Separate Food Diet

The separate food diet is designed to help encourage your body to fully digest food so you get all the nutritional value. The diet's author designed the diet to help him deal with his own health issues. However, there is no evidence that the diet is especially effective in promoting weight loss.

History

Dr. William Howard Hay developed the principles behind the separate food diet in the early 1900s after he was diagnosed with a variety of health problems including high blood pressure and Bright's disease. He experimented with treating his ailments through diet, specifically separating various types of food to aid in digestion.

Digestion and Nutrition

Hay theorized that the body does not completely digest food, leading to incomplete nutrition. He believed that if he separated various types of food, the body would metabolize them more efficiently, making more nutrients available to help the body fight disease.

Combinations to Avoid

Hay recommended eating foods that are easy to digest such as sugars in one meal and harder-to-digest foods such as proteins in another meal. He thought if you ate sugars and proteins together, the body would ignore proteins and concentrate on the sugars; the proteins would pass out of the body undigested. He also thought you should separate starches and acids because acidic foods would neutralize the alkaline medium necessary to digest starches, and that you should separate proteins, which require an acidic environment to properly digest, from carbohydrates, which require an alkaline environment.

Weight Loss

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, if you need to lose weight you should look for a program that that provides healthy, balanced eating plans that are easy to follow and do not forbid specific foods or food groups. The most effective way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you burn. In a 2001 study at the University of Rostock, Germany, a separate food diet such as Hay's did not reduce total body water, lean body mass, body fat or weight.

Before You Begin

Speak with your doctor before you begin any weight loss plan to make sure the diet meets all your nutritional and medical needs. If you are receiving treatment for any disease, including heart disease or diabetes, do not discontinue treatment if you choose to follow the separate food diet. Instead, consider nutrition and diet to be complementary treatments.