Written by John Immel, Asheville, NCAlthough our digestion can get used to some forbidden foods and combinations anything that aggravates doshas without expelling them is considered a bad food combination. Generally Vata has the most difficulty with poor food combining because they do not have enough fluids to adequately break them down. Proper food combining is important for anyone with a weakness, those recovering from an illness, or those wishing to cleanse or rejuvenate their bodies. One pot meals, preferably soups with a few simple ingredients, are generally the easiest to digest.

Reduce the Enzymes You Need to Digest

Every ingredient demands separate enzymes and attention from the gut. With simpler food combinations our body can focus on each ingredient without too much multi-tasking. Here are some general guidelines:

• Eat only up to three main ingredients in a meal.
• Avoid mixing animal with vegetable proteins such as beans.
• Eat proteins with leafy greens or rice only.
• Avoid eating fruits within two hours of a meal. They form a sour wine in the stomach.
• Avoid eating dairy, including cheese, within two hours of a meal. Milk curdles in the stomach if mixed with other foods.

Do You have a Traffic Jam in your Gut?

Eat foods that are easy to digest first, hard to digest last. For example, eat rice before lentils, steamed veggies before nuts. The gut holds onto foods until all the nutrition has been extracted. Every organism loves foods that are easy to digest including the bacteria in our gut. When stuck behind a traffic jam, food that is easy to digest ferments.

Avoid proteins with foods that suppress stomach acid

Fatty foods and acidic foods reduce gastric acid secretions, specifically inhibiting protein digestion. For this reason, avoid mixing lemons with meats or oranges and nuts. Since meat is often fatty, it should be eaten with bitters to counteract the digestion lulling properties of fats.

Cooking & Bad Food Combinations

The effects of bad food combination are less when foods are cooked together because their qualities blend together. A great example is a soup. For the same reason, carefully chewing poor food combinations may help you in situations where bad food combining is inevitable such as as restaurants. Avoid combining raw foods with cooked foods and fresh food with leftovers.

Common Bad Food Combinations to Avoid

• Sandwich - The modern sandwich is a newfangled invention by the earl of Sandwich, a British lord named John Mantague who was also a pathological gambler. They generally combine wheat mixed with meat, raw food (lettuce) with cooked food (meat), and fermented food (cheese, sour cream, vinegar) with fresh. These combinations are very difficult to digest. Click here for more about the history of the sandwich.
• Cheeseburger - Made with wheat, meat and dairy. Each of these ingredients are difficult to digest separately. Together they confound the stomach.
• Yogurt with fruit
• Burritos - Often contains vegetable with animal proteins (beans and meat). Mixes meats with dairy (sour cream and cheese). Contains too many ingredients in general. Mixes raw tomatoes with cooked.
• Pizza - Mixes wheat with cheese and tomatoes.
• Apples with peanut butter - Beans take a long time to digest. While the body churns away at the bean, the bacteria churn away at the fruit.
• Salad with tomatoes, cucumbers & raw mushrooms - Contains raw foods of different energetics mixed together.

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