SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS: FOOD COMBINING
It’s not so much the food we eat that determines our health, it’s the food we manage to digest and absorb that counts. If food is not successfully absorbed from the digestive tract into the body proper it passes out of the body with the bowel movements of the following day.
Stress is the great inhibitor of digestion and absorption. Adrenalin shuts down the digestive tract by directing the blood away from it to the muscles, brain and eyes to prepare us for action. Food in the pipe at this time just sits there doing nothing save causing the abdomen to bloat and distend. (The digestive system is simply an 8.5 m (28 ft) pipe stretching from mouth to anus.)
Insidious malnutrition afflicts those who are too busy, committed, or anxious to sit down to eat and to relax after eating to let the food digest. The great irony here is that nutritious foods like wholemeal bread, nuts, seeds, fresh fruits and vegetables, with their high fibre and complex carbohydrate content, are harder to digest and absorb than the refined foods of white bread, tinned fruits, TV dinners, pies or potato crisps, that have a slower passage through the pipe and are more likely to yield their limited nutrients to absorption.
The fact that whole, natural foods require adequate rest and relaxation for their digestion is often missed by the hard-charging, health buff type who works forty to fifty hours per week, jogs three nights, plays competition sports such as squash or touch football and is always eating alfalfa sprouts, wheat grass, wholemeal bread, nuts and seeds on the go and yet feels tired all the time.
These types always seem to have a brother-in-law who ‘is a bit of an under-achiever’, doesn’t exercise, eats pies for lunch in the pub, is a bit over-weight, but seems energetic, enough and never catches the amount of colds and ‘flu that 1 he hard-charging health buff catches. In short, he annoys the hard-charging health buff who cannot understand why this brother-in-law seems to have a higher resistance to infection and a greater joie de vivre than the hard-charging health buff, who is so fit and has such regular bowels. The regular bowel movements are, unfortunately, where most of the hard-charger’s food intake ends up.
Often the hard-charger tries to rectify the situation by coming in late from a busy day and cooking a balanced nutritious meal. Being that it’s late and there is a busy day ahead, the hard-charger goes to bed with a full stomach, a practice that interferes with digestion as during sleep all body processes slow dramatically, including those of digestion and absorption. The hard-charger wakes next morning and cannot face breakfast as part of last night’s meal is still lying undigested in the stomach.
Young, New World civilisations have a lot to learn from the historically successful and well-established Old World civilisations. The Italians, for instance, have some of the sanest and most health-promoting eating habits of all. They have their main meal in the middle of the day and they take the afternoon off to relax, enjoy and digest it. Before their leisurely midday meal they often sip such appetisers as Campari and Vermouth to enhance the flow of their digestive juices in readiness for the food. With the main meal they eat bitter salads that help to maintain the acidity of their stomachs. Optimum stomach acidity is needed to ensure digestion of protein and absorption of minerals. They get maximum nutritional benefit from their food which gives them energy when they need it most, during the waking hours. Could this be one of the reasons Italy has contributed so much to the world of art, music, architecture, education and scientific thought?
Cultures that are predominantly Anglo Saxon-Celtic tend to have their main meal at the end of the day. Although this is not as wise as the Italian practice, it’s OK if the evening meal isn’t too big or eaten too late and if the rest of the evening is spent relaxing. However, watching drama and violence on TV does not constitute relaxation, for this gets the adrenalin levels up again and reduces digestion and absorption. Using the after-dinner hours to do the ironing, put on a load of washing, sit over a desk doing paperwork, phone customers, colleagues or employees to discuss work is not relaxing and will help to reduce your digestion. If you are one of these workaholic, hard-charging types, are guilty of these practices and habitually drive your car above the speed limit, you will find you will probably have a distended abdomen through the week that flattens out on the weekend—if you slow down. Many people think this see-sawing pot tummy is the result of Candida or overeating and so go on a strict, often crash diet to get rid of it. Such restrictive diets add to their already high stress levels and cause malnutrition.
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