Can you mix meat and fruit at same meal?

The concept of not eating meat with fruit comes from the theory of food combining, which promotes the eating of certain foods together. It is based on the theory that certain foods create an acid or alkaline environment in the stomach, and that it is harder to digest a food in an alkaline environment that normally requires an acidic environment and vice versa.

I'm not convinced by the food combining theories based simply on how the digestive process works.

So, let's look at the digestive process and see if we can unravel this one logically.

• Digestion of starches begins in the mouth with salivary amylase.  This continues until the starch has reached the stomach, where the amylase becomes inactive due to the acidic environment.  Complete digestion of carbohydrates does not occur until it has passed through the stomach and enters the small intestine  this is normal.
• Gastrin is stimulated at the commencement of a meal and this signals the stomach to secrete its gastric acid which includes Hydrochloric Acid, Pepsin, Intrinsic Factor and gastric lipase.  This is where your fats and proteins begin digesting.  No fruit busting enzymes are released at this time.  Even if you eat your fruit on its own, it still won't be digested until it gets to the small intestine, that's just how the body works.
• The stomach then churns these digested proteins and fats and partially digested starches and undigested fruits into a liquid called Chyme which is released over a 2 hour period into the small intestine. Chyme, along with Gastric acid has an acidic pH, so I'm not quite sure where food combiners get their theories on stomachs becoming alkaline.
• In the small intestine (around 2 hours after our meat and fruit meal) bile, pancreatic lipase pancreatic amylase and proteases digest our proteins, fats and carbohydrates into their single molecules including, but not exclusive to, glucose, amino acids, monoacylglycerols and free fatty acids. Sucrose in fruit is digested by the enzyme sucrase and produces fructose and glucose molecules.  Fructose in fruit passes through the whole digestive process unchanged where it enters the portal vein and heads off to the liver. The pancreatic secretion also includes bicarbonate which neutralises the acidic chyme, thus enabling enzymes to finish the digestive process.

To say that meat and fruit can't be digested together is true, but only because your body isn't going to digest them in the same place anyway its simply not set up to do this.  But to say that you aren't digesting properly by eating both meat and fruit together is simply untrue.

Your meat will be digested first in the stomach and then in the small intestine. Some of your fruit will be digested in the small intestine, with the rest of it not needing any digestion at all.  The stomach will be acidic and the small intestine will be more alkaline, which again is normal and all part of digesting all foods.

If something is causing excessive flatulence, bloating, cramping, reflux in the stomach there are other things to look at such as:

• Low digestive acid secretion (and this can be a result of a number of different causes)
• Swallowing excessive wind while eating
• Large meals
• Not chewing food properly
• Hiatal Hernia, candida, H Pylorus bacteria
• Smoking, drinking, pregnancy, obesity
• Lying down too soon after a meal
• Intolerences (lactose, fructose, gluten etc)

So go ahead enjoy your fruit and meat, no need to take apricot chicken, ham steaks with pineapple and pork with apple sauce off the menu just yet.  Just listen to your body.

Stacey
19 April 10