Is gastric distress a common symptom of eating or is there something seriously wrong about our food choices? The fact is, according to a commonly quoted statistic, Americans spend more than $700 million dollars a year on laxatives and antacids to aid in digestion. Talk about butterflies in your stomach!
If you’re looking for a real solution, ditch the quick fix and adopt healthy food combinations!
Dr. Herbert Shelton, pioneer of the natural hygiene movement of the 1920s, strongly promoted plant-based diets and proper food combinations as the ultimate health choice that harmonized with the body’s natural digestive processes.
Grounding his work in sixty years of dietetics, Shelton published “Food Combining Made Easy” in 1982, which went on to inspire world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi. In the book, Shelton discloses the proper food combinations that coordinate with the body’s enzymatic disintegration or how the body breaks down complex foods into simpler compounds.
We eat because we love it and get a kick out of a good steak or a veggie burger, if you’re like me. Most importantly, we eat to maintain our vitality and keep our bodies pumpin’ with an intake of nutrients and organic compounds like protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and vitamins.
But even if we’re loading up on everything good under the sun, we may not be combining foods properly. In the study of dietetics, there are specific enzymes for specific types of food substances, as well as enzymes that activate at certain stages of digestion. This is important because an enzyme cannot perform its work if the enzyme before it is backed up and so forth. Indigestion occurs when food is not properly digested.
Complex food combinations require more time to digest and if it doesn’t digest in a time, the food spoils rendering it waste.
 “The digestive enzymes of the human digestive tract have certain well-defined limitations….it is logical to believe the admixture (of food) taxes the physiological functions of these cells to their limit”, says Shelton.
The categories of food groups Shelton lists are as follows:
- Proteins:Â nuts, cereals, olives, avocados, milk, cheese, beans (soy, peanuts, peas)
- Starches:Â starches (potatoes, cereals, beans, artichoke, etc.), sugars (honey, maple, sugar), sweet and dried fruit (banana, mangoes, dates, etc.)
- Fats: oils, butter, avocados, nuts, etc.
- Acid Fruits:Â citric fruits (lemon, orange, etc.), tomato, pineapple, pomegranate
- Sub-acid Fruits:Â pear, apricot, sweet apple
- Non-starch:Â leafy greens, cauliflower, spinach, etc.
- Melons:Â cantaloupe, watermelon, honey dew, etc.
According to “Food Combining Made Easy”, these are the food combinations our body agrees with:
- Proteins + Non-Starchy
- Starchy + Non-Starchy
- Melons (consume alone)
- Liquids (consume alone)
- All fruit categories alone or with non-starchy vegetables
The appropriate food combinations are so important that sickness and diseases can be avoided all together if you learn to eat right! When the body is receiving natural, life-inducing ingredients, it’s functioning at an optimal state that discourages sickness to develop in the body.
By: Genesis Moreno
