Food Combinations

Seemingly simple, yet the subject of food combinations is one worthy of the serious attention and study of every individual. Few persons recognize the importance of the subject, otherwise there would be greater simplicity in diet than we find existing at the present day. Most persons realize that certain foods do not go well together, for instance lemonade with milk, but this is only an instance of one of dozens of food incompatibilities. Every animal but man keeps to one diet; but woman has provided man with so much variety in this respect that he finds it almost an impossibility to keep within reasonable range of any ideal whatever - in so far as simplicity in the use of food is concerned. Nothing short of six to ten dishes seems to satisfy him, now, in this respect. Foods have different degrees of digestibility; all of them are digested in the mouth, to some extent at least, others in the stomach, still others in the intestines while again others may be digested in several different portions of the digestive tract. Flesh meats are digested in the stomach, fats and cane sugar in the intestines. Bearing these facts in mind, then, it will be readily perceived that a mixture of half a dozen different kinds of food, whose composition and digestibility are so widely different, are not calculated to result in anything but an unnatural condition of affairs in the stomach or other digestive organs. It is a principle practically amounting to a Law of Digestion that those foods should be eaten together which digest together. As previously referred to, the coarser vegetables and fruits are not a good combination. To more fully explain this idea of the incompatibility of food, let us suppose we have a diet of peaches and lettuce. Alone, the peaches are ready for almost immediate digestion and assimilation within a period of one-half to an hour at the utmost. The introduction of the lettuce puts an entirely different phase on the digestibility of the mixture of the two foods. Until the lettuce is digested, probably a matter of two or three hours, the digested products of the peach have to remain in the stomach, awaiting the slower digestion of the lettuce. The delay of any digested product, or in fact of any undigested product, in the system beyond a certain time, is bound to end in fermentation, decomposition, putrefaction, or marked food perversion of some kind, inducing in the stomach pronounced digestive disturbances. These disturbances are largely the result of germs, ferments, or microbes. If the digested products of each food were passed out of the stomach, separately, this perversion of food might be obviated. We know, however, that the pyloric orifice or lower end of the stomach does not open for the discharge of food until all the food products in it have been reduced or churned to a uniform mass, all prepared and ready to be passed along together for intestinal digestion. If two foods of different degrees of digestibility and assimilation are likely to produce disturbances, the conditions will be doubly accentuated where several different foods form the diet. Vegetables, owing to their woody structure, are particularly slow of digestion with some individuals. It is for this reason that, whether they be taken with fruits, or in fact with almost any other food combinations, they produce gastric disturbances. A purely vegetable dinner is more likely to prove digestible, than where the dinner be composed or several other foods in addition. Nuts, cereals, and fruits form a perfect food combination, all the better in it be one food, only, of each class. The addition or vegetables, to the foregoing, spoils the combination, with the possible exception of raw tomatoes and baked beets, or any of the digestible vegetables not possessing woody fibre. Vegetables approaching fruits in structure are not likely to be incompatible with other foods.

Dietetic Pitfalls

"Ill digestion makes unquiet meals."

DYSPEPTICS must learn that dyspepsia is cured, not by medicines, but only by following a certain specified line of diet.

The first essential is to learn and practice thorough mastication of the food, the quantity of which should always be moderate. Never hurry in eating and never eat when worried, tired or fatigued. If one is hurried in eating, it would be well to wait until a favorable opportunity presents itself. Better go without food entirely than eat hurriedly. If the teeth are imperfect the food should be selected and always be cut into small pieces. Zweiback, being a partially digested food, if slightly moistened, may be used by those who have bad teeth. The nut-butters and fruits will also be appropriate for the same class of persons, usually the aged. Women should avoid lacing. Compression of any of the internal organs paralyses to a greater or lesser degree the digestive functions.

Solids and liquids must be taken at separate times. Dry food induces thorough insalivation and is particularly indicated in cases of dilation of the stomach, in which there is always more or less want of tone and contractile power in its muscular coat, owing to defective innervation or long continued gastric catarrh.

For those whose digestive powers are weak, the food should always be taken in the dry form, and this means the exclusion of the miscellaneous compounds of fluid or semi-fluid foods, cereals of any kind so prepared, mushes with milk, cream, sugar, the syrups of preserved fruits, custards, or in fact fluids of any other kind. The moment one begins to mix and use any of these fluid or semi-fluid mixtures, the secretion of saliva practically ceases, as has been pointed out elsewhere. Dry foods alone excite the salivary glands to secretion. Moist food fails to do this more than to a very limited extent.

Foods taken without fluid of any kind, either immediately before, during, or immediately after meals, and with thorough mastication, is the salvation of most dyspeptics.

Flesh meats, digested as they are solely or nearly altogether in the stomach, are heavy of digestion, and cannot, under any circumstances, be recommended for dyspeptics.

Spices, hot sauces, vinegar, pickles, and all other irritating compounds used as appetizers should never be taken. Hunger is the best known appetizer, besides it is natural.

Experiments by Shafer, Pavlow and others seem to indicate that each class of food excites the secretion of a particular kind of gastric juice, exactly adapted to the digestion of the particular food in question.

The gastric juice produced by different food substances varies greatly in both quality and quantity. Milk produces the least active digestive fluid. Flesh-meats produce a strongly acid digestive fluid. Bread produces during a long period a moderately acid but powerfully digestive gastric juice. Represented numerically, the digestive value of the juice produced by the substances named, according to Pavlow, stands as follows: milk, 11; meat, 16; bread, 44.

Following along these lines it is found that farinaceous, or starchy foods, and proteid foods should not be taken at the same meal; in other words, the same character of food only should be introduced into the stomach at the same meal. For instance : bread and butter might be taken at breakfast, but no meat, fish or eggs. Luncheon might consist of eggs, fish or meat, but no bread, potatoes or other starchy food. Supper might consist of the same kind of food as at luncheon or at breakfast. Introducing the same kind of food into the stomach at each meal insures the completion of digestion.