AYURVEDA CORNER

Balance your Imbalanced Diet

Does your day start with a nice tall glass of a healthy banana milk shake or an exotic fruit salad accompanied with a glass of chilled milk? Grilled fish and yoghurt for lunch? If your answer is yes, then its alarm bells. Your health may be at risk!

How does one then, define a healthy balanced diet? It is the putting together of your daily intake of basic food components like proteins, vitamins, fats and carbohydrates. Correct, but, in addition it also requires evasion of incompatible combinations of certain foods. It is widely known that every food item has its own digestive chemistry, an individual heating or cooling energy and post-digestive effect. When two or three different food substances of different digestive chemistry, energy and post-digestive effect are combined together it is called “Incompatible Food Combination”.  

As per modern diet and nutrition science, Compatible Food Combination (CFC) refers to the combination of foods which are compatible with each other with respect to digestive chemistry. CFC is considered as a stepping stone to optimal nutrition because it allows the body to digest and utilize the nutrients in foods to their full extent. When two or more foods are consumed that require opposite conditions for digestion, the digestive process is severely compromised. For example, protein foods require a highly acidic environment for digestion while carbohydrates (starches, sugars and fruit) and fats require a more alkaline medium. When proteins and starches are combined, their stimulation to the digestive juices generates a conflict response and produces a medium that does not digest either of the foods adequately. This situation often leads to indigestion, gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort and poor absorption of nutrients. If carbohydrates are not digested they can ferment producing poisons such as carbon dioxide, acetic acid, lactic acid and alcohol. Undigested proteins have been linked to auto-immune diseases and allergies.

Apart from digestive chemistry incompatibility, various other types of food incompatibilities are also described in Ayurveda that lead to the onset of health conditions such as acidity, liver malfunction, colitis, skin ailments etc. The common incompatibilities are potency (fish and milk products together), processing or preparation (heating honey), dosing quantity (mixing honey and clarified butter in equal proportion), consumption time (consuming curd at night), and combination incompatibility (fruit-milk shakes/ fruit salads with milk).  In Ayurveda, this concept of food incompatibility is called “Virudhha Aahar” 

Practice compatible food combinations and stay healthy forever.