Episode 31: The Science Behind the Food Combining Diet
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the upbeat Dietitians podcast. Hello, guys. Welcome back. Today we are talking all about a phenomenon called food combining. Food combining is a not so new wellness culture diet that's been floating around, and we wanted to discuss why this approach is likely not a good fit for you. So we're going to go over what food combining is the claims around it. And we're also going to go over why those claims are generally pretty false. Yay, I like how you said phenomenon. That's so good to say. Good to say. I feel like it was constrained going. It's a phenomenon that's for sure. Yeah. So kind of starts off on what is food combining if you have not already heard of it before. So it's this really popular trend going around. And the wellness cultural gurus are all Florida, of course, like any trend. And essentially its claim is we shouldn't be eating certain foods either together or we should eat them separately. Essentially, I don't know if I just said the same thing. You should eat some foods together. Some shoes should be eaten separately. Yeah, essentially, to better the digestion and metabolism of different foods, especially with nutrient absorption. And in case some food combinations increase chances of gas bloating, toxin build up or if our food is not moving quickly enough throughout our digestive traffic. Yeah, we'll get into why that is something you don't want to happen. A little spoiler diarrhea is usually unwanted by most people. Yeah, there are a list of do's and don'ts. So, Emily, why don't I go over the dos? You can go over the don'ts. Okay, so some of the do's and there's a list of them. There's a lot. So buckle up. Always eat fruit on an empty stomach. Protein is to be paired with non starchy vegetables. Fats can be paired with non starchy vegetables as well. Carbohydrates can also be paired with non starchy vegetables. Always wait three to 4 hours between meals before switching categories and only consume dairy on an empty stomach. There are some wild rules of science, especially vegetables with everything, apparently. And then kind of the don't side of foods we should eat separately. Don't combine starches and protein. Don't mix fats and protein. Melon should be eaten alone and never paired with other fruits. Don't drink, gosh Dang it melon. Don't drink liquids with meals. Don't combine starches with acidic foods. Don't combine different types of protein and don't eat fruits or vegetables at the same time. It stresses me out thinking about all these things. It's exhausting, and I'm like, we'll go into it. Yeah. Yeah. So the big idea where these rules kind of stem from is like what Emily already said is we don't want to cause a traffic jam. We want to have our food go through us as quickly as possible, so we feel nice and light and airy. Their claim is that if you eat fast digesting fruit, such as, like fruit, for example, along with a slow digesting fruit like a protein, like maybe chicken breast. This can cause that traffic jam, and this can cause that digestive distress and toxic build up. I can't even say that without feeling like a fool. I know just a thought. This is already, like foreshadowing the entirety of this. I know. But if I just come into it thinking about, like, I have to get all my food through me. I would just drink coffee. Yeah. If they want everything to be digested quickly. Yeah. Just take a laxative. That's not medical advice right now, but there's a better way to go about this. The food combining route. Right. But kind of going into we already kind of talked about some of the different claims, but that's specifically the improving digestion to feel lighter and have more energy. I feel like it really depends on the types of foods you eat, not the volume, not even the volume of food. At times, there are no quantitative rules. It's food combination. And we don't want you to digest your food quickly because not only can that inhibit absorption of essential nutrients in different components of our GI tract, but also, you don't want to go who, like, five plus times a day. Well, even then, I don't know what the average amount actually is. This is a good time to plug Andy's blog post. We'll link a good blog post from a future guest you guys will be hearing from. Yeah, we don't want you going to the bathroom all the time, all day. I don't think you would want that either. You've got things to do and can't spend half your day on the toilet flame moving on where do I go from poo preventing toxic build up. Your Ti track is very smart, and it is doing everything in its power to not have any type of build up or anything like that. It naturally pushes through, takes the nutrients. Obviously, if you have some type of GI disease, absorption or metabolism might look a bit differently. But for the average human being, your stomach is not going to get too acidic or alcohol. Alkaline, alkaline, alcohol. Say alkalinic. I don't know if that's a word. I'm just making it worse. Your PH will not get messed up by food. Your body has a very not even from like, a acid based perspective. Like it has a strong like something strong. It does a good job of breaking down foods and making sure that nothing gets too wonky down in there. And also toxin build up is probably not going to be solved for food combination, and even then, it's different. Toxins that could potentially build up are from extreme cases of different diseases. Typically where you're in failure of some type of like or some organ is failing you. Yes, that's what I wanted to point out is that if you actually have toxic build up, don't do some food combining, like detox reset to get it fixed. Like, go to the hospital. Please seek urgent medical assistance at that time. Not pairing fruit and chicken breast together is not going to fix the problem. No, absolutely not. Okay. And then the last thing so many fun things that are these claims. The last one is promoting weight loss because most of these trends always have some component of weight loss. Any weight loss that can occur from this is not to be attributed to food pairing. There is no research behind food pairing and weight loss. Your body does not decide to release fat stores or gain fat stores based off of food pairing. It's not really involved with that at all. Maybe if you're going to the bathroom five plus times a day and you don't have anything in your GI tract, then you might lose some weight. But that's because there's nothing inside of you. Yeah, you'll lose some weight, but you're not going to lose fat from that. You're just going to lose some contents of your intestines, which adds up. I guess. I bet your goal great. You've accomplished something. Yes. Not a fun way to go with weight loss. No, there's better approaches. Okay, let's go over. We've kind of already talked a little bit. What's the specific about what is wrong with food combining? So first of all, there is no evidence to support this. In my research, I was finding this is like a really old concept, but as diets do, they just keep reinventing themselves and coming about new ways. Ketos and new Adkins, whatever. But there is not any evidence to support the claims that we've kind of listed off that Food. Compining is supposed to have. Let's talk digestion. Shall we let's go into digestion actually works. Anyone who's taken, like, a biochemical class or anatomy should know this. And I feel like we learned about digestion in 7th grade health class. So I don't know how these food combining health coaches are coming up with this. But anyway, so the first step of digestion happens in our mouth. We're chewing our food, and certain enzymes are released to help break down the food. So amylase is an enzyme that is released to break down carbs and lipase is an enzyme that is released to break down fats. And the protein enzyme comes later. So we'll get to that. So we chuchuchu the enzyme cocktail comes to be. And then that food bolus enters the stomach and gastric acid is released along with more enzymes. So now Pepsin enters the chat, which is the enzyme that breaks down protein. And I wanted to pause here and stop and say that all of these enzymes are working at the same time. So that is one of the flaws of food combining is that it kind of assumes that you can only break down one of these at a time and so you can combine them. It's going to slow things down. But our body is very good at having all these enzymes come to break down all three of those macronutrients. And so that is not a concern. Plus, most of the foods that we eat are composed of more than one macronutrient. Anyway, like, there are very few foods that are just composed of, like, just protein or just fat or just carbs. And so it would be very, very challenging for the body to digest food very inefficient if we could only do one macronutrient at a time. Just thinking about that. I was like for like, nuts, for example, nuts are both fat and approaching what's it going to do? Like, just separate it. You first. Exactly. You next. Now is time. Yeah. I'm choking on mystery would take so long. I think it takes twelve to 30 hours for our body to digest food, I think, is about the average time we take, like, 60 hours a week's process just to like, yeah, we would also be so bloated from holding all that food in our stomach and our intestines and talk about a traffic jam. This is really, like, a very good. This is one of our most graphic episodes. Right. If it took that long to metabolize natural nutrients by itself, you would be in so much pain. Or our bodies would probably look very different. True.
Participant #1:
I do wonder question, how would our bodies look if we metabolize one macronutrient at once and also, what order would it be decided in that? But if you put, like, a different order, would one prioritize over the other and suddenly switch? And then, right. Maybe we'd grow like three stomachs, like a cow. Maybe that's like a cow, one for each macrobootry. That's awesome. Maybe I'm going to draw that now I'm going to create them. This is what we look like just to show how dumb it would be. So bottom line, if you do food combining, you'll turn into a cow. I don't know what we kind of are drawing from that. Okay. But anyway, once the food is in the stomach, it then goes out of there into the small intestine. And then at this time, the pancreas releases digestive enzymes and bicarbonate to neutralize the stomach acid. So another point here is that our body at all times is trying to balance that PH, like Emily was saying, and this is another example of that. So our body is really good at that. You don't want to intentionally alchemy. I just had a stroke. Alkanalize or acidify your body. No, we don't want that. That will lead to many other problems. Yeah, we just keep going back to this point of you don't want your food going through your GI tract quickly, because the longer it takes, not only from having to go to the bathroom, like, a million times a day, but also from the perspective of satidity and, like, feeling full and hunger. Cute stuff like that, because the longer food takes to digest, the longer we feel full. So that's pretty common practice where dietitians will recommend adding, like, a protein or a fat with some carbs or at meals or snack times. Just so people feel Fuller for longer periods of time because those mechanics tend to be metabolized a bit slower. And if your macros are being all your foods being metabolized quickly, you're going to get hungry again really quickly. And it's perfectly fine to honor your hunger cues. But you'll probably from a physiological standpoint really quickly, and you'll have to be refilling. That, like, every hour or so, you'll be honoring those queues all day long. Yeah, it'll be like a fulltime job to go to the bathroom. Eat, go to the bathroom, eat, go. You won't have time for anything else. Yes, I think that's the biggest thing there. We talked about. The diarrhea and diarrhea is not fun. That is not our scientific opinion. That is our experience based on what I've heard. Yeah, that's the only thing up for debate in this entire episode. Since we don't have it face by site. We should have made a Disclaimer at the beginning that if you don't want to hear about poop, don't listen to this episode. Everyone poops. They need to know about this. Oh, I'm used to it. Everyone always like, patients will come into my office, my little exam room and be like, oh, I'm so embarrassed, but this is happening with my constipation or whatever. I'm like. I talk about this day in, day out. Literally. Every person we talk about, there's nothing. These four walls have not already heard about bowel movements, so it's fine. I want to talk about it. Yeah, I guess we should have put disclaimers like, don't eat or anything if you have, like, a sensitive stomach. Well, now is your warning. Not too late for you to turn back. It's true. We probably got most of it out
Participant #1:
anyway. Okay. Diarrhea. I think that's most of the diarrhea talk for the day, so you're lucky. It's good. You're good. I promise. Actually, I'm not going to promise, but let's hope. Okay. We haven't really touched on Bloating too much, but Bloating is another claim that food combining is sometimes claimed to help with Bloating is normal. I mean, most people experience Bloating to some degree, but that being said, if it is painful or frequent, this kind of goes back to that toxic build up thing where if you are having, like, painful, frequent bloating, don't do food combining or some short term fix to resolve that, like, go see your doctor. Something might be going on. There's a lot of different causes of Bloating that can be hopefully easily fixed, and you don't have to keep just doing Band Aid after bandaid to kind of cover it up. Yup, Yup. That's everything to add. Yup. Bottom line, seek at least a second opinion. True. Before you do something. Yeah, we're circling back around to ending on always a note of weight loss. And why the food combination or foods eaten separately will not really attribute to any weight loss progress. Like we got noted, I think the weight loss or weight management Tips episode has already come out by now. I think so. Yeah. So go listen to that, because we go a lot more in depth about dietitian approved ways to make sustainable changes that are realistic, but kind of giving you a bit of a summary related to food combination. Specifically, weight loss is mostly seen with eating more fruits and vegetables in general, eating less because you can't combine food. Yes, because if you're not combining food, then you're probably eating less calories. Exactly. And if you're being so hyper aware of food combination, you're probably eating a lot less calories overall, because you feel like you probably can't eat a lot, which I'm looking at those rules I wouldn't know what to eat and what to eat, so I probably wouldn't eat that much. I'd probably lose weight. And then Additionally, since there are so many rules about what you can combine, meals might seem a bit boring and bland, because I'm just going to go eat some chicken breasts by myself because I can't combine it with anything else. So you probably won't overeat, especially with food combining, because you might just get bored of eating one thing at a time and then waiting three to 4 hours to eat something else. I would probably eat a protein of fruit and maybe a vegetable each day. And like, one serving. Or maybe I probably would eat more because I'd be so hungry. Honestly, but there's so many rules of combination that you're probably once again going to be in a caloric deficit, and that will probably lead to weight loss. So, yeah, you don't need to do food combination food separation to lose weight. Yeah. Any weight loss, you see, is just because you're in a caloric deficit because of the reasons Emily just said it's not because of the food combining. Yeah. Sounds terrible to me. So many rules. So many rules. That's what I don't love. And with the weight loss, too. Yeah. If you do lose the weight of all these food rules, how long can you really stick to that when you go out to eat? True. What are you going to do? Are you just going to eat a side of broccoli and nothing else? I think one of the rules is you can't combine liquids in your meals. You can't even drink a hot water. Right. Or a water. Right. You can't even have water with your broccoli. That's a stupid rule. That's pretty stupid. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably. Yes. And if it sounds super restrictive, then it probably is. Yeah. We don't want to develop any disorienting habits. This is a no disorder eating habit development zone. Trying to think of the acronym that would be NDEZ
Participant #1:
no disorder eating development.
Participant #1:
I was going to say I didn't want this to be a no disordered eating zone because that's something we're both very passionate about, and we want to help people with. But we are not promoting disordered eating here. Restriction. There's a very high chance it could lead to disordered eating and a poor relationship with food because I wouldn't like eating food if there are all these rules, how strict as these are. And then you feel so guilty when you broke a rule and you're likely to break a rule and there's, like, 18 of them. Yeah. All right. Well, bottom line, you guys probably guessed it off the bat that we didn't love the idea of food combining, but it is a fad. It has strict rules. It's not sustainable for most lifestyles. Our digestive tract could handle a lot more than what this diet gives it credit for. It can break down multiple food groups at once. It's not going to get jammed up. And if it does get jammed up, go to the doctor. So you don't have a bowel obstruction. We encourage you to actually combine foods, especially if you are eating carbs to always pair those with protein, healthy fiber and fat to help you. Healthy fiber, healthy fat and fiber. I think all fiber. Healthy fiber. Anyway, pair your carbs with other foods, help you stay full and stabilize those blood sugars. Yeah, that's the only type of food combining here, but it's much more general, and it's just like it's essentially don't eat a simple car by itself. Yeah. And if you do, it's fine. Just don't. It do all the time. Yeah. So I don't really have anything to add to that. It's been fun talking about food combination and pooping. So it's time for a bonus question. And this week is something I have never heard of this question. I was so excited for this question. I'm glad you are, because I was just like, okay, but the question is, is the ocean a soup? There are so many ways we can break this down. Yeah. Okay. Well, I started by Googling soup definition. Let me read that off to you from Wikipedia. I'm ready. Well, here there's, like, three different definitions. The first one is a liquid dish typically made by boiling meat, fish or vegetables in stock or water. So I would say, Besides, the idea of the ocean is not really a dish for most people, and it's not usually boiling. That's what I see.
Participant #1:
Okay. The other definition is soup is a substance or mixture perceived to resemble soup in appearance or consistency. Wait. So the definition is the perception of the actual thing that's being defined. Okay, that one. We're next thing. And then this is Wikipedia definition. The other one came from the Oxford languages. Okay. Wikipedia says that soup is primarily liquid food. I guess that's the keyword. There generally served warm or hot that is made by combining ingredients of meat or vegetables with stock, milk or water. Hot soups are Additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a broth.
Participant #1:
I'm just really excited for this question, but it was very creative. And I was excited. It was I was thinking my first thought was no one's eating the ocean. So it's not like no one has a spoon out. But then I was like, okay, what is eating the ocean? And then I thought of like, whales. Oh, it's whale soup. Yeah. Because I thought of in finding Nemo when the whales or I think blue whales or probably other whales do this. Well, they filter out the krill and the liquid comes out through it. So they're like, filtering out the broth of their soup. But they're also swimming in their soup. I mean, if I had a pool full of soup, I would swim in it, too, give them the opportunity to do. So if it presented itself, I would do it. Yeah, but no one else could be in there because they'd be dirty and I'd be freaked out by the I'd have to be like a close friend or something. That's the only situation. I don't even know if I'd swim in a soup pool with you. No, I would be like, only me and my krill. It was like a really big pool where you could stand separate sides. And it was like, for a short time where I knew that your body parts wouldn't get to my body parts unless we sang for hours, in which case it probably get gross. Okay, this is going off topic. And this is a new question. But what type of soup would you want to swim in that's for next week? No, that's a good question. I mean, I wouldn't want to be too hot either. Like, a cold pea soup would be probably really a good texture to swim in or like any other soup. But, like, at room temperature, it depends. Are we swimming in it to eat it, or are we swimming in it for the way it feels? We're swimming in it because we're like a whale and we're living in the sea. Well, you at least need to swim in it and you have to eat it. Swim in it and eat it forever. We'll say for a short period of time. Okay. Because it'll get some it'll get bad. Probably. Yeah. Let's do, like a broth. Probably last longer. Okay. If I had to live in a soup for a short time that I could swim in and eat. Oh, my gosh. I got to just go with one of my favorite soup, which is like a loaded potato soup. Yeah, definitely potatoes. Every bacon there to Munch on. It'd be great. Yeah. The cheese would get really stringy and sticky, though, which I know you hate that's, like algae. Oh, algae. I was like, what did you say? Yes, it would be. Or like, see, we do just get caught up in it, so at least you could eat it. That's true. Okay. What soup would you live in for a short time that you could also eat? My biggest thing is I would want it to be a clear liquid in case I got stuck somewhere and I couldn't see safety as well. Yes, because this is completely obscure. But what if the ocean was soup and I was in the ocean and this shark snuck up on me, but I couldn't see. Granted, if I'm the ocean and the shark is sneaking up on me, there's nothing I can do about it, but at least with a clear liquid, then I'd see it true. I was thinking, just chicken. Noodle, because I can see through that pretty clearly. There's not a lot there's, like fun noodles. There's not a lot that would freak me out or cause any reaction, because if also, I did, like a dairy one. Imagine, I'm just like, yeah, if we just loaded potato, you couldn't come to that party. I would not go anywhere near. I would starve if I had to live and loaded potato soup. But the temperature was a very good point because I like my soup, like, scalding hot, but I don't like staying like a hot tub for a long period of time. Also. Same. So probably then a lukewarm chicken. Noodle soup. I think that tastes better than a lukewarm potato soup, though. That would get, like, all curdled. Oh, yeah. Temperature wise. Yours is definitely a better choice and safety wise, which I didn't consider. Well, I didn't say there were animals in it. I thought it was just you and me. In the pool, but I guess not. I got to make it the scenario that we had to survive. Like, if it was a pool, we could get out. That's true. Maybe you'd be like, Have you watched squid games? I'm just. No, I need to play. You need to watch it. What if there was a game where you had to live a huge sang of soup and there were animals in it that could attack you. But you also had to eat this. That would be gross, because there'd be a ton of people in the soup. But it was like a three day survival in soup with these scary animals. And you make your own raft out of food, though. So people are already trying to eat your raft. My God. Well, in that scenario, I don't know. I guess yours would be pretty good, too, because chicken is pretty sturdy. But I was thinking, like, noodles aren't as sturdy as a potato. No, that's probably sink. Yeah. Maybe in that case, French onion soup, because that's still clear. But, like, croutons can float. That's true. They get pretty soggy, though, after three days. That's true. That's when it would get exciting. When everyone's, like, boat is sinking, everyone's good at first on their croutons and they start getting soggy someone hire us to make a TV show that will be all these survival games. We just need, like, another podcast where it's us just thinking of different food survival games. I think we could take our bonus questions and literally turn those into an alternate podcast. Yes. Oh, yeah. We can do a whole episode just on that. Maybe we'll start doing, because that'd be fine if we did, like a fun one. Stay tuned. Yeah. Where we just debate outrageously. Like, if you survive in an ocean.
Participant #1:
Yes. Back to the initial question is the ocean of soup. I think if you turn it into one by putting it into a pool, I think the ocean might be souped to a whale, but not to us. I agree. So depends who you're asking. Yeah. Next time you see a whale ask what its thoughts are on this question. If you refer them to this podcast, we'll give you a shout out, a $5 Venmo. What do you want? Yeah. We'll give you some exclusive thing if you get a whales take on ocean soup. Okay. I don't have the words to describe what just happened. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. We hope you learned a little something. Let us know what diet you want us to debunk next, and we will gladly do so. And we will see you guys next week. All right, everyone, have a great rest of your day and we'll see you next time. Okay. Bye bye.
