Fruit Before Noon: My Thoughts on Food Combining

When I mentioned to a friend that the first solid food of the day I typically consume is fruit (usually a banana or berries), she asked if I had heard about “food combining”, which involves always eating fruit on an empty stomach. Isn’t that curious.

Research led me to uncover that food combining originates from Ayurvedic medicine, which is a form of ancient, holistic medicine in India more than 3,000 years ago. Food combining is an eating protocol that aims to optimize our digestive system on the premise that certain foods pair well together while others do not. And to think about our digestive stack as a “train track” where food gets digested in the order of consumption, or a “highway” where you want your faster digesting foods to be at the front. By streamlining the way we intake concentrated food at a time, we can minimize bloat, gas, fatigue and other discomforts.

While food combining can become very complex and specific, simplicity is at its core. The gist of it organizes food into 4 broad categories: starches, proteins, fruits and vegetables. Our body’s digestive environment is different for the first 2 categories: starches (grains, root vegetables) require alkaline conditions versus proteins (meat, dairy) require acidic environments. When we eat a starch and protein together, which many traditional dishes do like pasta and meatballs or chicken and rice, we are asking our digestive system to be both acidic and alkaline at the same time. This is not possible.

Remember in high school chemistry when you learned about cations and anions combining to form neutral molecules? Effectively, that is what happens in your body. Amylase enzymes break down carbs while pepsin enzymes process proteins. Both have different pH levels so when you eat a combination of starch and protein, your digestive juices neutralize. Thereby, slowing digestion and causing a food “traffic jam” that can sit and ferment. By minimizing ingredients at each meal, we are simplifying our meals and may naturally eat less.

Other interesting food combining rules include:

· Only eat fruit by itself until noon. After waking up, the first thing you eat should ideally be ultra nourishing and easily digestible. Fruit is one of the most naturally detoxifying foods in its pure form and digested in 30 minutes on average. It contains not only fiber, vitamins and minerals, but also simple sugars that are quickly absorbed for energy.

· Pair non-starchy vegetables with starch OR protein. Non-starchy vegetables are limitless “neutral” foods that can complement and add volume to a macro. Other freebies include herbs, spices, oils, and fermented veggies like olives, pickles, kimchi and capers.

· Never mix different types of protein. Proteins are complex molecules made up of different combinations of hundreds or even thousands of amino acids bonded together in long chains. To dismantle and assimilate, it can take 4–6 hours for our bodies.

· Drink plenty of water but not during mealtime. This theorizes that water dilutes digestive juices and interferes with the proper breakdown of food and nutrient absorption. There is a lot of misinformation surrounding this and is not supported by research. Hydration is so essential to good health that the benefits of drinking water during meals would outweigh any negative effects.

· Wait 3–4 hours before switching categories. Eat foods in their digestible order from fast to slow throughout the day; ie. fruit in the morning, starch for lunch and protein for dinner.

There is still ongoing debate over the science behind food combining because our bodies are actually made to digest multiple macronutrients in the same meal. Food is blended together into chyme, and different enzymes are released starting in our mouths, into the stomach, then into small and large intestines — not all in one place. In addition, many foods are naturally a mix of starch, protein and/or fat. Quinoa is both a starch and protein, while eggs are rich in both protein and fat.

I think that the dietary improvement and weight loss results that come from food combining can be attributed to conscious decisions to eat more clean, whole, healthy foods. You already know this to be true. As author Michael Pollan recommends in his book In Defense of Food, “Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”