Featured Topic - Food Combining

Health is dependent on the balance of both body and mind. Nutrition plays a major role in your health and wellbeing. Choosing the right foods for your body type is important as well as using fresh ingredients that are vibrant and full of life, vitamins and minerals. Processed and tinned/packaged foods don't have much life energy and therefore have much less nutritive value than fresh produce and will actually create toxins in your system.

Bearing this in mind, it is also important to consider food combining. Our digestive system can't cope with a big variety of foods eaten at once, regardless of how healthy they are. It is a scientific fact that our digestive enzymes require a certain PH, or acidity, to function. Also, different foods require different time in the stomach. For example, proteins require longer than starches.

Eating properly combined food will ensure complete digestion and absorption of nutrients and hence more energy. Poor food combing choices can lead to indigestion, bloating, lethargy and create toxins in our system.

The following guidelines are based on scientific principles of digestion. Try to incorporate them into your diet. Remember to make changes slowly and observe the changes that occur;

• Eat acids and starches at separate meals. Acids neutralize the alkaline medium required for starch digestion and the result is fermentation and indigestion. (Acids – strawberries, tomato, orange, pineapple etc. Starches – potato, corn, pumpkin etc)
•  Never mix yogurt & fruit - heavy, sticky, sweet and sour should not be combined together as they cannot be metabolised together.
• Fruit should be eaten alone as it moves through the digestive process quickly.
• Eat only one kind of protein food at a meal. E.g cheese, eggs, meat, beans.
• Do not combine milk with fish, meat or fruits.
• Eat fats and proteins at separate meals. Some foods, especially nuts, are over 50% fat and require hours for digestion.
• Eat melons alone. They are incompatible with most food.

The following points will also help with digestion;

• Don't eat or drink anything very cold.
  Reasoning: cold food or drink can adversely affect the digestive fire.
• Avoid eating leftovers where possible (the food cooked for dinner can be eaten the next day for lunch, but anything kept longer than this are considered leftovers).
  Reasoning: leftover food can become difficult to digest and this can result in additional toxins.