Combine Your Foods Right

You may be eating healthy but you could be combining wrong. Proper food combining is a way you can eat to decide how you will feel later. It can help you control your enormous energy output when it comes to how much you want to dedicate to digestion and how much you want to use for other things.

Proper food combining is a practice that was easily followed when food was organically grown everywhere, eaten fresh and in season by people that listened to their bodies. They also paid attention how animals foraged in the wild for eating tips.

For generations of people, many food combining habits became common know-how, until the Industrial Revolution turned farming into an agro-machine and food into a processed convenience.

Proper food combining can also offer you a way to control various health challenges such as inflammation, immune system strength, weight maintenance, muscle performance and more.

Learn how to combine your foods right to see if, in due time, it improves your quality of life.

Calm Your Bloating

Your body utilizes a variety of functions when it comes to digestion. Stomach acids and enzymes are able to grind through just about anything you consume. However, there could be repercussions, particularly indigestion and fatigue.

It turns out that combining proteins and starches causes the body to work longer and harder to break them down.

According to Laura Schoenfel, Registered Dietitian with a Master’s degree in Public Health from UNC Chapel Hill,

“Eating certain food combinations—specifically, protein-rich foods combined with carbohydrate-rich foods—these combinations are harder to digest, which supposedly decreases nutrient absorption, and also the combination of the foods supposedly would cause food to sit longer in the GI tract, which could promote gas, bloating, and the buildup of toxins from food not moving through quickly enough.”

Try that burger without the bun and fries. Replace with vegetables instead. Even though most are carbs they will be much easier to digest. Also, rice and beans are the only protein-carb combo your body can break down easier than others. Go for brown rice and try to soak your own beans (or at least rinse canned beans) for optimal absorption.

Anti-inflammatory Combos

There are a variety of foods that are believed to cause or prevent inflammation. Avoiding these culprits and combining the right choices could make all the difference when it comes to as joint health.

• Tomatoes and Avocados – These two tasty vegetables (ok, maybe they’re fruits) make a good one-two punch for keeping inflammation at bay. Natural News reports that, “A study from the Ohio State University showed that people who added avocado to their salsa mix were  absorbing more than 4x more lycopene. Eating foods rich in lycopene plays a role in cancer prevention. It can also help with inflammatory disease and can prevent cataracts.”

• Tart Cherry Juice and Bananas – The compounds in tart cherry juice have long been used to reduce or prevent inflammation. Add in bananas and the high potassium can nourish your muscles which may assist as an anti-inflammatory.

• Avoid Nightshade Combinations – Nightshades are a list of specific foods believed to possibly create adverse effects to joint health. The most prominent nightshades are white potatoes, tomatoes, most peppers and eggplant. Tomatoes eaten with avocados is okay as long as you do not eat before bed as nightshade combinations could be more detrimental during sleep. Yet if you decide to limit your nightshade intake, reducing your tomato intake, especially ketchup, is recommended.

Fight Oxidation

When your body is overrun with free radicals you can experience all sorts of adverse health effects. Combinations of antioxidant foods can help reduce free radicals better together than on their own.

Some excellent antioxidant combinations include:

• Red Wine and Fish – Although many combine their antioxidant strong, omega-3 fatty acid rich fish (like salmon) with white wine, switching to red wine offers a dual pronged antioxidant approach. Moderate amounts of red wine contain high antioxidant properties.
• Green Tea and Lemon Juice – These two powerful botanicals work hand-in-hand to optimize  antioxidant absorption. You can also replace green tea with yerba mate’, another antioxidant rich tea.
• Dark Greens and Chia – These are two superfoods that are capable of scrubbing your body clean of free radicals. Sauté kale, spinach or broccoli in garlic and olive oil then sprinkle with chia seeds for a superfood feast.

 

There are many ways you can combine your foods right. Treat your body better simply through ‘thought-out’ eating choices which could be the most potent medicine available.