Separate nutrition: misconceptions and facts

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Almost everyone has heard about the concept of food combining, pioneered by Herbert Shelton. Its essence is that supposedly, acidic gastric secretion is necessary for digesting protein food, while alkaline is needed for digesting carbohydrates.

Vegetables, fruits, and greens are digested in any medium, so they are compatible both with meat and fish, as well as with bread, cereals, potatoes, and other carbohydrates.

According to Shelton’s theory, due to the different digestive environments, proteins are not compatible with carbohydrates, and if consumed together, part of them remains undigested. It is claimed that consuming traditional mixed food supposedly inhibits the activity of digestive enzymes, disrupting digestion processes, causing fermentation or putrefaction of food, body intoxication, increased gas production, and metabolic disorders.

However, food combining, firstly, lacks scientific justification, and secondly, has certain harms, which will be discussed below.

Food combining is a pseudoscientific dietary concept based on the idea of food compatibility and incompatibility. Nutrition and physiology specialists deny the existence of scientific justification for this diet system.

The food combining system gained popularity thanks to the American naturopath Herbert M. Shelton and — to a lesser extent — the surgeon William Howard Hay.

In the course of evolution, nature did not create two separate digestive tracts for proteins and carbohydrates for humans — due to the impracticality of such — but instead created a single protein-carbohydrate digestive tract.

Acidic environment and stomach enzymes do not digest protein food in the stomach but only prepare it for subsequent digestion in the small intestine, which has an alkaline environment.

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Primary digestion of carbohydrates occurs in the same place as the primary digestion of proteins — in the small intestine. The presence of carbohydrates in the acidic environment of the stomach turns out to be a forced and useless step for this process.

In nature, there are no foods consisting only of proteins, fats, or carbohydrates. Fruits, greens, vegetables are the same carbohydrates and proteins combined together. Legumes are especially rich in protein.

From the perspective of food combining, all these products should be declared inadmissible. But scientific research shows that statements about the need for different digestive environments for protein and carbohydrate food are utterly incorrect.

Historical conditions of human development and the digestive system are such that nature could not provide ancient humans with any specific diet composition. Our ancestors at any given time had to eat any food, whether protein or carbohydrate, in any combination of proteins and carbohydrates.

Modern people have inherited this universality of the digestive system, which does not allow for any modifications, including those by Shelton. Humans are adapted to eating diverse, mixed foods, rather than separate types one by one.

At the same time, Shelton himself writes:

“Properly prepared diverse food guarantees better nutrition than monotonous food.”

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Food combining turns out to be non-physiological. The harm of food combining is obvious, as it disrupts the evolutionary protein-carbohydrate universality of the human digestive system, as discussed above.

It not only brings many inconveniences to people's lives but also, with systematic use, produces conditioned reflexes that ensure protein and carbohydrate meals at specific times with appropriate enzyme content in digestive juices. If the strict order in the diet regime is violated, the result can be severe.

In food combining, during protein meal times, carbohydrates cannot be consumed, and during carbohydrate meal times, proteins cannot be consumed. If the body is long accustomed to food combining for proteins and carbohydrates and this regime is once violated by regular mixed eating, the body may respond with a developed conditioned reflex.

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Herbert Shelton did not have a medical education. He was often arrested and fined for practicing medicine and lecturing on medical topics without a license. He developed the principles of food combining only based on theoretical assumptions.

The hypotheses underlying the food combining system do not agree with the data obtained over many years by medical science.

Shelton was ignorant in matters of gastroenterology and, apparently, having a very approximate understanding of the digestive tract's structure, did not know that neither in the stomach, nor in the duodenum, nor in the small intestine does separate digestion exist.

Does food combining affect weight loss and weight reduction? The answer to this question is given by a conducted study (link), which concludes the following:

The diet according to the principles of food combining underwent randomized clinical trials. For 6 weeks, one group of overweight patients ate separately, while the other received a regular balanced diet. The content of the main product categories in both diets was practically identical. At the end of the experiment, weight loss in both groups was equivalent, and there were no differences in blood glucose, cholesterol, and insulin levels. Waist and hip circumferences in both groups also decreased approximately equally.

Thus, scientists concluded that the additional separation of foods does not matter for weight loss. Patients managed to lose weight only by reducing the diet’s calorie content.

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Hollywood stars, many of whom were also his patients, played a significant role in the spread and popularization of Shelton's system. Thus, food combining became a business based on people’s nutritional ignorance.

In addition to refuting Herbert Shelton's food combining system, specialists point out that only a combination of different products best ensures the delivery of necessary nutrients to the body — with a wide variety of substances, it is easier for the body to "choose" the necessary ones. The processes of assimilation and metabolism of micro-components often sharply activate in the presence of other food substances.

The most favorable from the perspective of the "work" of all enzymes of pancreatic juice is the intake of maximally diverse food, containing optimal ratios of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, in which the body simultaneously receives both amino acids, fatty acids, and monosaccharides, i.e., building material and energy carriers. The intake of only "building material" without energy, and vice versa, energy without "building material," undoubtedly creates difficulties for the body.