Introduction
What is 'food combining'? We've heard about the various fad diets that are out there, hidden in mainstream and non-mainstream society. But the practice of 'food combining' is altogether quite different. Though it, like other health food guru groups, encourage and support healthy eating - the eating of health-promoting foods - it also sees itself as something more. Something which is unlike other approaches to food. This article aims to find out what this "something" is, and compares its philosophy of its way of thinking with mainstream biology, by digger deeper.
Nutrition
Everyone knows that a balanced, healthy diet will encourage and support one's health and well-being. It's common-sense to avoid eating too much of the "bad foods" that are high in sugar, fat and carbohydrate. The result of not avoiding eating too many of these foods, of course, leads to obesity. With the excess sugar content in popular foods such as breakfast cereals, snacks, ready-meals, ready-made cakes, biscuits and soups, the Western diet is really just asking for trouble.
But food combining is something more than this common-sense notion of not eating too many of the bad guys. According to its way of thinking, we not only eat too much of the wrong food, but also eat too much in the wrong combinations. Hence why it's called food combining.
According to p.7 of the food combining bible, by Dries, Jan and Inge:
'The principle behind food combining can be stated very simply. Every food contains up to five nutrients: proteins, fats, sugars, starch and acids, in proportions that are specific to each particular food."
Already, some powerful words that make the book seem as if it is professional and scientific: by talking about the five constituents of food (proteins, fats, sugars, starch and acids), it appears as if the book is talking about something that is scientific and well-established. Dries continues:
'Some nutrients are inert or passive in the presence of other nutrients - but some react with others, and cause disruptions in the digestive process. The nutrient that is proportionately the greatest in quantity ... 'controls' the entire digestive process. To eat different types of food at random may result in the presence of more than one dominant nutrient, and the consequent reaction between conflicting dominants may cause anything from a mild flush to serious digestive problems and gastroenteric disorders.'
Skipping some pages, we reach p.112, where we learn the logic behind the food combining: 'In Nature, high-sugar foods do not contain much fat and vice versa. We should learn from this and avoid the fat-sugar combination, which means cutting down and finding alternatives for quite a few tasty treats...'. So it seems that because foods found in Nature that are high in sugar do not contain much fat, and vice versa, people should also adopt this way of thinking? But hang on a second before you chuck away those freshly made cakes, or that ice cream you'd fetch from the ice cream van earlier...
There are many problems with this mode of thinking. Firstly, food combining's principles are not founded on biological science, though it uses some of its terms in order to sound impressive and scientific. If sugars could not be digested with fats, the science of biology would have known about it already. The fact that biology does not mention that eating this food with that food can lead to digestive problems does lead to an interesting point: Food combining does not make sense in the knowledge of biology. Indeed, biology doesn't mention that eating foods with other foods can lead to problems - because that hasn't been discovered.
There appears to not be a scientific basis to not eating sugary foods with fatty foods. It merely uses the observation as "evidence" that fats and sugars should not be eaten together. Then it makes a point that because foods with a great deal of sugar are found in nature with a low concentration of sugar, this means that people shouldn't eat a lot of sugar with water. But why shouldn't they?Why should this supposed logic be extracted from an observation of nature? Has its claims been tested and rigorously repeated scientifically? The book does not list any references to scientific studies performed to test the claims of the food combining approach. Nor does it include any such studies in the main text. This is despite it saying, on p.163, Chapter 5, that 'Food-combining, as I have presented here, is dependably scientific.' In order to affirm this claim, the authors continue: 'I have investigated the entire subject thoroughly, judged the combinations critically and have drawn conclusions about them, basing my work at all times on the most up-to-date research.' But the authors' investigation, judgements and conclusions of the field of food combining is not enough to confirm that food combining is, by any means, "scientific". Also, what of the "most up-to-date research"?
It says a lot that there are no references to studies carried out to investigate scientifically the claims made of food combining proponents. If the authors have actually seen "most up-to-date research" regarding food combining, why haven't they included any, even as mere references at the back, in the book?
Perhaps they consider it not necessary - the book boasts a great deal about good nutrition, and includes an enormous amount about nutrition, as well as including, on p.160, advice regarding doing reflexology on oneself - there is a map on this page with a labelled diagram of the feet which has a map of the acupuncture points. Added to that, on p. 178, it has advice on doing regular exercise, such as Tai chi. It doesn't exactly look or sound "scientific" as a result.
In retrospect, then, the book seems to be a book on general nutrition and healthy lifestyle, combining this with its non-proved philosophy on food combining. The only "evidence" that food combining works, as the authors claim, is a list of 5 people who supposedly benefited from adopting the food combining principles and found that they helped with their ailments. But this evidence is anecdotal - they are case histories which are either fabricated or based on actual people, but this is not enough to prove that food combining does what it says on the tin. After all, a case history is not the same as a scientific experiment. Perhaps Jean's respiratory issues got better due to some other variable that Jean or the food combining practitioner hadn't noted, but for some reason they attributed the improvement due to Jean adopting the food combining principles. Or perhaps the story was completely fabricated to serve the purpose of persuading the reader to believe that there is "something" in food combining and that it actually works. Or maybe Jean's side of the story wasn't entirely correct - perhaps Jean wasn't telling the whole story, or maybe they made up the story for whatever reason.
Is it scientific? No. The only evidence given for its claims - that food combining helps people's ailments by not combining the "wrong food" with the "wrong food" - is case histories, not actual scientific experiments. Another "bad combination" is eating food rich in protein with a food rich in sugar. Why? Well, according to p.114: 'There are few foods rich in protein that naturally contain very much sugar.' Here we go again! Then it suggests: 'To maintain digestion, we should take our lead from Nature and avoid combining these two nutrients. For example, food combining authorities always advise avoiding ending a meal with a sweet dessert if, say, the previous main course has been packed full of protein-rich food.'
(Interestingly, no reference is made to these "food combining authorities".)What? I shouldn't eat the delicious, mouthwatering-ly sweet, chocolate Victoria Sponge with its heavenly sugary icing after that satisfyingly huge roast chicken? Just because you don't find in Nature many foods rich in protein that contain a lot of sugar? You don't normally come across ice creams in Nature. Does that mean I shouldn't eat ice creams?
Science vs. psuedoscience
Food-combining isn't science. Whereas the knowledge collected in science, including biology, is through rigorous experiments that have been replicated, as well as scientific study and investigation, food combining is a whole world away. Taking as evidence for its claims observations made of nature, alongside findings from supposed case studies, food combining is not scientific in the slightest.
What happens in digestion? As soon as a person starts chewing some food with their teeth, the food is broken down into smaller pieces of food. Thanks to the tongue and chewing motions in the mouth, the food is covered, like a spider wraps its prey in silk, with saliva, which is a bile-like substance that contains three enzymes, which start to work immediately on beginning the digestion of the food, before it is swallowed.
These enzymes are amylase, lipase and protease.
Enzymes are described as biological catalysts. This means that enzymes quicken the process of digestion of food, so that people don't die whilst the digestion takes place! In other words, if it weren't for enzymes, it would take so long for the human body to digest its food that the body would have died when it came to its next meal. How enzymes work is by having an 'active site' on which the molecules in food latch. For example, starch molecules would latch onto the active site of amylase, and the fat molecules latch onto the active site of lipase, and protein molecules latch onto the active side of protease.
Though the molecules themselves get broken down, the enzymes do not. However, enzymes are not exactly like Spider Man - they can become 'denatured' (which is where they stop working because they have changed shape as a result of different factors, leading to the starch molecules being unable to latch onto, like a key in the lock, the active site of amylase - the key being the starch molecule, and the lock being the amylase enzyme). Denaturing can occur due to the wrong pH in the environment - whether it be too acidic, or to alkaline. Usually, enzymes work best at body temperature - which is about 40 centigrade. But they can also become denatured due to other factors.
After the food is swallowed, it enters the food pipe (the oesophagus), where it enters the stomach, where the enzyme pepsin is found. Pepsin breaks down the proteins - which was what protease began to do in the saliva - into polypeptides, which are shorter-length amino acids. However, it takes a little longer, and further travelling, before the polypeptides become amino acids. The food enters other organs afterwards - the duodenum (which is the beginning of the small intestine), where more enzymes get to work on digesting the food, then the remainder of the small intestine, before in enters the large intestine, then the rectum, before the undigested food (the fibre - aka cellulose) is egested out. (This is just extremely brief biology here!)
Also, seeds contain enzymes, which are activated when the seed is wet. These start digesting the food stores in the seed, so that the seed has an immediate supply of energy for growth. (As an aside, it makes sense that sprouted seeds would be very good for one's health, as these are grown in water, and are eaten fresh, whilst the seedlings (or "sprouts") are still very young.) Anyway, the seed comprises starches, sugars and proteins. It contains amylase to digest the starch, as well as enzymes to break down the other two nutrients.
In comparison, food combining does not deal greatly with enzymes. Whereas in biology, these are found in the body together, which makes it logical that foods containing starches, proteins and sugars and fats can and should be eaten together, food combining just states that foods containing these should not be eaten together, ignoring the established fact that eating them together should be no problem, as the molecule of starch requires a different enzyme to the molecule of sugar and that, for example, amylase, protease and lipase as already stated are all found in the saliva (which is a pH7 - neutral). Food combining draws its conclusions about what the diet should be like based on observations in nature, and not on observations made in the laboratory that avoid other factors or variables coming into play. Food combining merely mentions enzymes as an aside, and does not iterate the previous two sentences. There is not a great deal about food combining in the book, as its main focus is on nutrition, exercise, healthy eating, and a plethora of recipes. However, there is sufficient to go on to draw a judgement.
But how does food combining suggest that by mixing the wrong foods with the wrong foods, it results in digestive issues? It does not explain why doing so causes such problems it claims to.
In conclusion, food combining provides a strict method of combating illness and digestive disorders through ignorance and lack of understanding of the basic biological principles of digestion and how it works. It does not, to repeat, include any findings from any studies that aim to test food combining, which leads the reader to conclude that there isn't any scientific verification of the authors' claims. The only references for food combining at the back of the book are (13) books on food combining and two websites. But references to any studies? None.
References
The food combining bible - by Dries, Jan & Dries, Inge
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