The Complete Book of Food Combining: A New Approach to the Hay Diet and Healthy Eating - Review

The Complete Book of Food Combining: A New Approach to the Hay Diet and Healthy Eating by Jan Dries and Inge Dries (Rockport, MA: Element Books, 1998), 240 pp., $15.95 paperback, ISBN 1-86204-239-X.

This volume describes in detail the authors' eccentric program of "food combining"--a supposed way to achieve better health by eating only certain foods specified by a rigid formula. It tells you which food combinations are good, which are poor, and which are "problematical." It provides examples of recipes and menus that are considered appropriate. And, though it promotes the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, it is mostly just inaccurate, confusing, and downright difficult to follow.

The principles of food combining outlined here are based on the authors' own interpretation of digestive physiology. Supposedly, as each food is eaten, it forms a layer in the stomach, and each layer is then sequentially digested. The dominant nutrient in a food determines the type of digestive enzymes that will be secreted. To ensure adequate digestion, one must therefore consume foods of only one type of dominant nutrient. The authors contend that there are--contrary to basic nutrition textbooks--five different macronutrients in food: protein, fat, starch, sugar, and acid. To determine the dominant nutrient, one calculates the nutrient's weight as a percentage of a food's total weight rather than its caloric content. A food combining pentagon with the good and bad food combinations depicts which dominant nutrients are digested well together.

But the pentagon is based on a shaky foundation. In the opening chapter, the authors reject scientific evidence and offer anecdotal evidence--mostly their own--as the only information "that counts." For example, the authors note (incorrectly) that a fruit-only diet is well tolerated and nutritionally sound for cancer patients. The authors suggest that consumption of only one food in a diet would be the most appropriate for digestive problems, ignoring the fact that a variety of foods are required to ensure adequate micronutrient intake.

Although the book emphatically states that it is "up-to-date" in terms of modern physiology and nutrition, the majority of mechanisms described are inaccurate. Despite the authors' insistence, the pancreas does not secrete only one of three enzymes according to the dominant nutrient in a meal. Even the numbers used to illustrate how to calculate the dominant nutrient in a meal are incorrect. Behind the food-combining theory one will find elements of a calorie-restricted, low-fat, mostly vegetarian diet that is likely to account for any success it may have in aiding with digestion and weight control. The diet is complicated and unnecessarily restricted in macro- and micronutrients. Not one reference is in English. Not one referenced author can be found with a National Library of Medicine Medline search.

This is not a healthy combination.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Prometheus Books, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group