Food combining--3 articles by Dr. Shelton

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Principles of Combining Foods Properly

 

By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Reprinted from Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review

 

There are sound physiological reasons for eating foods in compatible

combinations. In other words, some foods, if mixed in the digestive

system, will cause distress! The principles of food combining are

dictated by digestive chemistry. Different foods are digested

differently. Starchy foods require an alkaline digestive medium

which is supplied initially in the mouth by the enzyme ptyalin.

Protein foods require an acid medium for digestion- hydrochloric

acid.

 

As any student of chemistry will assure you, acids and bases

(alkalis) neutralize each other. If you eat a starch with a protein,

digestion is impaired or completely arrested! The undigested food

mass can cause various kinds of digestive disorders. Undigested food

becomes soil for bacteria which ferment and decompose it. Its by

products are poisonous, one of which, alcohol, is a narcotic that

destroys or inhibits nerve function. It plays havoc with nerves of

the digestive tract, suspending their vital action such that

constipation may well be a result! As set forth in Dr. Herbert

Shelton's FOOD COMBINING MADE EASY these are the salient rules for

proper food combining.

 

The Basic Rules of Proper Food Combining:

1. Eat acids and starches at separate meals. Acids neutralize the

alkaline medium required for starch digestion and the result is

fermentation and indigestion.

2. Eat protein foods and carbohydrate foods at separate meals.

Protein foods require an acid medium for digestion.

3. Eat but one kind of protein food at a meal.

4. Eat proteins and acid foods at separate meals. The acids of acid

foods inhibit the secretion of the digestive acids required for

protein digestion. Undigested protein putrefies in bacterial

decomposition and produces some potent poisons.

5. Eat fats and proteins at separate meals. Some foods, especially

nuts, are over 50% fat and require hours for digestion.

6. Eat sugars (fruits) and proteins at separate meals.

7. Eat sugars (fruits) and starchy foods at separate meals. Fruits

undergo no digestion in the stomach and are held up if eaten with

foods that require digestion in the stomach.

8. Eat melons alone. They combine with almost no other food.

9. Desert the desserts. Eaten on top of meals they lie heavy on the

stomach, requiring no digestion there, and ferment. Bacteria turn

them into alcohols and vinegars and acetic acids.

 

 

The Necessity of Proper Food Combining

 

By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Reprinted from Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review

 

The human stomach is a site of constant chemical activity. Digestion

is largely a matter of chemical changes in the food eaten. These

changes are instigated and carried out by enzymes secreted in the

mouth, stomach and elsewhere. For their activities, these enzymes

require suitable media. All of this makes it important that we

exercise some care not to take into the stomach at the same time

foods requiring different and incompatible media. The assertion

recently widely publicized that the stomach cannot tell one food

from another and digests one mixture of foods as well as it does

another is not good chemistry; it is even worse physiology. Either

the one who made it is grossly ignorant of the " facts of life, " or

has a poor regard for truth. Whether ignorant or dishonest, such an

individual should not pose as an authority in the field of human

nutrition and presume to advise millions about proper eating.

 

Different Food s Require Different Digestive Tasks

It is a fundamental fact in chemistry that alkalies and acids are

opposites; that they neutralize each other. It is a fact in

physiology that all starchy foods digest in an alkaline medium and

the starch-splitting enzyme of the mouth (ptyalin or salivary

amylase) is destroyed by acid, even a mild acid. Therefore, if acids

are taken with starches, starch digestion is suspended. If breads or

cereals or potatoes are eaten with berries or with citrus fruits, or

with other acid-bearing foods, the digestion of these starches is

delayed.

 

Eating Protein and Starches Together Begets Indigestion

It is a fact of physiology that proteins require an acid medium for

their digestion in the stomach. When proteins are eaten, acid is

secreted to enable the enzyme, pepsin, to begin the work of protein

digestion. Now, it is not possible for two processes, that of starch

digestion requiring an alkaline medium for its digestion, and that

of protein digestion requiring an acid medium for its

accomplishment, to both go on in the same stomach at the same time,

with any great efficiency. The rising acidity of the stomach will

neutralize the saliva, destroy the salivary amylase, and bring

starch digestion to a halt. If no protein is taken with the starch,

no acid is poured into the stomach and starch digestion proceeds on

schedule.

 

A Fundamental Rule

The application of this fact of the physiology of digestion is

plain: Eat starch foods at separate meals from acid foods and foods

requiring acid in their digestion. This simply means, do not eat

such foods as cereals, bread, potatoes, (sweet and Irish), parsnips,

squash, beans, or other starchy foods with flesh, eggs, cheese,

nuts, or other protein foods, and do not eat these starchy foods

with berries, oranges, grapefruit, pineapple, or other acid foods.

There is enough oxalic acid in spinach to delay or suspend starch

digestion.

 

Acid Indigestion Arises From Wrong Combinations

All of this means that those grand old combinations, the mainstays

of every boarding house lady in the land, of citrus fruits and

cereals for breakfast and meat and potatoes at dinner, will have to

go. So, also, will have to go those other popular favorites,

sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, and similar combinations. Pastries

with proteins, pastries with acid fruits, and similar popular

combinations, are in large measure, responsible for so much of what

the patent medicine barkers call " acid indigestion.

 

Retarded digestion favors fermentation and putrefaction of the foods

eaten. Certainly there can be no sane reason why one cannot eat his

foods in such combinations as place the least tax upon the digestive

glands. Nobody has ever charged, so far as I know, that one cannot

get all the food required or that the food will be lacking in

essential nutrients if the food is combined according to a few

simple rules that have their basis in the physiology of digestion.

Who is behind the strenuous effort to persuade the people that food

combining is needless and hurtful?

 

Medical Profession Spreads Lies About Physiology of Digestion

It might be thought that the manufacturers of Alkaseltzer are behind

the effort or that the maker of some other antacid is trying to

preserve his market, but I doubt this. I think that the medical

profession is behind the effort and that they discredit all effort

to find a physiological mode of eating because of their ingrained

hatred of Hygiene. They have been fighting Hygiene and slowly

retreating before its relentless advance for a hundred and thirty-

five years. At this late date they are not going to " eat crow " and

admit that they have been wrong.

 

Natural Combinations Wholesome

It is sometimes objected that nature herself combines protein and

starch and it is argued that if she combines these food factors, the

combination must be good. When those who offer this objection come

up with sandwich trees, hamburger bushes and hot dog vines, we'll

concede that they have a valid objection. But until they are able to

provide us with such combinations, we shall be compelled to think

that they are merely throwing spit balls at phantoms. This objection

has been answered many times and the answer has been ignored as

often as it has been given. It may not be amiss to briefly reply to

it again at this time. The digestive tract can vary its digestive

secretions, both as to the acidity of alkalinity and as to timing,

to meet the digestive requirements of different foods. It can do

this with the greatest ease if the food- cereal or legume or potato,

for example-is eaten alone, but this adaptation of juice to food is

not possible if, instead of a food a complex meal is eaten. Complex

meals are not seen in nature and they are not digested with much

efficiency by man. Simple meals digest better. It will also be found

by all who will give the matter a fair trial that properly combined

meals digest much better than the conventional heterogeneous

comminglers of foods that are commonly eaten. When a subject is so

easily put to the test, there seems to be no reason why anyone

should be in doubt about it. One does not have to accept the

dogmatic assertions of the ex-spurts, who know all about the subject

and know it all wrong.

 

Wrong Food Combining Responsible For Much Suffering

Man's digestive system struggles with the haphazard combinations

with which it is supplied, and does the best it can: That in the

strong and vigorous, it succeeds in doing a reasonably good job for

a time is a matter of common observation, but the tax placed upon it

is enervating, hence disease-producing. In the weak, in the sick, in

those with impaired digestion, there is urgent need that correct

combinations be eaten if satisfactory digestion is to be achieved.

The healthy man may make occasional compromises, the sick man should

never do so.

 

 

Efficient Digestion

 

By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Reprinted from Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review

 

A view frequently expressed by medical authors and apparently held

by the whole profession, is that if two foods may be digested

separately, they may be digested together. They extend this

principle to cover the whole menu: if each article of food in a bill-

of-fare is separately digestible, then they are digestible if eaten.

in a twenty-one course dinner, with the diner partaking of

everything from soup to nuts.

 

Conventional diet causes digestive problems

In a limited way, this view is true, else would conventional eaters

die from lack of food. Instead of dying, they thrive after a

fashion, many of them even growing fat on the conventional diet with

its haphazard mixtures. That digestion is not very efficient, is

shown, however, by gas, sour eructations, discomforts, foul stools

and the presence of large quantities of undigested food in the

stools. At least half of the food eaten by most people is passed out

undigested.

 

It is commonly held that foods may be taken into the digestive tract

in the most indiscriminate and haphazard manner, in any possible

combination, and in whatever amount the eater may desire will be

well and efficiently digested. This view is not based upon

physiology, but upon the determination of the profession that the

customary practices of the people shall not be disturbed. Every

student of physiology is well aware that the digestive enzymes have

certain well-defined limitations and that different digestive juices

are secreted for use in digesting different kinds of food

substances. These limitations should be respected in our eating

habits.

 

Proper food combining does not cause digestive problems

The inhibiting effect upon protein digestion of acids, sweets and

fats makes it important to avoid combining these three types of

foods. Good digestion depends upon a number of factors, but

simplicity of meals with combinations of foods that do not overstep

the known enzymic limitations is one of the most important of these

factors.

 

Vinegar retards digestion

Experiments have shown that as small a portion of vinegar as one in

5,000 sppreciab1y diminishes the digestion of starch by its

inhibiting or destructive effect upon the salivary amylase. One part

in 1,000 renders starch digestion very slow and twice this quantity

arrests it altogether. From these facts it becomes evident that

vinegar, pickles (saturated with vinegar), salads on which vinegar

has been sprinkled and salad dressings containing vinegar, are

unwholesome substances to take into the human digestive tract,

especially when taken with starchy foods such as cereals, bread,

legumes, potatoes and the like.

 

Vinegar is not an evil merely because its highly toxic acetic acid

content destroys ptyalin (salivary amylase), but it also contains

alcohol, which precipitates the pepsin of the gastric juice and

retards or prevents gastric digestion of proteins. What wonder then

that pickles and vinegar have been found useful in reducing weight.

They cripple the first two stages of digestion. My readers should

know that apple cider vinegar, which is so much lauded today as

a " wonder drug " in folk medicine contains both acetic acid and

alcohol and is unfit for use, not alone because it impairs

digestion, but also because it contains these two virulent poisons.

 

Acids destroy digestive enzymes

All acids destroy salivary amylase, the starch-splitting enzyme in

the saliva, and thus arrest starch digestion in the mouth and

stomach. Even those acids that are valuable as food, such as the

acids of pineapples, grapefruit, oranges, tangerines, lemons, limes,

tomatoes, apples, grapes, peaches, cherries, etc., destroy the

amylase of the saliva and arrest the digestion of starch. For this

reason, such foods should not be eaten at the same meal with

starches-potatoes, bread, cereals, legumes (beans and peas),

Jerusalem artichokes, carrots, cauliflower, parsnips and similar

foods.

 

Acids inhibit the secretion of gastric juice, hence they suspend or

retard protein digestion in the stomach. These fruits should not be

eaten with protein foods-such as eggs, flesh, cheese, nuts, etc.

They make a better combination with nuts and cheese than with flesh

and eggs for the reason that the cream in cheese and the oil in nuts

also inhibit gastric secretion, and the taking of acid foods with

these foods does not inhibit the secretion of gastric juice more

than does the fat. Nuts and cheese still combine better with green

vegetables.

 

Alcohol and cooking ingredients interfere with digestion

I have mentioned above that by precipitating the pepsin of the

gastric juice, the enzyme that initiates protein digestion, alcohol

impairs protein digestion. There are many other substances that

destroy pepsin. Extensive tests have shown that the residues left in

bread by baking powders retard the digestion of protein. Although

most of these tests were made with cream of tartar powders, no

powder seems to be exempt from this effect. Baking soda also

destroys pepsin and retards gastric digestion. Many drugs both acids

and alkalis, have been used with which to reduce weight because they

retard digestion.

 

Anything that either inhibits the secretion of the digestive juices

or that alters their chemistry, or that destroys their enzymes, will

retard or suspend the process of digestion. It is important,

therefore, that we take nothing with our foods that either alters

the acid-alkaline reactions of the digestive fluids, inhibits their

secretion or destroys their enzymes. It is also important that we

refrain from taking foods at the same meal that either directly or

indirectly interfere with the digestion of each other.

 

Tea, coffee and condiments cause indigestion

Tea and coffee, not alone because of the toxic substances which they

contain, but also because of the sugar that is commonly taken with

them, inhibit the digestion of foods in-the stomach. They are common

causes of indigestion. Condiments of all kinds also, because of the

irritation of the stomach which they occasion, inhibit stomach

digestion. As they are indigestible and occasion irritation

throughout the whole length of the digestive tract, it is likely

that they also inhibit intestinal digestion. Salt inhibits stomach

digestion, also. There are a number of products widely so1d in

health food stores, that consist of powdered vegetables, some of

them containing highly salty sea weeds, others with salt added. They

are used with which to make broths and they are sprinkled on salads

and other foods as seasonings and supplements. They inhibit stomach

digestion, sometimes for hours.

 

Onion family causes digestive problems

There is no reason to doubt that all the members of the onion family-

onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, chives, etc. -as well as radishes

and all other foods containing appreciable amounts of mustard oil,

because they occasion irritation of the stomach and intestines as

they occasion irritation of the mouth and throat, inhibit digestion.

Horseradish and mustard are especially strong in occasioning

irritation, but ordinary white and red radishes occasion

considerable irritation. There seems to be no good reason why we

should eat such items.

 

It seems that it is the part of wisdom to refrain from eating

practices that retard, inhibit and impair digestion, rather than to

eat in the indiscriminate and haphazard manner that is common and

then resort to drugs to palliate the resulting discomfort. To avoid

discomfort by avoiding its cause is certainly preferable to

deliberately inviting trouble and then seeking to palliate it with

drugs that are worse in their damaging effects than the foods, food

additives and combinations that are responsible for the initial

trouble.

 

Nature does not mix foods

The eating of complex mixtures of foods is not seen in nature.

Animals not only stay strictly with the foods to which they are

constitutionally adapted (those to which their digestive secretions

and processes are specially adapted) but they refrain from mixing

these indiscriminately.

 

Man mixes foods from all sources. He will combine in one meal the

diet of the tiger (carnivore), that of the pig (omnivore), that of

the sheep (herbivore), that of the bird (gramnivore) and that of the

primate (frugivore), and expect such a combination of foods to be as

speedily and as efficiently digested in his stomach as the tiger's

diet is digested in the tiger's stomach and the sheep's diet is

digested in the stomach of the sheep. On the face of it, it would

seem that however great is the adaptive capacity of the human

digestive tube, it would not be capable of adjusting its digestive

secretions to so many different types of diet at one and the same

time.

 

Why should we expect the human digestive tract to be able to

efficiently digest such meals? It is often asserted that " normal

(human) digestive tracts have been coping with such combinations for

centuries without a whim per, " but such a statement is based, not on

fact, but on ignorance of the history of mankind's eating practices

as well as upon an ignoring of the facts of contemporary human

suffering. Present-day eating practices are not centuries old. The

meals of man, until very recent times, have been very simple and

have consisted of but two or three articles of food. With several

notable exceptions, even the meals of the wealthy classes have been

very simple when compared to the eating practices of today.

 

Mono meals ideal

That the human digestive tract copes with such combinations today

without a whimper is simply not true. Indeed, the whimpering assumes

the proportion of a loud national groan. Viewing the eating

practices of the lower animals, we observe the utmost

simplicity. " Every animal keeps to one dish-herbs are the food of

this species-fish of that- and flesh of a third, " wrote an early

Hygienist, who advised: " Be content with one dish at a meal, in the

choice of that consult your palate. "

 

Certainly the human digestive tract, like that of the lower animals,

can make a far more complete and efficient adjustment of its

secretions to the character of the food eaten if but one food is

eaten at the meal. It may turn out in the long run that all of our

efforts to work out compatible food mixtures is an effort to stray

away from the simple path of nature without suffering.