Food combining

Traditional systems across the world share the intuition that some combinations of food sit better than others. Ayurveda has an extensive doctrine of viruddha ahara — incompatible foods. Western naturopathy has its own version, largely derived from the food-combining rules popularised by Herbert Shelton in the early twentieth century.

What the tradition says

• Eat fruit on its own, on an empty stomach, rather than at the end of a heavy meal.
• Melons especially should be eaten alone.
• Avoid combining milk with sour or salty foods, with fish, or with citrus.
• Do not mix large quantities of protein and starch in the same sitting.
• Curd is best taken at midday rather than at night.
• Do not drink large amounts of water during a meal.
• Do not reheat food repeatedly, and do not combine hot and cold together.

What I think is actually going on

The strict physiological theory behind Western food combining — that the stomach cannot digest protein and starch at once — does not hold up. The digestive system handles mixed meals perfectly well; that is what it evolved to do.

But several of these rules describe something real, just for different reasons than the tradition gives. Fruit eaten after a large meal ferments while it waits behind slower food, which is why it causes bloating. Milk with sour foods curdles it. Drinking a litre of water with your meal genuinely does dilute gastric acid. And curd at night sits poorly with many people.

My suggestion is to treat these as observations to test on yourself rather than laws. Try a rule for a fortnight and see whether you feel better. Your own digestion is more reliable evidence than either the tradition or the textbook.