You have probably heard of food combining. When you avoid eating foods from certain food groups together in the same meal. Like where you should not mix fruits (sugar) with fats, or carbohydrates with protein etc.
All this is to support an easy and stress free digestion without bloating and gas. Depending on how strong your digestion is and how sensitive your stomach and intestines are, you might already follow these guidelines somewhat or even pretty strict.
But if you are not aware of how food combining works or would just like a few simple rules to consider. Especially now when the holidays are approaching and lot of the activities are centered around food. I will give you just a few tips to remember. So here it is – food combining made simple.
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Follow what your digestion tells you
Bloating, gas, cramps? Then do consider how your meal is combined and in what quantities. If you have none of these problems? You are probably already paying attention to the food combining rules, or have a strong digestion, or are only eating smaller quantities of the “wrong” combinations.
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Avoid sugars and fat combined
Sugars we find in dried fruits – raisins, dates and agave syrup, coconut sugars, honey etc. As well as in fresh fruits, more in the sweet fruits – bananas, persimmons, melons etc.
And the fats – like coconut oil, nuts and nut butters, avocados, olives and other oils etc. Since it takes longer time for the fats to digest than for the sugary fruits, the sugars might ferment and there you have the bloating, gas etc. Avoid nut-raisin mixes, dates with almond butter, and adding nuts or nut butters etc. into your fruit smoothies.The same goes for your salads. Too much oil, nuts, avocados together with citrus wedges, berries, grapes etc. might be too much to handle for a smooth digestion. Especially if you have a lot of starchy veggies in there too.
Eating fruits on their own is a good rule to consider.
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It all depends on HOW MUCH
you eat – the quantity. A small handful trail mix might be quite OK for you, but a whole bag – oops! Not so good, probably. You be the judge. But when we are aware it is easier to avoid the pitfalls when it comes to digestion.
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Mono meals
Mono meals are obviously the easiest for our bodies to digest. Like only oranges for breakfast or only tomatoes for lunch (with greens J). It is clearly easier to digest a meal with 3-4 ingredients, than one with 8-10. Think of this when creating your salad. The fewer ingredients, the simpler to digest.
Plus, varying your raw food when it comes to taste is less of a problem. You will find so many more interesting flavors in your salads when they only contain a few ingredients (which you can change around as you like). You do not need 10 ingredients in the same meal for variety nutrition wise. Variety can still be there.
And flavor wise, with 10 or more ingredients, your raw food salad will taste more or less the same every time. How fun is that?
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Greens!
Greens, like in leafy greens, are wonderful, they go with everything – fats, protein, carbs and sugars. If you like to have both nuts, seeds and fatty dressing on your salad, and the tang of fruits and berries (raspberries, oranges, apples etc,) too, then adding more greens will help with digestion.
They are great with both fruits and fats/protein alike!
Even the large primates roll up there fruits in green leaves from the same tree the fruit came from!
I am ending with a quote from Victoria Boutenko, The Green Smoothie Queen:
“Greens are the primary food group that matches human nutritional needs most completely. “
-How about that – crunchy salad anyone?
Good luck creating meals your tummy will like!
Inspiration from article by Frederic Patenaude
