminate all of the above foods from your diet in order to avoid eating protein and carbohydrates together. However, large amounts of protein (like the 80+ grams of protein that would be found in a 12-ounce steak) together with large amounts of carbohydrates (like the 40+ grams of sugar found in an 8-ounce glass of grape juice) might be a taxing combination for your digestive tract. The combination of these two foods might be harder on your digestive system than either food alone. Nonetheless, we see the basic problem here as one of going to extremes (too much protein at once and/or too much sugar at once) rather than food combining.
Large volumes of water during a meal can raise the stomach pH level. Exactly how this impacts digestion is not clear from research studies. But a person with insufficient stomach acid might have his or her digestion even further compromised by drinking large amounts of water with meals, because strong stomach acid concentrations are needed to help digest proteins and to trigger other digestive events in the small intestine. So in general, we encourage high-volume water drinking between meals rather than during meals. Advocates of food combining sometimes take this same approach to water drinking.
There is no research evidence that the practice of waiting an hour or more after eating fruit before consuming other foods is necessary or beneficial. However, many people report better overall digestion when they follow this procedure, and a good number of healthcare practitioners advocate fruit consumption separate from meals. There are a number of theories used to support this practice involving the fermentation process and how the fruit fermentation might take place at the expense of other digestive events. However, we have once again found no research evidence to indicate that fruit with meals is a predictable problem. As you can see from our website, we do include fruit as an ingredient in our recipes and find it to be delicious.
SOURCE
Sometimes proper food combining just means avoiding extremes.
For example, some food combining advocates recommend eating protein alone or carbohydrates alone rather than protein and carbohydrate together. However, this goal is essentially impossible, since most vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes contain both proteins and carbohydrates. You would have to eliminate all of the above foods from your diet in order to avoid eating protein and carbohydrates together. However, large amounts of protein (like the 80+ grams of protein that would be found in a 12-ounce steak) together with large amounts of carbohydrates (like the 40+ grams of sugar found in an 8-ounce glass of grape juice) might be a taxing combination for your digestive tract. The combination of these two foods might be harder on your digestive system than either food alone. Nonetheless, we see the basic problem here as one of going to extremes (too much protein at once and/or too much sugar at once) rather than food combining.
Large volumes of water during a meal can raise the stomach pH level. Exactly how this impacts digestion is not clear from research studies. But a person with insufficient stomach acid might have his or her digestion even further compromised by drinking large amounts of water with meals, because strong stomach acid concentrations are needed to help digest proteins and to trigger other digestive events in the small intestine. So in general, we encourage high-volume water drinking between meals rather than during meals. Advocates of food combining sometimes take this same approach to water drinking.
There is no research evidence that the practice of waiting an hour or more after eating fruit before consuming other foods is necessary or beneficial. However, many people report better overall digestion when they follow this procedure, and a good number of healthcare practitioners advocate fruit consumption separate from meals. There are a number of theories used to support this practice involving the fermentation process and how the fruit fermentation might take place at the expense of other digestive events. However, we have once again found no research evidence to indicate that fruit with meals is a predictable problem. As you can see from our website, we do include fruit as an ingredient in our recipes and find it to be delicious.
SOURCE
Labels: digestion, food combining, Myth
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