Raw Food Combining

To be truthful, I never put much thought into food combining when I entered a raw food diet. Maintaining a raw food lifestyle can be tough enough but adding food combining to the mix, for me, seems extreme.

When I first started raw, green leafy vegetables weren't a large part of my diet.  Insane, I know!  It took a few years before greens were a mandatory part of my day at every meal.
 
This WAS my typical weekly (2-3 times) salad:
1 head of lettuce
1 cucumber
1 carrot
handful sprouts
1 avocado
½ onion
1 jalapeno
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 handful flax or pumpkin seeds
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt

I always get a sweet tooth after my salads so I would top it off with a nut-based dessert of some sort or a piece of fruit.

Healthy????  At the time I thought so, I would get so full, tired and bloated after this meal but I thought it's raw so I am alright.

Fast forward to today's daily salad:
4-6 lettuce leaves
½ avocado
½ tablespoon hemp seeds
1 lemon juiced
1 tablespoon onion
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

I still have that sweet tooth, but this time I wait for an hour or so before I eat my dessert or fruit.

My serving bowl is more than half the size of the previous salad and I feel satisfied without the bloating.

The remaining ingredients from the previous salad is used to create a blended salad.  I hadn't changed the foods I eat, I just modified the way I eat them.   My digestive system thanks me.

I have gotten to the point where I naturally gravity to eating simple without worrying if I am perfectly food combining. Heck, I bet you, half the recipes I prepare for this site has broken the food combining rules.

I come from the school of thought that you should be mindful of your meal, chew your food slowly and enjoy whatever you are eating (raw or cooked). Stress, worry and guilt are bad for digestion.

Food combining is based on the theory that certain food combinations (protein, starch, fats) may be digested with greater ease and efficiency than others.

For example, melons should always be eating alone because they digest quicker than nuts, other fruits, starchy carbohydrates and greens.

Correct food combinations result in an immediate improvement in health by lightening the load of the digestive organ.

Here are a few of the food combing rules:
Never eat carbohydrate foods and acid foods at the same meal.
Never eat a concentrated protein and a concentrated carbohydrate at the same meal.
Never consume two concentrated proteins at the same meal.
Do not consume fats with proteins.
Do not eat acid fruits with proteins.
Do not consume starches and sugars together.
Eat but one concentrated starch at a meal.
Do not consume melons with any other foods.

Here is where you can find chart on the food categories and their digestive rates.

Cooked foods, raw food, food combining (and the billions of ways to eat), should be treated on a case-by-case basis. Feeding YOUR body isn’t a one-size-fits all sort of thing. What works for me doesn’t work for Man on the Raw. We personally feel that eating raw is the way to go for optimal health but we realize not everyone can go 100 % nor should they if they aren’t loving the lifestyle. Incorporating an abundance of fresh green leafy vegetables and fruits in your cooked diet will carry you far.

Listen to your body and see how you feel after a meal, if you feel great, smile and thank the powers that be. If you feel miserable after a meal, take note and avoid that combination again.