Food combining is one of the most overlooked aspects of skin health and proper digestion. You could be eating all of the right foods, but if your food combinations are not optimal, you are probably not going to see the results that you are looking for. Take the info in this article and use it to simplify you meals and amplify their nutritional value.

Food combining techniques are invaluable when attempting to heal psoriasis, eczema, and dermatitis. By developing an understanding of what foods you can mix and at what time of the day you should be eating them, you will be taking a powerful step forward in terms of gut health.

Food Combining Principles 

• Avoid combining starches and protein
• Fruit is best eaten alone
• Vegetables go well with anything
• Pairing starches with starches is ok
• Pairing healthy fats with proteins or starches is ok depending on your diet approach
• Adopt timely eating practices
• Maintain targeted macronutrient ratios

 

What is food combining?

Food combining is the practice of eating foods in accordance with the digestive enzymes and acids that they require in order to be digested properly. Different food groups are going to require different enzymes, acids, and gastrointestinal environments. For instance, while proteins demand an acidic environment to digest, starches require an alkaline environment and therefor these two food groups should not be mixed.

The rules of food combining are in place to simplify the processes within your gut and ensure that you are getting the most nutrition out of your food as possible. If you eat a meal that mixes all sorts of different foods that are inherently digested differently, your body will become less efficient in processing and absorbing the nutrients within that meal.

Avoid combining proteins and starches

As a U.S citizen, I basically grew up on foods that go against this basic principle of food combining. Pizzas, burgers, hot dogs, etc… Virtually all of America’s favorite foods are a combination of proteins and starches. While I don’t think that disobeying this rule every once in a while will cause major issues, it is certainly important and is something that you should be taking into consideration.

The problem with combining your proteins with your starches is that your body requires a different set of enzymes to digest proteins than it does to digest starches. Protein requires an acidic environment and the digestive enzyme pepsin, while starches require an alkaline environment and the enzyme ptyalin.

When you eat proteins and starches at the same time, your body tries to release alkaline and acidic solutions simultaneously. This then confuses your digestion in a sense and you end up not digesting the protein or the starch in and efficient manner.

The key to healing your gut is to take the necessary steps to ensure proper digestion. One of the best ways to do this is to make things easy on your digestive system through learned food combining techniques. Eat your proteins and your starches at different times of the day.

Fruit is best eaten alone

While I do believe that fruit is one of the most effective healing foods that nature has to offer, it can cause a lot of problems for some people if they aren’t eating it on an empty stomach or are mixing them with other types of foods.

The reason why fruits are best digested alone or with other fruits is because they digest much quicker than just about anything else. For instance: If you eat a piece of meat for lunch (say a chicken breast salad), that meal is likely going to take around 3 hours to digest. Now, if you eat your fruit an hour or so after that meal, then that fruit is going to be stuck behind your previous meal and may begin to ferment and putrify in your gut. This is exactly what you are trying to avoid if you want to improve your digestive health.

Personally, I am guilty of going against this rule but I do so cautiously. For example: I really love making smoothies. My smoothies typically consist of fruits, some vegetables, and some nuts and/or seeds. When ingredients go through the process of a blender, they are pre-digested and it lightens the load for your digestive system. For this reason, I believe that smoothies are an exception to this rule in many cases..

I also love putting some fruit in my oatmeal and I feel as if my body reacts well to that as well. With that said, everyone is different and you should listen to your body. Just make sure to avoid eating fruit around Any bigger meals that are high in protein or fats.

Vegetables go well with anything

Eat as many vegetables as you can. Make juices, put leafy greens in your smoothies, have some broccoli with your dinner… Any time of the day is a good time for some veggies.

In my experience, vegetable consumption played a huge role in terms of my skin and overall health. The vital micronutrients that they contain are irreplaceable. So rather than trying to find the perfect time to consume them, just go ahead and eat them whenever you can and however you can.

Vegetables do digest faster than say proteins or starches but they do not have the sugar content that fruits have and therefor are not going to cause any of the digestive traffic jam issues that fruits may cause.

Pairing Starches with Starches is ok.

This is a food combining technique that is great for those of you who are following a high carb approach. Although mixing a starch with a protein may not work out well for your digestion, painting a starch with another starch should be just fine. Not to mention there are some tasty starch on starch combination you can experiment with.

I also want to make a quick note on beans in this section. Considering that beans are high in both protein and carbs, it can be somewhat confusing when trying to categorize them in terms of food combining. With that in mind, beans are generally considered to be a starch and are safe to pair with other starches.

A couple of my favorite starch on starch combos are a baked loaded sweet potato with quinoa and homemade pico de gallo and a chickpea and quinoa salad/burrito bowl with spinach or kale and some vegetables.

Pairing healthy fats with protein or starches is ok depending on your diet approach

This rule is rather tricky as you will find information that suggests that healthy fats should only be consumed with proteins and not starches and vice versa. According to my experiences, I believe that both of these food combinations can work depending on what kind of healing plan you are following.

One thing to keep in mind is that you want to be following either a high fat/low carb or a high carb/low fat regimen in order to heal your skin. You don’t necessarily have to go to the extremes such as completely plant based vegan or completely keto. But you do want to keep your fats over 50% of your caloric intake and your carbs under 30% if you are following a high fat plan or your carbs over 50% and your fats under 30% if you are following a high carb plan. I am going to touch a little more on this in the Macronutrient Rations section of this article.

So yes, fats can be paired with both proteins and starches. You just want to keep your Macronutrient ratios in mind when doing so. For instance, if you are following a high carb plan, you can make some fat/starch combos such as avocado toast or oatmeal with nuts. Just make sure you aren’t getting over 30% with your fats.

Honestly, if you are just eating moderate amount of nuts and avocados, you shouldn’t have to worry about your fats getting too high. But when you start adding oils like olive oil or coconut oil into the mix, you may start causing some problems. My take: If you are eating high carb, eat nuts (only if you react well to them) and avocados but avoid oils. If you are eating high fat, go ahead and enjoy all healthy fat sources but you obviously want to take a step back on consuming starches.

Adopt timely eating practices

What may be even more important than considering what foods should be eaten together, is considering what time of the day to eat those foods. By understanding how long a certain food group takes to digest and what the nutrients within that food group can do for your body/energy, you can essentially schedule your days to ensure optimal digestion.

For instance, considering that fruits take the shortest amount of time to digest, it is probably best that you start your days out with fruit. Or at least don’t eat your fruit until at least 3-4 hours after your last meal. On the other hand, proteins and fats take the longest to digest and should probably be consumed at the end of the day in order to avoid any backup in the GI tract.

I am currently following a moderately high fat/low carb approach and here is what a typical daily eating schedule looks like for me: For breakfast (around noon-1 pm) about an hour or so before I work out, I’ll have a fruit smoothie with some leafy greens and some nuts or seeds (the fats digest quicker when processed in a blender).Then for lunch I’ll have some ground beef or turkey with a few eggs, spinach, and an avocado. Then for dinner I’ll have some chicken legs, grass fed steak, salmon or something along those lines with broccoli or asparagus.

I also want to mention in this section that you should do your best to drink water away from your meals. Drinking water is one of the most important aspects of maintaining good health. Just don’t drink it on top of your foods as this can interrupt digestion. Try to schedule your water consumption for when you have an empty stomach or wait at least an hour or so after your last meal to start drinking water again.

Maintain targeted macronutrient ratios

This rule is more of an aerial view of the food combining principles. You certainly want to make sure that you are making the right food combinations, but you also want to make sure that your day as a whole is built around a planned macronutrient distribution structure.

I briefly touched on this in one of the previous sections. It has been my experience that people with skin disease are better off on either a high carb/low fat or a high fat/low carb approach. Some people may be able to see good results on say a 33% 33% 33% macro split, but I do not have as much experience with that plan.

If you are new to the idea of counting macros, this may be a little confusing to you at first. With that said, I can assure you it is not. Download some kind of calorie/macro counting app (I use FatSecret) and simply type your meals for the day into the app. The app will then calculate your macro split amongst other information.

If you are looking for some examples on how to formulate a day of macros on both a high carb and a high fat approach, click here to head over to my article on a full day of eating to heal skin disease naturally.

Take the information in this blog post and apply it to your diet approach and I am confident that you will see an improvement in your skin and overall health. It can be fun learning about and incorporating new healthy eating practices. I encourage you to make it as fun as possible. Just understand that there are rules that you should consider when enjoying these delicious and powerful health foods.