Summary: This week in our Ask the RD podcast, we’re focusing on food combining diets and whether or not there’s any science supporting those recommendations. We’ve received many questions about this topic so we’re going to cover the topic completely in today’s podcast. Laura and Kelsey will be addressing the following question in this podcast: 1. Is there any science behind the food combining diet? Links Discussed: Oil and salad study Stephan Guyenet on Food Reward Mark Sisson on Food Combining Paleologix Adaptagest Supplements TRANSCRIPT A big thank you to Amy Berger of tuitnutrition.com for the transcription of this episode. LAURA: Hi everyone. Welcome to the second episode of ask the RD. I’m Laura; I’m a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill studying public health and nutrition, and I’ll have my RD at the end of 2013. KELSEY: And I’m Kelsey, a registered dietitian specializing in whole food ancestral diets, and I’m working on my Master’s in nutrition and functional medicine. LAURA: Thanks for joining us for our second edition of Ask the RD. We’re really excited that this is a new feature on Chris’s website and we hope that you’ll enjoy learning about nutrition-related topics. And just as a reminder, as always, this is just general advice and should not be used in place of medical advice from a licensed professional. Are we ready to get started with our podcast, Kelsey? KELSEY: Sure! Okay, so I’m going to ask you this question. I know you’re going to do a of of talking about it but I’ll do some interjections here. So here we go. Is there any science behind food combining diets? LAURA: Okay, so first what I want to do is explain to everyone what a food combining diet is. It’s not something that everyone’s always familiar with, and honestly, being an RD, we don’t often learn about this kind of stuff in school, so I had to do a little research for myself about what a food combining diet is. So the basic principle behind a food combining diet is that different foods require different pH levels to digest properly, and they all have different transit times in the GI tract. And the belief is that 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. So people who recommend food combining diets usually have specific recommendations for what type of foods to eat at the same time, and which foods to eat separately. One example of one of the more original food combining diets is called the Hay Diet, and that one has three different types of food. They’re either acid, alkaline, or neutral. And this particular diet suggests that combining acid foods like meat, fish, and dairy, with alkaline foods like potatoes and rice, would lead to a buildup of toxins. Some people even suggest that the reason this would occur is because these foods require different types of enzymes that end up canceling each other out when used in the same meal. So, there are four common rules in food combining, depending on which food combining diet you’re looking at. Number one is to always eat fruit—and especially melons—on an empty stomach, or at least twenty minutes before eating anything else. Number two is to eat starches alone, or with cooked non-starchy vegetables. Number three is to eat meat, dairy, fish, and eggs, and other high-protein foods alone or with cooked non-starchy vegetables. And number four is to eat nuts, seeds, and dried fruit with raw vegetables. And these are all recommendations that aren’t really supported by any evidence, and most of them are actually myths. KELSEY: Right. And I have to say, I tried to find research on this stuff, and there’s really just nothing, to be honest,
