Food combining involves eating foods in certain combinations or sequences with the goal of aiding digestion and minimizing stomach discomfort. People who advocate food combining follow guidelines that dictate how to combine foods at meals and in what sequence to eat each food. They feel that improperly combined meals can result in digestive discomfort, a buildup of food in the stomach and even more serious health problems.
Digestion
A basic principle of food combining is to only combine foods that have similar digestion times. According to nutritionist and food-combining advocate Dr. Stanley Bass, water, juice, fruits and vegetables have generally short digestion times of under 45 minutes, and whole grains, dairy products, proteins, nuts, seeds and complex carbohydrates take more than one hour and sometimes as long as several hours to digest. Proponents of food combining believe that the stomach overworks when it digests a variety of foods at a single meal, and it's healthiest for the stomach to handle similar types of food at once. When the stomach has completed the majority of digestion for one group of items and is mostly empty, it's permissible to eat again.
Good Combinations
Combine foods that have similar digestion times or that are in the same food group (with the exception of proteins, which should be limited to one type at each meal). Alder Brooke Healing Arts recommends combining vegetables with buttery or fatty foods, carbohydrates or proteins. Other good combinations include starches with carbohydrates or proteins and fatty foods with carbohydrates.
Bad Combinations
Avoid combining starches and carbohydrates with proteins. Acidic foods and basic (alkaline) foods should be eaten separately as well. Fruits and most juices are composed largely of simple carbohydrates and take only a short time to digest; therefore, it's best to avoid consuming them with any other foods. Finally, desserts don't combine well with any meal. They are heavy in sugar, and food-combining advocates believe that they ferment in the stomach rather than digest easily.
Chewing
People who follow the principles of food combining believe that it's important to completely chew all foods at all meals. Healing Daily also stresses the importance of chewing all foods thoroughly before swallowing them, almost to the point of liquidizing them. The organization notes that partially chewed food is almost always only partially digested and can pass through the body without fully dispersing its vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
Risk
Due to the somewhat rigid guidelines of food combining, it can be a challenge to get sufficient amounts of important vitamins, minerals and nutrients when following the principles. If most meals are heavy on foods in a certain food group and lack foods from other groups, people striving to combine foods productively may not get a completely balanced diet. Anyone considering beginning a diet that focuses on food combining should first talk with a physician or nutritionist to make sure that his or her diet plan is healthy.
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