A number of diets claim that combining specific proportions of proteins, carbohydrates and fats will help you reap health benefits. In most of these cases, however, the benefits of such an approach remain questionable. If you're considering a regimen that suggests food combining, it's best to regard it with a critical mind.
Food Combining Regimens
Food combining has been applied in a variety of health scenarios. For vegetarians, food combining has been recommended as a way of procuring adequate protein. For those with digestive problems, food combining is said to ease the passage of foods through the digestive tract. For those who are trying to lose weight, various permutations of low fat or low carb diets have been suggested.
Vegetarians and Complete Protein
Many a concerned parent has worked herself into a tizzy over her teen child's choice to become a vegetarian. Lack of adequate protein is a common, though unfounded, worry among parents of vegetarians. A complete protein is made up of 20 different amino acids, nine of which must be consumed through dietary sources. Proteins are readily available in eggs and dairy products, but vegans who abstain from all animal based food sources do not have those as an option. Plant foods contain some, but not all, of these amino acids in various combinations.
The old school of thought was that in order to obtain complete protein in a strict vegan diet, you had to combine plant foods in order to consume all of the essential amino acids at once. This is now known to be unnecessary. Protein deficiencies are extremely rare in Western society, and any vegetarian who is consuming a healthy diet including beans, grains and nuts should have no trouble getting enough protein, without working through convoluted food combining rules
Digestion
Digestion is a complex business, kind of like a chemical plant in your gut that extracts vital nutrients and eliminates waste products. At one time or another, you've probably experienced the ache of a belly full of random junk foods, and it makes sense that eating too much of anything may disturb your digestion. Some dietary regimens claim that food such as carbohydrates and proteins should not be eaten together, as they are digested by different enzymes and take different amounts of time to pass through the gastrointestinal tract. "Yoga Journal" ascribes to this philosophy of food combining, while noting that no medical research has shown that there is any validity to this system at all.
Weight Loss
Some weight loss programs claim that sticking to certain proportions of carbs, protein and fats will help you lose weight faster. In reality, it appears that calories, not content, are what matters for weight loss. According to Health Services at Columbia University, any weight loss seen during a food combining regimen is likely a result of making wiser food choices and consuming less calories, not of any particular formula for combining foods. In fact, a study conducted by researchers at the University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, found no significant difference in weight loss between patients who were assigned a "food-combining" diet and those who were in the balanced diet group. Both groups lost an equal amount of weight, but those in the balanced diet group lost more fat and experienced decreases in blood pressure.
References
- "Yoga Journal"; The Right Combination; Hale Sofia Schatz
- Health Services at Columbia; Food Combining Diet; October 2010
- "International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders"; Similar Weight Loss with Low-Energy Food Combining or Balanced Diets; A. Golay, et al.; April 2000
- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine; How Can I Get Enough Protein? The Protein Myth
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