Food Combining, When Not to Eat, and Cooked Comfort, Healing & Transitional Foods
by Cassendre Xavier
Greetings!
I have had many conversations with friends recently about the following so I thought I'd share what I've learned since I seriously embarked upon the raw food path in 2005:
1) Food Combining
Our bodies process different foods differently, and the combinations with which we eat them significantly affects our digestive health and functions.
Fruit takes only 30 minutes to digest.
Everything else takes 4-6 hours to digest, with 6 being the fattiest content foods.
Starches are not to be mixed with proteins.
And fruit should always be eaten alone. (Fruit includes non-sweet fruits like tomatoes, avocadoes, and cucumbers.)
Melons take only 15 minutes to digest.
When you mix fruit and non-fruit, it all ferments in the stomach and creates indigestion.
One of the worst and most common things to do is eat fruit as dessert. If you wish to eat sweet fruit, eat it first, then wait 30 minutes before eating anything else.
Juices (no fiber) take only 15 minutest to digest. Fruit smoothies containing fiber take 30 minutes.
2) When Not To Eat
a) When you're not feeling like eating. Listen to your body. If you have little appetite, your body may want to fast, which is very healthy for it. If you're feeling ill, your body may need all its energy to focus on healing, and when it begins to need some of this energy from outside nutrients, it will give you cravings for exactly what it wants.
b) After dark. When the sun starts to set, that's when your body starts to wind down for the day. It doesn't want food to have to digest. It wants to start doing the self-healing and rebuilding it does when it rests. Sleep is one of the most self-healing and productive times for your body, and when it starts getting dark (sometimes as early as 3pm) is when your body starts telling you to slow down, retire for the evening, and go to sleep to let it do its thing, which it can only do during those hours.
3) Cooked Comfort, Healing & Transitional Foods
As you know, you don't have to be all raw to significantly benefit from what I like to call "The Living Plants and Where They Come From", you can experience a very high level of health, beauty and prosperity of all kinds by having 50% or more raw vegan content in your daily diet. In between, you can allow yourself to enjoy all kinds of other foods, including some of my favorites:
a) Short or long-grain brown rice.
b) Steamed or lightly boiled or sauteed vegetables.
c) Fowl, seafood, and lighter meats.
d) Adding raw food to cooked foods - such as generous amounts of fresh parsley, garlic, greens, and so forth.
May these assist your on your partially or raw food path for greater health, beauty, and prosperity of all kinds!
Cassendre Xavier trained at Arnold’s Way Raw Vegetarian Café & Education Center in Lansdale, PA, is the author Expanding Your Capacity for Joy: a Raw Vegan Comfort Book, Sourcebook & Journal, and the co/founder of support groups for raw foodists and survivors of abuse who also suffer from eating disorders. She has been an imperfectly practicing and increasingly healthier raw foodist since 2005. Cassendre hangs her internet hat yonder: http://cassEndrExavier.com but most of her raw community loves to be at The YouTubes yonder: http://tinyurl.com/CXYouTubeRaw.
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