You talking about Fit for Life?
Fit for Life is a very well known food combining program that has been around for a very long time. I read the book myself and somewhat followed the plan back in the late 80's. I wasn't overly keen on it, but in theory it seemed all right. The only reason I looked into it at all was my room mate at the time was a naturopathic doctor (according to him anyways) or something along those lines. In any case he was a hard core vegetarian and followed the food combining plan to the letter. He claimed it turned his entire world around and gave him energy like he had never before experienced. I tried it and did notice some improvement, but it does require a good deal of planning your meals and eating because, as noted in other posts, the big part is separating starches and proteins, oh and fruit too.
The big deal was this. The break down of the food starches and proteins requires different acids or substances produced in the stomach. By eating the 2 food types together our stomach is forced to produce both an acid and a base, which work against each other, therefore slowing down the entire digestive process. It is suggested that digestion requires such a large amount of energy, that by prolonging the time we spend on digestion we are robbing vital energy from other aspects of our lives. The book repeatedly mentions the "wanting to have a nap after a huge dinner" example. The "ideal" method of food consumption in their eyes would be eating the starches and proteins 1 to 2 hours apart, giving the stomach time to move the material on into the intestines before adding another component. Theoretically by doing so, you would save tremendous amounts of energy which would then be used by other processes in your body, leading to detoxification, weight loss, etc.
Fruit on the other hand is to be eaten completely separately, as it is typically digested in 20 minutes max on its own, but can slow down both starch and protein digestion if combined with either.......
Long story short, maybe it does have some awesome energy saving benefits and is a good idea. But I just never had the desire to be on that kind of program which required me to turn each meal into a 2 hour process. My roomie would do it though. He would eat his veggies and tofu first, then have a baked potato an hour or so later.
I don't know, sounds interesting, but after that first little foray into the fit for life food combining system I never really heard much about it again. Couldn't have been doing all that much for people if it just disappeared...
I am sure if you googled fit for life you would find heaps on it though...
sirant
