Food combining: Why you might have been eating wrong your whole adult life
The science of what and how to eat
I can already imagine the contrasting human emotions and reactions to the title. A part of you might be enraged at the vain suggestion. Another part might scoff, convinced that you have been eating right your whole life. Yet, a final part might have the nagging feeling that something might be right here because the gut, more often than not, feels wrong.
For most of it, however, you might be convinced that combinations do not matter; eat anything you desire and the body will take care of the rest. This is why some of you will dismiss this piece outright while others might be intrigued and give this a read. For the latter half, and for myself, I write the science of food combining hoping to offer some help and insight.
You are not what you eat, you are what you digest
Your body is an incredible machine. There is no doubt that no matter what combination of foods you fill it with, your body will digest it. At least it will try.
No one is refraining you from eating any combination that you desire. You are an adult and if you want to eat cake for breakfast then that is your right as a semi-functioning human being to wolf down that creamy chocolatey dessert. I only implore you to consider what you eat because eating is not where the story of digestion ends, it is where it begins.
You can eat everything and anything you want but that is not what builds your health and wellbeing, it is what you digest. You are not what you eat but what you digest. That cake or the oats porridge you eat for breakfast will become you, for better or worse, depending on how well you digest it.
Your body will do its best to digest everything that you cram into it but it does not mean that it will succeed. It will sprint past a bowl of fruits but it will trudge through that chocolate dessert.
A 16-year-old can wolf down an overloaded pizza and wash it down with a thick chocolate shake and still want more food. A 50-year-old is more likely to throw up before even finishing the pizza. An athlete can assimilate the nutrition of a five-egg bacon omelet with a serving of prawn rice but you might struggle with even a three-egg scrambled and bread on the side. This is why it is important to consider what to eat and how to do it right.
Gestation digestion
Ayurveda believes that food takes as long as one month to be assimilated into the body and become ‘you.’ While I cannot vouch for this timeline, I know for certain and I am sure you do, all the food you eat eventually becomes you and food can take a day or two to show its effect on you.
Gas, bloating, indigestion, and uneasiness are some of the immediate symptoms and offer crude clues when you have gone overboard. There are, however, more subtle clues the body gives you over time. Greying hair, toxic belly fat, brittle nails, dulling skin, sagging eyes, slowing brain, and fading energy levels are all signs that your food is weighing you down. What should keep you alive is killing you from within.
Consider that you can be pre-diabetic for as long as 10 - 15 years before your choices reflect all that was bubbling within you. You can be gobbling down wrong food combinations for decades before it becomes apparent to you. Or maybe it already has and you simply cannot, and do not, want to stop.
Marginal utility
The reason you love to have a bit of everything rather than one thing at a meal is the same reason that the second bite of biryani does not feel as satisfying as the first one. The same reason why the third episode in your binge-watch does not hit the spot. Hello, marginal utility.
Marginal utility is the satisfaction you derive from consuming something and it tends to decrease (quite rapidly) with every successive unit of consumption. The second slice of that truffle pizza is never as good as the first one and never as enticing as the first spoonful of pasta.
You combine all these different foods because you are, quite naturally, trying to maximize your satisfaction (utility). You are only following your instinct for pleasure.
This is no reason to throw your hands in the air and succumb to your physical desires. I highlight the science behind it to allow you to understand that food is more than pleasure, utility is in the head and you are more than the sum of your basal self.
Food might be a source of pleasure but it is also a form of sustenance. Utility is a game of the mind and not a play of the body (I can attest to this because I ate the same dish 30 times in a row as part of a cleanse). You are more than the sum of your pleasures and higher than your baser instincts.
The Ayurvedic view
I would have liked to pen down different Eastern viewpoints on food combinations, but lacking the knowledge and the experience, I cover only the way I know. I would rather say less than scream out anything wrong.
Ayurveda, as it does in everything else, emphasizes simplicity in food. This is in stark contrast to our current culture of saturating ourselves with more flavors and foods as our bodies and senses can handle. Ayurveda believes in ‘sattvic’ i.e. simple food with as few ingredients as possible and its food combinations rules follow the same principles.
The picture below does a better job of highlighting the basic rules than I could hope so I will let the picture speak for itself. A rare case of a picture literally speaking a thousand words (or close to it)
The most likely thought to pop into your brain after reading this would be, “This is absurd, this is ridiculous; there is no way I can or will ever follow this.” I reacted the same way when I skimmed through this infographic. No fruits with your oats, no milkshakes, no cheese omelet, no yogurt with your dal kitchari, and no pizzas, to name a few. Try it; your mind will tell you it is difficult but your body will tell you it is right.
Fire
You might be thinking that you break these rules every day without any untoward effect and you might assume that these combinations are bogus and your digestion is prime. While your digestion might be prime, the only reason you can “cheat” every day is that you have been harnessing the power of the ultimate food alchemist.
It has set us apart from all other species on the planet. It has allowed us to tinker with the chemistry of food and extract nutrients inaccessible to all other creatures. It has changed not only our bodies but also our minds. Fire.
Fire cooks the food making it not only easier to digest but also highly assimilable. Fire transforms even the most incompatible food combinations into some semblance of easier-to-digest foods as the properties and tendencies of the different foods are blended by its alchemical energy. Fire lets you cheat, now and then. Most of us, however, cheat every day multiple times in the day.
The “New-age view”
If you thought the ayurvedic view was strict and restricting, you are in for a rude shock. The ayurvedic view, for once, is far more lenient than the “western view”. While there is no consensual overarching new age view when it comes to food combination, they all agree on a few things:
There are four broad groups of foods:
Proteins and fats
Starchy or high carbohydrate foods
Neutral foods
Fruits.Neutral foods can be combined with the first two groups but you can only have one group at a time i.e. do not mix your proteins (and fats) with your starches
Fruits should always be had on their own and ideally only one fruit at a time
Wait at least a few hours between every meal
Rules are meant to be bent not broken
I realize that all of it seems not only intimidating but nearly impossible to implement, which is why I have found my workaround for these rules.
It is always better to bend the rules if that means you will stick with them longer, rather than follow them in the absolute till one of the two, you or the rules, break.
I combine multiple items from one category except for animal protein (back when I wasn’t a vegan). I will happily gobble multiple fruits or polish off different starches. I will mix some nuts and seeds but NEVER combine multiple animal proteins. One animal protein is hard enough for the gut.
Neutral foods have no restrictions and so I will fill my plate with a lot of these nutrient powerhouses. Remember these are not to fill in your caloric gaps but rather to address your nutritional needs.
I always have fruits alone and ideally on an empty stomach as the first meal of the day.
I follow oil-free cooking so as not to mix starches with fat. Proteins do not require additional oil as they bring their own to the cooking party.
Allow sufficient time between meals to digest all the food and allow your mitigating motor complex (MMC) to kick in and sweep out all that remains from your feeding fiesta. An optimal MMC is a solution to more than half of your digestive woes.
Nature has the answer
I could not, for the longest time, pick between the two and so I turned, as always, to the best health guide, nature. It didn’t take even a moment to realize that in her eyes, the “new-age” view is right.
Pick out any whole food and you will see that the answer has been in front of your eyes and on your tongue all along. Nature packs fats and proteins together and carbs on their own. With the sole exception of milk, no other food contains equal proportions of all three macronutrients (which tells us something intriguing about milk itself but that is the topic for another article)
Grains are rich in carbohydrates but low in protein and fats. Meats are laden with fats and proteins but lack carbohydrates. Nuts and seeds are protein and fat powerhouses but are deficient in carbs. Nature has designed foods this way. This is how we must eat, the natural way. Fats and proteins together. Carbs all on their own.
Sustainability == 80-20
No life-hack is complete without it incorporating some form of Pareto’s rule of 80-20 and the same holds for food combining. Stick with the food combining protocol 80% of the time and have a feeding frenzy for the rest of the 20. Let loose but just enough.
Do not fly off the handle and stuff your face with every food from every category. Sustainability is born from balance. Also remember, if you can rebel, your body can do so doubly well. You can completely let go and relish the Diwali of flavors on your tongue as long as you are willing to deal with the lethargy and indigestion that will fade into the days after.
Why it matters
All of this might sound good on paper (or screen?) and logical in theory; at least I hope it does otherwise my ranting is all for nothing. I understand that it is nearly impossible to follow through in practice. I understand and empathize. For me, however, there was one sole thought guiding my choice.
I can choose to feel good during my meals or feel good in between them. You can choose to be powered by your food or weighed down by it. You can choose to live for food or live for life; food builds life, it is not life.
If you cannot follow these combinations, follow your awareness. Bring your attention to how a particular combination makes you feel after your meals. Everyone is different and you are the best judge of yourself.
Focus on feeling good in between your meals rather than during them. Different flavors and foods might feel good at the moment but sooner or later you must come to realize that long-term gains require short-term sacrifice. That delayed gratification and not instant indulgence is the ultimate prize.
Eat to live because hacking food is the easiest way to hack life i.e. biohacking.