Choose WellThee: Foods that just don't go together

The other day at the Miami airport, I was at the Starbucks cafe waiting for my sandwich, courtesy running out of food due to delayed flights. As I waited, I struck up a conversation with a co-passenger. During our conversation she opened a sachet of honey and poured it into her tea, and chuckled about her small efforts to be healthy.

Despite all my effort to hold back unsolicited advice, I politely responded telling her that adding honey to hot liquids only makes it toxic. She was surprised; as you probably are as well. Anyway, that day I made a mental note to write about the not-so-compatible food combinations. And here we are.

Food in its simplest form is most nourishing. In our quest to either rustle up something quick and simple or try something exotic, we sometimes forget or overlook food compatibility with our bodies and digestive systems.

The list of compatible and non-compatible foods can be a bit overwhelming. My goal here is to give you some broad guidelines, and encourage you to take your journey deeper based on how your body responds and what your lifestyle and life stage permits.

But first, I will draw on Ayurveda (the world’s most sophisticated and powerful mind-body health systems dating a few thousand years and used in conjunction with Yoga) to provide some context.

Think of your digestive system as the furnace. Anything that you eat along with your foods should help the furnace burn/cook the food. In Ayurveda, "Agni" is the Sanskrit term for the “digestive fire” that breaks down the food and other things we ingest from the environment, assimilating what is useful, and eliminating the rest.
Also, every food has its own taste(rasa), a heating or cooling energy(virya) and a post digestive effect(vipaka). So while it is true that agni largely determines how well or poorly food is digested, food combinations are of great importance. When two or more foods having different taste, energy and post-digestive effect are combined, agni can become overloaded, inhibiting the enzyme system and resulting in the production of toxins. Yet these same foods if eaten separately, help stimulate agni, can be digested more quickly and get rid of toxins.

Here are some examples of foods that are bad combinations

1. Honey and heat – Technically heat is not a food but I needed to put this as number one because I see it being used so widely. If I had a penny for each time I saw someone adding honey to their tea or baking with honey.....I would be very very rich. Raw honey has many benefits however, when heated beyond 40 degrees centigrade, it takes long to digest and its molecules become like glue. The molecules then tend to adhere to mucous membranes in the digestive tract producing toxins, called ama. Ama is waste that arising out of improper digestion, that is then not discarded. It is considered to be the root cause of most ill health in Ayurveda with heated honey one of the most difficult forms to detoxify.

2. Fruit and Dairy- Fruit should be eaten by itself and not combined with anything in general, and last of all milk. Fresh fruit is light and very easy to digest and it also ferments very easily. If you eat fruit with food or after food that is heavier and more difficult to digest, it will stay in your belly too long and will over-digest. In short, it will turn the whole contents of your stomach into slightly fermented goo. You should particularly avoid eating fruit with (or just after) heavier foods like milk, cheese, yoghurt, meat, nuts and eggs. So banana or other fruit smoothies, mango lassi (a very popular indian drink during summers) are a no no if you want to be kind to your digestive system. However, if a parfait is something you just cannot do without, go for room temperature yogurt and add raisins instead of berries. Also the exception to this is dates and milk. Dates go well with milk.

3. Dairy and Seafood - Two types of food that should never be combined, according to Ayurveda, are dairy foods (including cream, cheeses, milk and yoghurt) with fish or seafood. This is because they have deeply antagonistic qualities. It simply means avoiding or tuna and cheese salads or sandwiches, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, seafood pizzas and yoghurt or cream sauces with fish or seafood pastas.

4. Liquids with food-If you remember my reference of the digestive system to a furnace, stated above, you can imagine how water can douse the fire and go against digestion. Liquid tends to pass away immediately into the intestines taking away all the digestive enzymes thus inhibiting the digestion. Liquids should be taken at least 20 minutes prior to meal and not immediately after or along with meal but can be taken one hour after meal. I don't think any of us sits down for a meal without water or a drink, whether it is at home or at a restaurant. Small sips of warm water during a meal might be ok but drinking extremely cold water during the meal is not good as the body uses too much effort to move it through the digestive tract, which should be saved to digest your meal.

5. Beans and Dairy or Beans and Seafood - I know, your taco nights just got a tad less interesting, case you can’t load up on black beans and cheese and sour cream all at the same time. You have my sympathy and empathy since mine did too. Beans are astringent and have a cold, dry, and heavy quality. Dairy is cold and heavy as well and so the two together can lead to a dousing effect of digestion. That’s why beans are prepared with heating spices to allow for optimal digestion. But when Raita or buttermilk is made with the right spices it can be a good accompaniment.

We can’t and don’t always eat perfect and so here are a few tips and workarounds that can help the digestive process in general. These would be beneficial to practice as part of your routine, but could be even more beneficial when you are consuming food that you know is going to be difficult to digest

1/2 a teaspoon of grated ginger with a pinch of rock salt before the meal stimulates the digestive system
Spices and herbs are added to food to make them more compatible or ease the powerful effect. For example the addition of cilantro can be cooling and help in digestion of spicy food
A cup of lassi (1/4 yogurt with two pinches of ginger and cumin powder with 1 cup of water) at the end of the meal helps aid digestion
When the ingredients are cooked together, they become more compatible and hence one pot stews can be very nourishing
Eat till you are 2/3 full. Imagine your stomach like a mixer grinder, if it is full, it really wouldn't be able to process the food inside it
Also, chew your food, about 20 chews per morsel so that the saliva gets mixed with the food and the food is well broken down before it enters the digestive tract

Incorporating these factors into everyday life is a work in progress even for me.

As a friend of mine who is a clinical ayurveda specialist says, food is hard to encapsulate in sound bytes. It all depends on a person’s Agni.The idea is to take small steps, observe, evaluate and improve. And do it with gratitude, joy and without anxiety, because only then can food actually benefit and nourish us.

For further reading, you can refer to the following links

https://www.ayurveda.com/pdf/food_combining.pdf

https://www.curejoy.com/content/food-combination/

https://www.banyanbotanicals.com/info/ayurvedic-living/living-ayurveda/diet/ayurvedic-food-combining/

Cheers!

Ayesha@Choose WellThee

Choose WellThee is about making choices that enhance your Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual wellness.