By James Lemire, M.D., Advanced Natural Wellness

February 12, 2014

• A new concept for healthy eating
• The fruity secret everyone should know
• But here’s an even better secret

A few weeks ago I introduced you to my 5 R’s for optimal health. I hope they are keeping you hale and hearty in these dark winter months!

One of the topics we discussed was food combining. In that article, we talked about the problem of combining protein with starches.

Today, I want to introduce a couple more tips you can use to make your body use the food you give it in the best way.

I understand that food combining might be a new concept for you. That’s okay. The important thing is that once you understand it, it can make all the difference in the world when it comes to your health.

Why? Because combining the wrong foods can make your body toxic. And a toxic body is an unhealthy body. It can lead to fatigue, weight gain, chronic inflammation, digestive issues and many other health problems.

And regrettably, the food combinations we eat here in the U.S. are very toxic. We don’t eat anything like our ancestors did. They would eat one or two foods at a time… whatever was readily available to them.

If they had fresh meat, they didn’t run off to look for berries. These sturdy people would feast on the bounty of meat before it spoiled.

If they didn’t have fresh meat… well… they went looking for berries!

But nowadays it’s an entirely different story. When we combine foods that are toxic, our food isn’t properly digested. And do you know what happens then?

Your body starts to absorb its own toxic waste before it can be eliminated! But you can avoid that with the tips I’ve included here…

You already know not to combine your proteins and starches. If you recall, these foods cause certain digestive acids and enzymes that literally cancel each other out. So your food isn’t properly digested.

Proteins also shouldn’t be eaten with sugar.

The sugar inhibits the secretion of hydrochloric acid. This stomach acid is necessary for the digestion of protein. So you can see that this combination would lead to problems, too.

All right then. What else can you do?

Don’t combine starches and sugars.

Well now, here’s another big mistake we make here in the U.S. We eat starches that are loaded with sugar. Waffles or pancakes covered in syrup. Toast or bread slathered with jelly. Donuts coated with glazes and sugar. French fries and soda pops.

These foods aren’t good for you in the first place because they put your body into an acidic state. And when you combine them, it makes matters even worse.

The sugar shuts down the enzyme (ptyalin) in your saliva that helps you digest starches. This impairs your digestive process and once again, if you’re not digesting the foods, it is left to rot in your gut.

Avoid eating fruits with proteins.

Most food combining strategies are easy to understand. This is the one that seems to trip my patients up. It’s just hard to understand why any kind of healthy, natural fruit would upset the digestive process.

Okay now. There is a simple explanation. It’s a secret everyone should know about…

As soon as fruit hits the gut it starts to ferment. And it only takes about 30 minutes for most fruits to pass through the stomach.

Proteins like meats, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, cheese, yogurt and beans take two or three hours to digest.

Can you see where the problem is? When you eat the two together, the fruit ends up staying in in your digestive tract while the meat is still being processed. And while the fruit hangs around waiting for the protein to process, it’s losing the nutrients – through decay – that you would get if you ate fruit by itself.

The general rule of thumb: Eat fruit no more than 30 minutes before a meal, and not less than 2 hours after. (This includes fruit juice!)

Now that you know about a few more foods you shouldn’t combine, what about ones that go well together?

It’s okay to eat proteins and fats together. And thank goodness for that, since most high protein foods contain fat! It is also all right to mix starches with fats.

But here’s the real secret…

The “key” to your diet should be non-starchy vegetables. This covers almost all vegetables except corn, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes and winter squash.

They go with absolutely everything!

And there are so many to choose from: Leafy greens, broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, carrots, bok choy, cabbage, celery, lettuces, green beans, garlic, onions, chives, turnips, sprouts, squash, zucchini, cucumber, beets, mushrooms, artichokes and more.

You can eat all of these fresh (organic, please!) vegetables with proteins, starches, fats and even fruits without any major concerns. I like eating about 75% of my vegetables in the raw form. But I’ll save the topic of raw vs. cooked for another day.

If you can’t choose organic for all your vegetables, make sure to you check out the most highly contaminated and the cleanest vegetables.