Im quite new to all this raw food living style... Ive read that its very important to combine correctly the food to be healthy and all...
What are these combinations exactly?

oh, that's a huge topic. you can google that for a ton of info. really, a ton. there are charts and books and wallet sized cards etc etc etc. youll be reading for days!

some people feel the need to food combine tapers off the longer you are raw, as your digestive strength grows. i think it's still a burden on the body to eat wacky combinations and that being able to "handle" it doesn't mean that it's not having a negative affect somewhere.
it's up to you though, as you go along you'll see what makes you feel best.

Is this similiar to the protein combining myth from the 1960s? Or something different?

I don't feel a need to combine anything; I think our bodies have the ability to "combine" something eaten 2 hours ago w/ another nutrient, if needed, from a food eaten 3 min. ago.

no, it's about optimum digestion, not about getting nutrients in the right combo. like sweet fruit doesn't mix with acids, etc. it's real, more real for some than for others but definitely not a myth.

Oh, I see. Thanks.

huh. coco--I found that I was much more able to combine foods early on, and now am very sensitive (one year raw this month!) to anything more complex than a few different fruits or veggies at once. was your experience the opposite?

either way, not a myth for sure. I almost don't have the taste for more than a couple things at once. although (to counter that), I recently had a meal at pure food and wine, and it was so entirely pleasurable, and in lovely company, that the feeling afterwards was more than welcomed. I just wouldn't want to feel so, during the day...when I know now how high my evergy CAN be.

I definitely keep proteins alone, if eaten at all, during the day. fruits I eat alone, or first if vegetables are to follow. I rarely eat fats, but if I do, they go second after veg and not with fruit. It's easy to get used to. I don't know much about the sweet/acid fruit thing. I tend to just go for 2 or 3 pieces of the same thing anyway, so I don't worry about it.

measure twice, cut once.

"In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." ~r.brautigan

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2008 05:07AM by shaine.

hmm, no i too prefer things simple. more than 5 ingredients is too much for me.
lots of long timers say that they can eat whatever they want as their digestive strength has increased over time. i still believe that it's a burden on the body to deal with so many things in the belly at once but that's just my opinion

At 50% raw, I loved green smoothies, and after two months of 100% raw, I reeeeaaaalllly have a hard time with blended food. I'm also slowly gravitating toward mono-eating, and meals less complex.

Basically, the idea behind food combining is, you want to eat things in order of how quickly they digest, from fastest to slowest. You don't want to eat half a cup of macadamia nuts, followed by an orange, because the macadamias are very rich and take much longer to digest. While your body would digest the nuts, the orange, in the meantime, would ferment, rot, get generally nasty, and affect the quality of blood going to your head.

In the beginning, I think it's easier just to focus on staying raw, because after you get through some initial adjustments, your body will start to tell you what combinations it likes and doesn't like. It sounds complicated at first, and like a lot to learn, but your body knows everything already. =) Fats were (sometimes still are ) also integral to overcoming my high-cal cooked food cravings--and you will learn with experience, bad combinations might not feel great, but SAD food feels much worse.

**You also have to think about the kind of fermentation that takes place when people have fruit for dessert after a multi-course cooked meal. That's a LOT of digestive action! O.O

i am thinking about this right now as i start introducing foods to the baby. with little i would mix some apple or pear with veg to make it sweeter, babies prefer sweet foods. he does like veggies now which i think is because i introduced them early on.
i wonder though about keeping her on a mono-diet for as long as possible. i suppose i could chew harder veg up for her or fine grate it on it's own instead of mixing it with the fruit. i wonder how it will affect her when she is eating mostly food.

Check out this link to learn about food combining.

For me food combining was less important when I first started raw, but I got to an all raw diet, and I was eating a lot of fruit, the food combining became more important to observe. If you don't observe these rules, you body will let you know that it didn't like your food combination by giving you gas, indigestion, bloating, or pain. So you really don't need to read the website above, you can just listen to your body when food digests well, and when it doesn't, remember what you did so you can avoid it in the future.

Frederic Patenuade's book "Raw Secrets" really simplifies food combining.
1. Do not combine fat with sugar
2. Do not combine acid with starch
3. Do not combine different types of fatty food within one meal.
[www.fredericpatenaude.com]

oh ok... its not as complited as i thought... Tough i have to be carefull

Was it Doug Graham who said that meals should be five ingredients or less and able to be prepared in no more than five minutes?

I read that somewhere...

Obviously, the healing hasn't reached my brain yet.

Lee