Foods that Fight
photo credit: foodistablog
Today I would like to share with you a very fundamental and simple nutritional principle that can have a significant effect on the quality of your health and daily life. I came across this principle when I was very sick with chronic fatigue and had been seeing a number of different alternative health practitioners due to the utter failure of medical doctors. One of the very knowledgeable and experienced people I was seeing gave me a little book about the principle of food combining.
This principle is very simple and easy to implement. It is likely the very first health change I introduced to my partner a number of years ago. She started to follow it and once she did anytime she deviated from it she really felt the negative effects of combining foods that fight. To test the truth of this nutritional principle all you have to do is experiment on yourself by testing it for 14 days. Afterward return to how you normally have eaten and take note of how you feel.
The Principle
The principle is dead simple:
“Do not consume protein with starches and sugars in the same meal.”
Protein refers to meat, fish, cheese and poultry. Starches and sugar refers to grains, bread and cereals, potatoes and sugars. While meat might contain some carbohydrates it is in the form of glycogen and requires little digestion and does not therefore interfere with the conditions necessary for protein digestion. It is similar with grains and starchy vegetables such as potatoes. The protein in grains only amount to about 10 percent, they are incomplete and are not concentrated as it is in meat.
So if you’re anything like I once was you probably eat meat and potatoes or some form of concentrated protein with something like pasta on a regular basis. While you may have built up a tolerance to this type of eating it is, irregardless, making you sick. Stop combining protein with starches and sugars in the same meal for approximately 14 days to remove the tolerance. Then try eating some steak with baked or mashed potato and listen to what your body has to say about what you’re doing to it. And have been doing to it for a long time.
Please note: Starches does not refer to fibrous vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, celery and so forth. These vegetables are perfectly fine to eat with protein. The key culprits are grains in bread and pasta and starchy root vegetables such as potatoes.
In the second part of this article - The How & Why of Foods that Fight - I’ll explain the how and why of foods that fight and the results of doing so. If you haven’t already done so you might like to subscribe so that you can receive the latest Balanced Existence articles directly in your email.
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June 3rd, 2009 at 7:49 am
[...] my previous article - Foods that Fight - I introduced the principle of food combining for health. That is, one should not combine starchy [...]
June 4th, 2009 at 10:55 am
[...] response to my two articles on food combining for health: Foods that Fight and The How and Why of Foods that Fight I received some good questions from a reader. Specifically [...]
July 14th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
[...] Signs If you’re eating the right foods for your unique body put together in the right meal combination you should be able to go for approximately four hours between meals without feeling hungry. [...]