***The following is an excerpt from my digital download PDF about Ayurveda and food combining. For this blog post, I made some changes and included a very simple list of Ayurveda food combining concepts. To learn more, check out my Etsy shop which includes a stylized Ayurvedic Food Combining PDF, Ayurveda Dosha Food Guide PDFs, and wellness checklists based on the concepts in The Elemental Woman book and Basic Ayurveda, The Elemental Woman Supplement Guide.
So who benefits from Ayurveda’s food-combining principles?
Those with sensitive digestive systems or those currently working towards a healthier digestive system may benefit from food combining. And although not considered the most important of Ayurvedic dietary changes to make, potentially everyone benefits from proper food combining, especially if they were previously eating a diet that included a plethora of these known combinations.
In Ayurveda, improper food combining contributes to ama. Ama is the junk that lines the inside of the digestive tract. When people cleanse, any cleanse, eliminating ama is the goal. After cleansing, many of us quickly return to eating foods that do not work for our unique systems, and without knowing it, we combine seemingly healthy foods that can complicate our energetic digestive process. And you do not need to do an official cleanse to lessen ama. Eating well in daily life allows your body to cleanse naturally.
Since food combining became popular on social media, many articles have popped up, saying there is no evidence that food combining is helpful. In early 2000, there was one study on food combining done monitoring weight loss, and I do not believe this study was on Ayurvedic food combining. The study did not yield weight loss results. In Ayurveda, you are making mental, physical, and spiritual changes, shifting your diet, taking herbs, noticing if you have ama, and what your overall symptoms are, and also looking at proper food combining to aid in maximizing your digestion. Western culture has never studied something like this before. And again, in Ayurveda, food combining has a more noticeable effect on those with sensitive systems or those with low “Digestive Fire”, as defined in The Elemental Woman book.
Many of the “bio-hacking” and other trending health tips that are popular today come from ancient Ayurveda. When studied—and when is the key here—these wellness concepts are proven accurate. Now, I say when researchers study them because, typically, these concepts are never researched. Often the sentence “not scientifically proven” is another way to say “not studied” or if something is studied, the applications and processes of the study itself are not how Eastern medicine would have used the concept. And that isn’t only true with Eastern medicine. “Not studied” is the case with physical medicine and manual therapy concepts. It was not “scientifically proven” that massage was doing anything to fascia. Fascia was literally thrown aside and not studied. Finally, after decades of massage therapists talking about the importance of fascia and how you can feel changes to the fascia when working on it, science started studying it. And guess what? It turns out fascia is holding all kinds of fascinating mysteries and yes, when loaded with manual touch, the cells of fascia change and heal. Movement is restored. All this to say, great Indian Ayurvedic teachers recommend food combining, and I would not quickly dismiss their knowledge. We should all be careful not to dismiss the traditional and long-held medicines of other cultures.
And please note that (in my opinion), the biggest food combining rule to notice is that surrounding dairy. Eating processed dairy is not healthy, it hinders our health, and it combines with nothing. Even with enzymes intact, Ayurveda suggests dairy be combined with very little.
Food Combining may seem complex, but it really is pretty simple. Look at the foods that go well together: grains, legumes, veggies, nuts, and seeds, and build simple healing meals from those. If you are eating other foods, first, notice your own digestive symptoms. Are you processing your food well? Are you absorbing nutrients well? Do you believe you have ama? Ask yourself how you think you may benefit from Ayurveda food combining.
What follows are just a few, simplifed Ayurveda Food Combining concepts. The available Ayurveda Food Combining Guide is more detailed
a) Beans and animal milk are known as indigestible combinations. Digestive issues after eating a large burrito, for example, are blamed on the beans. But could your system have better digested the beans if they had not been mixed with animal milk? A known ama-producing combination? And think, that poor combination is mixed with other foods, sauces, and flours and now you have a lot going on and your body is working hard to process all of this.
b) Pasteurized animal milk is missing the enzymes needed for digestion and assimilation. Pairing pasteurized animal milk with any food makes that meal more difficult to digest. The Elemental Woman book does not recommend the consumption of animal milk for health, environmental, and moral reasons. Animal milk used to be consumed in an entirely different way. Animal milk, as a liquid, was traditionally eaten alone and with its original enzymes intact. In other words raw. It should not be mixed with food or drunk cold. Even with those rules, animal milk was traditionally mixed with spices, such as cinnamon or cardamon, to aid the body in digesting it.
c) Mixing sour fruits or bananas with animal milk is considered especially ama-producing.
d) Acidic fruit, such as having a glass of orange juice with morning starch, aka cereal or oatmeal, causes a loss of digestive ability.
e) Fruit is amazingly healthy but should be eaten alone. Fruits make the perfect between-meal snack but, according to Ayurveda, should not be eaten alongside regular meals. This is especially true
with melons. Eat your watermelon as a hydrating between meal snack! In the PDF guide, I point out that you can add some healthy fat to fruit such as eating it with soaked nuts and seeds.
f) Astringent teas are best at the end of a meal or in-between meals. This includes black tea.
To simplify this information you can focus on what DOES combine well together. An easy list would be veggies, grains, herbs, spices, beans, nuts, and seeds. You can combine these foods in any form. You can shop for foods in these categories and combine them into a veggie burger, a pesto pasta dish, a healthy burrito, a hummus plate, or whatever you think of.
Peace & Love
Tara
*Author Tara Lee Clasen is a manual massage therapist specializing in women's health and pain conditions related to the pelvic floor, neck, jaw & shoulder. She also trained in clinical Ayurveda and has authored a book on Ayurveda called The Elemental Woman.
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