he idea that our digestive systems evolved with a kind of built-in fragility that prevented us from eating different food groups at the same time is preposterous. In a normal, healthy stomach, gastric juice is released on an as-needed basis until the pH hits somewhere around 2. Pepsin – an enzyme geared toward breaking down protein – is also released in the stomach. Then, as the considerable musculature of the stomach churns and mixes the food together, bathing the lot in a wash of stomach acid and pepsin, the small intestine gets the cue to prepare digestive enzymes like lipase (for fat) and amylase (for starch) and more protein-digesting enzymes. When the small intestine begins receiving the first of the chyme (the partially-digested food smoothie your stomach just produced) from the stomach, those digestive enzymes are primed to break down the rest of it.

Here’s the thing about the pancreas: it’s a great multi-tasker. It can secrete lipase, amylase, and protease all at the same time. It can handle a mixed meal containing carbs, protein, and fat with grace and aplomb. Now, if food entered your small intestine in sequential order in its original form, I’d say the food combining folks are on to something. But food enters the small intestine after being churned and blended into chyme. It’s an unrecognizable mix of everything you just ate, not a layer of meat followed by a layer of potato followed by a layer of salad.

There are confounders, of course. If you have low stomach acid, your digestive flexibility may be impaired. If you do not chew your food, instead opting for the gulping method, your stomach will have to work harder to turn it into chyme, and it may fail at that task. If you’re coming off a no- or low-meat diet, your stomach may not be accustomed to producing the required amounts of acid. But that doesn’t mean a normal digestive system can’t handle a mixed meal.

There’s also a funny claim by food combiners that sounds reasonable on the surface yet falls apart under scrutiny: that the acidic environment required for protein digestion in the stomach impairs carbohydrate digestion by amylase, which requires a less acidic environment. It’s true that amylase requires a more alkaline environment. It’s also true that protein digestion requires an acidic environment, and that an acidic environment can impair amylase function. However, it’s also true that the release of acidic gastric juice in the stomach acts as a signal for the pancreas to begin secreting digestive enzymes, including amylase, into the small intestine. In fact, low stomach acid impedes this communication and results in lower levels of digestive enzymes, including amylase, in the small intestine. So, you see, a highly acidic stomach environment is actually essential for proper carbohydrate digestion. And, since eating meat tends to increase stomach acid, it might be even better to eat carbs with your meat.

There has been very little direct research into food combining. That study I mentioned up above, where researchers examined the effects of a “food combining diet” and a “balanced diet” and found that they both elicited similar effects on weight loss (with the normal diet causing an insignificantly greater amount of fat loss), is the only one to explicitly study food combining. While it found no effect on weight loss, it didn’t examine digestion. It may very well be that the food combiners experienced “better digestion,” which is tough to objectively measure, but we can’t say either way.

    Hi Mark,

    I like to blend fruit and vegetable smoothies in the morning in order to jump-start my greens (and other colors) intake for the day. Recently, I heard from a doctor that eating fruits and vegetables at the same time cancels out nutritional benefits and hurts digestion.

    Is there any merit to this “food combining” principle? What about with other foods, like meat?

    All the best,

    Daniel

This seems even sillier. Who was this doctor, and what exactly did he or she say? I can’t imagine a physiological mechanism that would make eating spinach and bananas at the same time cancel each other out. The only thing I can think of is that the fiber and oxalates in certain raw vegetables may bind to minerals like calcium, magnesium, and potassium and prevent their absorption and utilization by the body, but that effect doesn’t require food combining to occur. It could happen even if you ate a high-oxalate vegetable by itself, because it would simply bind the minerals present in the high-oxalate vegetable. It doesn’t only affect nutrients from other foods. Besides, as you might recall, all that food gets blended together in the stomach, effectively becoming one.

Debunking the Myth of Food Combining
One expert puts the persistent myth to rest once and for all.

By Tamara Duker Freuman | Contributor May 12, 2015, at 7:00 a.m.
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Debunking the Myth of Food Combining
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Senior adult touching his stomach because of digestion problems

Your ability to digest and absorb protein is completely independent of what else your body is digesting simultaneously. (iStockPhoto)

No matter how blatantly false and unsubstantiated they are, some Internet-driven health myths just refuse to die. The myth of "food combining," which purports that the body is unable to digest certain foods if they are eaten in the wrong combination, ranks high among these. Typically, proponents of food combining warn that fruits must be eaten alone, lest they "rot" and feed "harmful yeasts" in the body. They also contend that when meats are eaten with grains or starches, it results in the meat "putrefying" in the gut because various digestive factors required to process protein and carbohydrate – be they enzymes or pH levels – "neutralize" one another and prevent the digestion of both. The consequences of inappropriate food combining, proponents of the practice caution, may range from gas and bloating to bona fide disease.

Rotting fruits in your stomach? Putrefying meat in your gut? Sounds horrifying. And it would be, if any of these claims were remotely true. Fortunately, they are not.

The rationales employed to advocate for food combining reflect a profound misunderstanding of the basic biochemistry and physiology of human digestion, and are poor pseudo-science at best. They are also grounded in a gross underestimate of our digestive system's ability to multi-task. (To be clear, I understand that there are some ancient cultural traditions, like Ayurveda, in which food combining plays a prominent role. These traditions are spiritually based and reflect a more metaphysical approach to digestion, rather than one grounded in molecular biology. The discussion below is not intended to serve as a critique of or commentary on age-old cultural food practices based on such non-Western modalities.)

With this context in mind, it's time to break out that high school biology textbook and put this persistent myth of Western-style food combining to rest once and for all.

Food does not "rot" in your stomach, period. Rotting is defined as the decomposition of organic matter (your food, in this case) as the result of bacterial or fungal action. Your stomach has a pH of about 2.0 or less when fasted, which is more acidic than even vinegar and lemon juice. This renders the stomach an extremely inhospitable environment to microorganisms, which are generally unable to survive there. In other words, if bacteria or yeasts are going to encounter your food at some point in the digestive process, it most certainly won't be in your stomach – no matter how many hours that food sits there waiting to empty after a large, mixed meal.

There is only one circumstance under which you'd need to worry about food rotting in your stomach, and that is if you were to die mid-meal. But assuming you're not planning on doing so, go ahead and eat fruit with whatever else you please and don't give it a second thought.

Food combinations do not affect digestive system pH levels. Another argument made by food combining enthusiasts is that starch digestion supposedly reduces stomach acidity, which is an essential pre-requisite for a protein-digesting enzyme (or protease) called pepsin to work effectively. This, too, is a mischaracterization of digestive biochem 101.

For starters, this argument overstates the stomach's role in protein digestion. The stomach's main purpose is blending food so there's maximum surface area exposed to the multiple digestive enzymes it will encounter in the small intestine – where the vast majority of digestion takes place. Even people without stomachs – and therefore who lack the benefit of stomach's protein-digesting enzyme pepsin altogether – are able to digest and absorb protein just fine in their small bowels. The gastric enzyme pepsin is only even responsible for about 10 percent of protein digestion, anyway.

Gastric pH levels are controlled by the cells which line our stomachs as they secrete gastric acid throughout the digestive process; we do not rely on foods to control stomach acid levels. And while it's true that pepsin requires an acidic environment to be activated from its precursor form, starches do not neutralize the stomach's acidic pH more or less than any other food. An empty stomach is a very acid stomach, and while the anions in all food help neutralize the pH somewhat as we are fed, the stomach remains, on balance, acidic even when fed. (This explains why people who suffer from gastritis, ulcers or acid reflux often feel awful when hungry and much better after they've eaten.)

Similarly, the pancreas controls pH levels in the small intestine by secreting bicarbonate-rich pancreatic juice. At this point in the digestive process, pepsin's protein-digesting job is over, and a whole slew of additional enzymes are ready to take over. These enzymes are optimized to be activated and operational in the generally alkaline environment of the small intestine.

In other words, our body has its own mechanisms to control the pH levels of each discreet environment that are required for each set of digestive enzymes to work where they are released. (Elegant, no?) And no combination of foods we eat will override these independent mechanisms.

Your ability to digest and absorb protein is completely independent of what else your body is digesting simultaneously. The scientifically unsound rationales for food combining implicitly underestimate the human body's ability to do more than one thing at a time. Different enzymes digest different classes of nutrients, and all of them are released without regard to what you've eaten. Even if you're munching on pure sugar – cotton candy, for example – your body will still release protein and fat digesting enzymes as part of the digestive process.

As a mixed meal passes through the small intestine, each enzyme goes about its business simultaneously, and in so doing, the absorbable building blocks of our food are absorbed as they become available. Because each type of nutrient – protein, fat and sugar (which is the breakdown product of dietary starches) – has dedicated receptors or other nutrient-specific absorptive mechanisms, they need not compete with one another for absorption. Just as you can walk and chew gum at the same time, so can your gut can absorb meat and grains – or frankly, any combination of food – at the same time as well. Don't underestimate it!

By the time your meat would encounter enough bacteria to be able to "putrefy," it has long since been absorbed in the small intestine. Whether you believe it's healthy or ethical to eat animal protein or not, the fact remains that animal protein is highly, highly digestible. In other words, virtually all of the components of meat are easily and fully broken down into their building blocks and completely absorbed in the small intestine; they never even make it as far as the colon. (There's a reason you've probably seen corn kernels or sesame seeds in your poop, but never intact meat fibers!)

Why does this matter? Because your colon is where the highest concentration of bacteria resides, and it's the segment of the digestive tract where your "leftover" food spends the most time: anywhere from 10 to 64 hours in normal, healthy adults on average. In other words, if a food is going to be fermented by bacteria – which, incidentally, is a normal and frankly desirable process – it's going to happen in the colon. Most of what winds up in the colon are indigestible plant fibers – fruit and veggie skins, seed hulls, bran, resistant bean starches – as well as unabsorbed sugars, as would be the case for lactose intolerant people who eat lots of dairy foods.

Incidentally, this is why it's more accurate to refer to the process as "fermentation" rather than "putrefecation;" the latter term refers to the decomposition of animal flesh, which doesn't really happen in the gut for the reasons described above. Fermentation refers to the bacterial decomposition of carbohydrates, which is a more accurate term to describe your gut's goings-on. So anytime you encounter the term "putrefy" in a description of the digestive process, file it away under "scare tactic" rather than "scientific fact."

Intestinal gas is not a sign of poor digestion per se. Intestinal gas – or "farting" in common parlance – doesn't necessarily mean your digestive system isn't working well. All it may mean is that you've eaten a lot of indigestible foods. Intestinal gas is produced as a natural byproduct of bacterial fermentation of fiber and unabsorbed sugars. (In this category, you should include unabsorbable low-calorie sweeteners like sugar alcohols and added fibers like inulin.)

How much gas you produce is generally related to how much of this non-digestible material you eat, and what the critters your gut harbors in abundance are partial to snacking on. As a rule of thumb, people who follow more plant based diets are likely to experience more intestinal gas as well. In other words, farting is not pathological, nor is it a sign that something is necessarily amiss. It most certainly is not a sign that you've combined foods in an inappropriate way. I consider farting to be a side effect of healthy living.

To be sure, excessive flatulence, exceptionally foul-smelling flatulence or a sudden increase in the amount of flatulence you experience can be indicative of other health problems or malabsorption. In other words, lots of gas is not necessarily a sign of a problem … but it can be the sign of a problem, particularly if it's accompanied by other symptoms such as pain, a change in bowel patterns, unintentional weight loss or vitamin/mineral deficiencies. If this is the case, don't waste precious time on a bogus food combining regimen; get yourself to a qualified gastroenterologist.
First protein, then carbohydrates

When protein is the first thing to hit your stomach, your pancreas releases the hormone glucagon. Glucagon is the antagonist of insulin. It blocks insulin production which leads to lower insulin levels and stimulates fat burning, blocks fat synthesis and prevents the dreaded attacks of a ravenous appetite. Carbohydrates and proteins start a kind of fire burning in your body, a fire in which fat can be favourably burned.  We need to eat correct amounts of carbohydrates and proteins, for this fat to burn at all.  If we skip a meal, this fire cannot burn effectively, thus less fat is burned.  Similarly, if we eat smaller portions, a smaller fire is started, and again less fat can be burned.  Biochemically, this can be explained with the “citric acid cycle”, well-known in the scientific community.  One could also call it a fire cycle, in which fat is burned in the carbohydrate and protein fire.  This cycle proves that it really is proteins and carbohydrates in corresponding measures that form the basis of our nourishment. Without protein and carbohydrates, fat doesn’t have enough fuel.  This is why we need protein, fats and carbs together; if a part is missing, or even the whole meal, the fat fire will not burn as efficiently as it could.  With some people this fire seems to have gone out completely.

Begin each meal with one or two bites of the protein food first, so that the digestive enzymes that are necessary to break those proteins down can start working.  If carbohydrates are then consumed, insulin production is stimulated, but with a slight delay.  This results in a slower increase of insulin levels in the blood (and a slower onset of hunger). After that, the other parts of the meal can (but don’t have to) be mixed in.  The five hour pause begins exactly after the last bite has been eaten.

David Rowland talks about food combining in his text, Digestion: Inner Pathway to Health. He states, “Healthy youngsters have the amazing ability to digest just about anything they eat, in almost any combination, at any time of day. When digestive juices are at peak capacity, the entire digestive system works very efficiently…..At this enviable time of life, overeating or eating unwisely does not necessarily result in indigestion.” If food is eaten at five hour intervals and in the combinations described above, the digestive juices should have time to re-boot and start the cycle again at the next meal just like a healthy youngster. It is our current habits of the wrong amounts of the indigestible, processed, overcooked foods at the wrong times that are creating the dilemma of no digestive juices and the need to think that we need to eat less and more frequently and not combine certain foods. This is not based on scientific fact. Human digestion is innately able to handle an omnivorous diet with some cautions:

    Rowland recommends no proteins and/or fats (e.g. meat, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, milk, butter) with refined and concentrated sugars (e.g. commercial fruit juices, sweet and sour sauces, pastries, pies, cakes, soft drinks, candy and sweet liqueurs). This is true because these kinds of sugars are held in the digestion longer and fermentation produces putrefactive gases.
    Rowland also recommends fruits and fruit juices on an empty stomach, 30 minutes before a meal. However, the physiological response will be a rapid increase in blood sugar and insulin and this is not a good idea. By consuming a fruit with a low glycemic load at the end of the meal, the blood sugar delivery is slowed down to keep the necessary satiety up for five hours.
    Do not mix acid foods and starches. Eat a bite or two of the protein food first, as suggested above and then the carbohydrate food, followed by the acid food last. Citrus fruits or vinegar will inhibit the action of ptyalin, a starch-digesting enzyme which originates in salivary secretions. Ptyalin will not act in even a mildly acidic medium. Proper chewing assures mixing of foods with ptyalin. Once Ptyalin in the saliva has begun its job and the food is swallowed, gastric hydrochloric acid is secreted and continues the digestion.
    Do not mix refined sugars and starches. These sweets in the mouth also inhibit the formation of ptyalin. Refined sugars also ferment if delayed in the stomach. Such a delay can occur if the sweets in the mouth inhibit the production of ptyalin. This enzyme is necessary for the preparatory stages of starch digestion to trigger the movement on to the intestine where proper digestion of starches takes place. Do not drink sweetened drinks and eat breads at the same time.
    Do not drink milk. Man is the only creature which drinks milk beyond the age of weaning. Milk causes mucous in the colon, allergies and malabsorption of nutrients. Milk neutralizes the hydrochloric acid in the stomach and it should consequently, not be taken with any protein. The lesson is “don’t touch!”
    Select your proteins wisely.  Muscle meat is difficult to digest, even when combined properly with other foods. The best and most digestible source of protein is the egg, and it should be soft cooked — never fried, scrambled, or hard cooked.
    Separate the proteins in such a way that each type of protein only appears once per day, so that they are not mixed.  This is important in order to avoid superfluous, over-acidified amino acids.
    It is also important to eat only one kind of protein at each meal. The utilization capacity of dietary protein at each meal depends on the lowest fraction of essential amino acids. If a food like soybeans has all eight essential amino acids, methionine is in this food in the lowest proportion. The biological value of soybeans is 0.75, based on the biological value in this food of 0.6 of methionine. See chart below.
myth of the myth....
FOOD COMBINATIONS

When we eat what we eat has a lot to do with how much good we get from it.

The proper combination of foods has had much said on it and there has been some controversy. From all the known facts and informed opinions leads to one conclusion. Despite encountering resistance from those to whom the idea is a new one, those to whom eating bread and potatoes with meats seems so natural that they can't accept the thought that such a combination is a bad one. Many of our oldest habits are unsound and should be changed, not lightly or for a whim, but with convincing reason.

The theory of dietetics is based upon the hypothesis that inadequate absorption of food causes degeneration of tissue, and that for perfect metabolism do not combine foods high in starches with food high in proteins or fats in the same meal. It is, of course, impossible not to combine proteins and carbohydrates in the same meal. Practically all foods have some protein, some carbohydrate or some fat. However, a meal can be predominantly protein or predominantly carbohydrate.

The contention of these doctors is that a combination of high protein and high starches inhibits the absorption of all the nutritive factors of foods and results in an unnecessary burden upon the entire digestive apparatus.

It is well known that many illnesses are due to deficiencies of certain essential food factors--vitamins and minerals. These deficiencies produce degeneration of certain tissues, and this degeneration results in loss of resistance. Infections then invade us and produce disease. It is not enough to have the essential elements in the food we eat--they must actually be utilized by our bodies, they must be available to our tissues.

Thus, it is possible to eat large quantities of nutritious foods and get no benefit at all from them if we eat other foods at the same time that interfere with the proper digestion of vitamin and mineral bearing foods. If we eat cheese, rich in calcium, and at the time it reaches our small intestine, an alkaline digestive process is going on there, then very little (if any) of that calcium will be available to us. The calcium will make a chemical combination with the alkali and become non-absorbable, it will pass through and out of our body unused! No matter how much cheese we eat, we may still suffer from calcium deficiency--if the calcium is not absorbed. But if this food reaches the small intestine when an acid condition is present, much of the calcium will be utilized.

Obviously then, we must be certain that when we eat cheese, our small intestine will be acid and not alkaline. But How? The answer is clear and incontrovertible: by not eating any high carbohydrates at the same time.

When we eat carbohydrates - starches and sugars - our small intestine becomes alkaline, and a condition is created by which essential factors in other foods cannot be used. These same carbohydrates may interfere with the digestion of certain proteins in the stomach itself, and partially digested protein food actually becomes toxic material. Research has found that proteins may be split up by imperfect digestion into large protein molecules that may be absorbed into circulation as macro-molecules, which then initiate a cascade of immunologic reactions that can cause symptoms and disease. Instead of being split up into smaller molecules (amino acids) proteins eaten with carbohydrates may actually become toxic due to incomplete digestion, absorption to our tissues, such as, the allergy producing and poisonous amines.

These are two distinctly different types of digestion: an acid digestion for proteins (meat, fish, eggs, and cheese) and an alkaline digestion for carbohydrates (sugars and starches).

All physiologists agree that proteins are digested largely in the stomach , by the gastric juice, which is acid in reaction. One of the most important constituents of the gastric juice is hydrochloric acid. Another important ingredient of gastric juice is pepsin, which splits protein only in an acid medium. In other words the stomach must be acid in order to digest protein.

Carbohydrates, on the other hand, are not digested in the stomach, but are digested largely in the small intestine, principally by the pancreas secretions, which are alkaline. One of the most important constituents of this process is amylase, which splits the starch only in an alkaline medium. On their way through the stomach to the small intestine, the carbohydrates not only inhibit the secretion of hydrochloric acid in the stomach but also combine with some of the free hydrochloric acid there.

Fats follow a different course - they leave the stomach largely unchanged and upon entering the small intestine cause the gall bladder to empty bile into the small intestine. Bile emulsifies the fat and releases fatty acids, which can neutralize alkaline secretions in the small intestine. If these fatty acids are produced in the intestine while carbohydrates are being digested there, the alkaline secretions that are part of the carbohydrate digestion will be neutralized, and the action of the amylase will be inhibited. The undigested carbohydrates will be left free to ferment and produce gas.

Hence the following rule, which is not only logical and physiologically sound, but has been proved highly valuable by clinical observation:

RULE 1: Do not combine pure fats (butter, cream, bacon fat) with high starches (potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, cereal, sweets) at any one meal. If you're having primarily carbohydrates at a meal don't eat any fats. If you're having potatoes for lunch and a sweet dessert, don't put butter or sour cream on your potatoes. Likewise, if you're having fats don't eat any carbohydrates. If you're having bacon or eggs for breakfast, don't eat cereal or bread.

In the past many physicians have practiced this rule unconsciously, by advising patients to cut out all fats and high starches, or greatly restrict them. Obviously this produced good results, because patients who ate neither could not combine pure fats and high starches. But, with a restriction of fats there was always the serious danger of running into a deficiency of essential fat-soluble vitamins and fatty acids. Neither fats nor starches have to be eliminated or restricted on that basis in most cases. Simply eat them at different times.

Interesting evidence that the high starches and pure fats are incompatible came as a sidelight from the observations of Dr. Joslin in his famous diabetic clinic in Boston. He established the fact that if you cut down in high fats in diabetic diets, you can add more carbohydrates without getting any increase of sugar in the urine; without increasing insulin, if it is an insulin case.

Primitive man did not eat fats with carbohydrates. The food had fat in the animal meat; but in millions of years he never found lumps of pure fat attached to any vegetable (carbohydrate) foods. As he evolved he never needed to digest fats and starches at the same meal - he never developed such mechanism - and today we still haven't any.

Eat fats with meats, or with any other proteins - fish, eggs or cheese. In fact you must be sure to eat fats with meat, they not only can be combined but they must be combined.

One of the most important studies ever made on an exclusive high protein and fat diet, was conducted by explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Karsten Andersen. The purpose of the test was to demonstrate that man could live on a purely animal diet in our climate for an indefinite time, and in this case it was extended over a period of one full year. The conclusions reached by this study were: (a) It is possible for man to live for long periods on meat alone. (b) No ill effects whatever were recorded. (c) The diet, in order to be adequate had to contain large quantities of fat, some liver, and that lean meat alone was not tolerated. (d) The tissues of one animal contain everything that is essential for another animal, in this case, man.

Important clinical observations in this test support the thesis that there is greater absorption of foodstuffs when eaten in the proper combinations. There was much greater absorption, no gas and a distinct simplification of putrefactive organisms in the intestine. There was no constipation. A further important observation was that both men showed no increase in blood pressure, and one of them actually showed a decrease of 20mm in his systolic pressure.

This experience and its conclusion was that fats and proteins are an excellent combination. Since protein is digested largely in the stomach by acids, and since the pepsin only works in an acid medium, when pepsin and protein get into the small intestine, if fats are being digested there at the same time and they have liberated enough fatty acid to acidify the intestine and prolong the action of pepsin so that the digestion of the protein would be carried further. Fats, proteins, acids, they all go together and help each other. Associate in your mind: fats with proteins with acids.

It's a different story with carbohydrates. Carbohydrates (starches and sugars) are digested by alkalies. Naturally, if any acid is combined with carbohydrates it will tend to neutralize the alkaline digestive juices they need. The more acid present, the more alkaline secretion will be required to neutralize the acid before it can begin to digest the carbohydrates.

RULE 2: Don't combine acids and carbohydrates. Don't take buttermilk, orange juice, lemon juice, grapefruit juice or vinegar at any meal that also includes high starches and sugars.

Patients have often said they "can not take orange juice because it causes an acid stomach." On questioning they have had it at breakfast with cereals, toast or other carbohydrates. When told to take it alone or with protein foods only, they did so with great satisfaction and no bad effects.

If you have had trouble with orange juice, just try it with bacon and eggs only.

It should be remembered, of course, that many healthy people combine orange juice and starches without feeling any distress or evidence of impaired digestion. But the impairment goes on just the same! Every time a healthy person combines acids and starches he is making trouble for his digestion, he is getting less value from his foods, and he is hurting himself. The body has remarkable ability to adjust itself to the most terrible treatment. You have heard many people exclaim, "I have the digestion of a horse," or, "I could eat nails and it wouldn't hurt me." Fifteen years later some of these people are wrecks.

RULE 3: Do not combine high proteins (meat, fish, eggs or cheese) with high starches (potatoes, cereals, breads, sweets) at the same meal.

This prohibition is based not only on extensive clinical findings but also on sound physiology. Let us review the evidence. We know that proteins require acid for their digestion in the stomach. We know that carbohydrates require alkalies for their digestion in the small intestine.

Some years ago in a Mayo Clinic study on sugars two things were made clear:

1. Sugars inhibit the secretion of the hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

2. Sugars combine with the free hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

Both of these actions, by lessening the amount of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, interfere with the digestion of proteins, which must have that acid. Conversely, if proteins are being digested in the stomach and there is more acid there for the sugar to combine with (pick up and take along to the small intestine), then it will require just so much more alkaline secretion from the pancreas to neutralize the extra acid before it goes to work on the sugar. And the same is true of starches that are potential sugars. Not only do the sugars interfere with the digestion of the proteins, but the proteins make more difficult the digestion of the sugars!

In a study reported in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition (1936) a graph showed the acidity of the stomach contents at varying times from five subjects; first after protein meals, then after starch meals, then after a combined protein and starch meal. After the meals, the stomach contents of the protein meal were most acid, the starch meal least acid and the mixed meal half way between.

100 c.c. of the protein meal stomach contents required 60 c.c. of the alkaline solution to neutralize the free acid, and the graph was going up sharply.

100 c.c. of the starch meal contents required only 20 c.c. of the alkaline solution to neutralize the free acid and the graph was falling rapidly.

100 c.c. of the mixed meal stomach contents required 40 c.c. of the alkaline solution to neutralize its acid, and the graph was coming down very slowly.

This means that when the starch meal entered the small intestine comparatively little alkali would be required to neutralize the acid it had "picked up" in the stomach, but when the mixed meal reached the small intestine just twice as much alkaline pancreatic secretion would be needed to neutralize its acid before starch digestion could begin.

It is also clear that when the mixed meal was eaten, the proteins in it were being digested under difficult conditions. Instead of the normal acidity required, as shown by the all-protein meal, the acidity was reduced. The starches cut the acidity to one-third less! Just such conditions are most likely to produce imperfectly split up proteins - the large toxic protein molecule.

When high proteins and high carbohydrates are mixed, this investigation proves, there is not enough acid to digest the protein part readily, and too much acid to digest the starch readily.

Now the bad effects of this abuse are not always immediately apparent. The digestion of youth has abundant juices but improper food combination places an extra burden. If we deplete that abundance, dip into our reserve power of accommodation, by the time we reach mid adulthood impaired digestion is evident. This may not make itself known by distressing symptoms, but the digestion is nevertheless chemically impaired. This contributes to an increasing deficiency of food elements, and that, in turn, leads to more tissue degeneration. Minor disturbances are directly created, serious diseases are made more probable, and one more obstacle is raised to our being able to live a full, long life of glowing health. Those with perfect health at present, please take note.

Nearly all foods contain some starch elements and some protein elements. This fact has misled many doctors since it seems to indicate the mixture of starches and proteins is natural and therefore presumably healthful.

Meat does contain carbohydrate - but in a form unlike other carbohydrates - glycogen. This is a carbohydrate was eaten by the animal and then metabolized and stored in its muscles. Little digestion, if any, on our part is required to make this sugar ready to be absorbed - it is ready to be absorbed as soon as it is liberated from the protein of the meat.

Similarly, the amount of protein in starchy vegetables is small indeed in proportion, and because of its negligible quantity presents none of the difficulties in digestion that result from combining large quantities of high protein with high starches.

While man, as he evolved, developed two types of digestion for the types of food he ate, other animals confined themselves to one type of food and correspondingly one type of digestion. What do they show us?

Herbivorous animals, such as the cow or sheep, eating only vegetable food, have specialized on alkaline digestion. They are equipped to eat large quantities of food in proportion to their size, compared to humans. They all first alkalinize their food by prolonged chewing (their saliva being alkali), and they all rechew their food (chewing the cud). They all have a large sack or pouch where man has his tiny appendix.

Carnivorous animals, such as lions or wild dogs, have specialized acid digestion. They bolt their food in large pieces and chew it as little as possible, if at all. Actually the less they chew it, the better it is for them. An experimental study was carried out at the Mayo Clinic in which dogs were fed meat fed in large chunks or meat ground up, and the contents of the small intestine examined for the results of digestion. The big pieces were digested far better than the ground meat.

It is highly significant that meat-eating animals have no appendix or a very small one. Man, with his small appendix, seems on this basis to fit the meat-eating animals, rather than the herbivorous animals with their large pouches. Our inability to handle starches and sugars advantageously seems to stem from fundamental physical sources. This parallels the findings from which the Page Fundamental Diet plan was developed and has been borne out over several decades.

With the atrophy of our appendix, we lost our ability to get enough protein from vegetable sources to produce the bet possible physical man. We cannot chew our cud.

According to Goodheart, when we eat meat, we should chew it as little as possible; but when we, like herbivorous animals, eat vegetable food, we should, like them, chew well and thoroughly.

Americans are notoriously calcium-deficient. Not because we don't eat foods rich in calcium, but largely because we don't eat them in combination or form in which the calcium can be assimilated. Animals never eat high proteins and high carbohydrates at the same meal. They have excellent teeth, they have strong bones, and they take no calcium supplements.

As mentioned earlier improperly digested proteins which, instead of splitting up into their proper end-products, split up into intermediate or large protein molecules that are actually toxic. Some of these molecules are the substance called histamine, an irritant and vasodilator associated with allergies such hay fever, asthma, eczema, coryza, migraine headaches and general malaise. Goodheart observations gave him unmistakable indications that mixed diets (combinations of fats with starches or high proteins with high carbohydrates) produce more histamine in the system than the combinations he recommended.

Histaminase is a substance developed from the intestines of certain food animals, it has the property of splitting up histamine and thus destroying its toxic effect. It serves as a way of testing for histamine and for finding the extent bad food combinations produce toxic results. Goodheart found that when patients eat a mixed meal, they require more histaminase to control their symptoms than when they eat proteins only or carbohydrates only! He concluded that the mixed diet produced more histamine! Many allergic patients, in fact, lost their symptoms entirely by simply avoiding bad food combinations; they actually lost their hay fever or headaches by eating the kind of meals he recommended. However, as soon as they slipped and ate an unwise meal, back came the symptoms.

Although theoretical physiology, laboratory tests and other research confirm it, your own experience must be equally convincing for you.

Extracts from the adrenal gland controls allergic reactions. According to Goodheart, the adrenal gland takes care of the normal amount of histamine produced in the body; but when years of improper food habits have given us certain deficiencies and degeneration's, the combination of excess histamine and food deficiencies depletes the adrenal glands, the control is lost, allergic reactions appear more readily and we are well on our way to serious bodily degeneration. The evidence on histamine production alone was sufficient to justify his recommendations on the food combinations!

The Amino Acids

Not all proteins are of equal value in nutrition. Proteins vary widely in chemical composition and in their ability to satisfy the body's requirement of nitrogen; they vary in the degree to which they supply the amino acids essential for tissue building and tissue repair. Ten amino acids have been shown to be essential to human nutrition and must be consumed in the diet since they can not be manufactured by humans.

The value of any protein is measured by its ability to supply some or all of these essential amino acids. A protein is called complete if it supplies all of essential amino acids. Unfortunately few proteins are ideal and therefore the diet must be properly varied from not only the muscle tissue of animals but also the connective tissues and tissues from their organs, plus eggs. Eating in this manner will usually supply all the essential amino acids in sufficient quantity.

Goodheart's Dietary Rules for Health

The general rule is to be sure you eat enough of the vital food elements; and be sure you eat them in the right combinations.

1.       Eat all kinds of meats, fish, eggs, leafy vegetables, citrus fruits (and carbohydrates only if you must) as the safest way to avoid deficiencies.

2.       Do not combine pure fats (butter, cream or bacon) with high starches (potatoes, cereals, breads, cakes or sweets) in any one meal.

3.       Do not combine acids (citrus juice, vinegar, buttermilk) with high starches at any one meal.

4.       Do not combine high proteins (meats, fish eggs, cheese) with high starches at any one meal.

5.       Eat fats freely with proteins and acid solutions.

6.       Be sure you get enough of each essential nutritional element as follows:

          a. Meat, fish, fowl and eggs: One serving of each, or two servings of one per day with butter or other fat.

          b. Milk, buttermilk, or cheese: Two glasses of raw organic milk or buttermilk, or two and one-half ounces of cheese a day (or one glass of milk or buttermilk plus an ounce or more of cheese).

            c. Raw, low-starch fruits and raw green and yellow vegetables: Two servings a day or one large salad bowl a day.

          d. 1 or 2 tablespoonfuls of a plain cod liver oil, or its equivalent in other fish liver oils, or their concentrates in capsules. But if you use capsules, then be sure to take plenty butter fats and cream; your liver must have fats, if it is going to make bile for you.

          e. If you are a carbohydrate eater, supplement with yeast or other equivalent Vitamin B Complex. Other natural fats and oils may also be necessary as the fact remains that natural fats and oils are absolutely necessary in ample quantities for natural, healthy metabolism.

How quickly you feel noticeable improvement depends largely on how good your health is to begin with, and how bad your eating habits have been in the past.

1.       If you are now in fine health, have been eating plenty of protein, have no digestive troubles, no marked deficiencies, you may experience no detectable effects of this diet in one month's time. But you will later. If you will come around in ten years' time I can tell if you have been following perfect eating habits by just looking at you.

2.       If you now suffer from occasional flatulence, indigestion, "acidity" and gas, a month on this regimen with no cheating will work wonders. Your ailments will probably disappear.

3.       If you now feel "all right" but sluggish and under par, if you have been eating unwisely--too much carbohydrates and not enough of the other food factors - you will experience a new feeling of wellbeing and full health which perhaps you did not believe possible.

Be certain to eat enough high proteins without fear of eating too much unless you have no control over your appetite or have a specific medical condition that dictates otherwise. Although you may continue to exist on a relatively low protein intake, there is ample evidence that a more liberal intake favors the development of better physique and improvement of general health. Any excess of proteins, above your body's requirement for growth and repair of tissue is used as body heat and energy.