27: Food combinations and shades
?Another myth that just sits on the tip of my tongue. Google. "Food combinations". I am quoting the very first result in Lithuanian: "According to the food combining proponents, proteins are only digested in the acid environment, and carbohydrates - in the alkaline environment. Your body is not able to produce both acid and alkaline environments at the same time, so if one eats meat with potatoes or fish with rice, then the stomach will first digest carbohydrates. Meanwhile protein - meat or fish - will stay in the stomach until acid forms. Undigested food starts turning sour or rot“.
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Sigh.
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The digestion process is meant to break the food apart into sufficiently small parts - small enough for the body to absorb and use to rebuild tissues and produce energy (2).
Preparation for digestion starts as soon as one sees, smells, or thinks about the food. All parts of the digestive tract start producing chemicals to be used in the digestion process. More or less at the same time. continue reading, each one will be described below.
?Your mouth produces alkaline saliva; amylase breaks starch to simple carbohydrates (maltose and dextrose, we will come back to them in the small intestine), and lipase starts breaking the fats. We will meet lipase again in the pancreas. Saliva also contains haptocorrin which binds vitamin B12 to proteins so they can travel safely through the acid stomach. That's it. Mouth mixes everything, what breaks - breaks, and everything moves long. Nothing turns sour.
?Stomach knows how to produce only one thing - stomach acid (3). Acid (right, more specifically this is a mix of hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride and sodium chloride, with acidity level from 1,5 to 3,5 pH). The main task of the stomach acid is to denature (break apart) the proteins. Then pepsin, a stomach enzyme gets to work. Pepsin continues breaking proteins into amino acids. Stomach lipase does some of the work in breaking the fats. All other substances in the stomach say - well, we have nothing to do with that, please continue. Food stays parked in the stomach until it is broken apart into small enough bits. Moving along.
?Duodenum and its friends take heroic action to extinguish the stomach acid with alkaline substances and transfer food to the small intestine, where 95 per cent of all nutritional materials are absorbed into the blood. This happens about one hour after ingesting the food. The liver absorbs various toxic materials, uses amino acids to produce new proteins, regulates the level of glycogen (which is a source of quick energy), breaks apart carbohydrates, and produces cholesterol and fats. The pancreas breaks apart fats (the already mentioned lipase), and produces insulin (which is necessary for the ability to absorb carbohydrate products), and I will not even start listing the other enzymes. The gall bladder also joins in in breaking apart of the fats. Everything is broken down into even smaller bits and sent along. All together. I would also like to point out that the pH here is already neutral, and it does not change depending on what was eaten.
Moving along. On the way absorbing everything that is nutritious.
?The large intestine absorbs water and minerals, the last phases of breaking proteins and starch happen, and products are absorbed. The gut microflora produces some substances (like vitamin K and B7), and are also here absorbed here. And the rest is more or less straightforward.
So now, put your hand over your stomach and tell me, where and what waits and rots, because it was part of the wrong combination?
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#spoonfulofreason #psychology #foodcombinations #nutritionmyths ?
Photo: Pichara on Unsplash
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My name is Monika, I am a health and nutrition psychologist. I help to deal with daily and difficult questions about behaviour, thinking, and emotions. I write, give lectures, and provide psychological counselling. Book my session here: https://calendly.com/saukstasproto/psichologine-konsultacija