What to eat with what - Food Combining - 673 words…

I’m tossing around what may be of interest in the area of food and health to blog about after a very likely food filled Thanksgiving weekend.  Fall is such a wonderful time for warm foods, comforting flavours and meaningful family gatherings.

When planning what to write, I try to think about what feels the most useful and applicable and least troublesome at certain times of the year.  When we get into fall and big holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, talking about trendy topics such as kale and intermittent fasting really does not seem to be the right thing to do.

What if we talked about digestion?  What if we talked about trying some ways to see if eating pretty much the same “mostly healthy” whole foods that you already eat but in different groupings, is something that helps you digest, metabolize and maybe lose weight, if that is something that is of interest to you.

There have been many articles, comments and testimonials on Keto, Paleo, Intermittent fasting, and so on.  These ways of eating are not new, but they’ve been in the spotlight quite a bit lately, and they each can work well, for some people.  Not for all people.  There are reasons why each of these diets does not work well for everybody.

With Keto being a high fat way of eating, it can be great for some people.  However, if you have your gall bladder removed, or sluggish and weak digestion, as well as a few other health issues, this diet could cause some significant discomfort when trying to digest large amounts of fats. 

With intermittent fasting, challenges regarding blood sugar regulating needs to be addressed because if you do not properly produce insulin or release glucagon, your blood sugar levels could leave you in a tough spot. 

I’d like to explain a well known and somewhat different way of looking at macronutrients - fats, proteins and carbohydrates.  

It is called Food Combining.  What food combining does is it groups certain macronutrients to be eaten together and others to be eaten away from each other. 

Basically your foods are mainly still whole foods.  However, whole foods that contain sugars or digest into sugars, such as beans, highly starchy veggies and grains and fruits - those types of foods are not eaten with proteins or fats in a meal.  You can eat those starchy foods on their own, and just with non-starchy veggies.  For fruit, those are eaten totally on their own, on an empty stomach, 30 minutes before any meal. 

The idea is keep sugars and foods that break down into sugars away from proteins and fats which take longer to digest.

This separation of foods from meal to meal, keeping digestion to about 3 hours or more between meals, can significantly improve digestion and metabolism of foods, even if you have weak digestion to start with. 

Examples of eating proteins and fats together with non-starchy veggies would be chicken, cheese and broccoli.  Or eggs, feta and spinach.  No toast or rice or pasta with those protein and fat foods. 

Examples of eating starchy food meals would be veggies and rice with black bean chilli (no meat), veggies with whole grain pasta with a veggie tomato sauce, or quinoa with grilled zucchini and garlic.  Whole wheat pita with hummus and lettuce and tomato.

This type of food grouping could be something to think about if digestion has you puzzled.  Once digestion is back on track, many can introduce some cross over of foods and have it work better for them.  You’d have to see for yourself.

Digestion is the foundation of health as it is truly what breaks down our foods into nutrients that we use to build and repair our cells.  Getting digestion on track is well worth the time and effort.

You can find lots of information by searching for Food Combining and look for sources that focuses on whole foods. 

If your digestion has you concerned, please see your health care practitioner.

Have a great week.

Lisa.