The principles of separate nutrition: the 10 most important

Octo­ber 03, 2019, 18:24

When you first encounter the con­cept of “sep­a­rate meals”, you might think that it is based on a sim­ple prin­ci­ple: do not eat all togeth­er. But this is a delu­sion. How to actu­al­ly build a diet accord­ing to such a sys­tem, the expert says.

Sep­a­rate nutri­tion is not a diet, rather it is a dietary con­cept. It is based on the idea of ​​com­pat­i­bil­i­ty or incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty of cer­tain prod­ucts. This nutri­tion­al sys­tem gained immense pop­u­lar­i­ty thanks to the Amer­i­can natur­opath of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Her­bert Shel­ton, and the Hol­ly­wood stars who were his patients.

What is sep­a­rate nutri­tion, what are its basic prin­ci­ples and how to build your menu based on its rec­om­men­da­tions? We asked an expert to talk about it.

All ques­tions are answered by a sports nutri­tion­ist-nutri­tion­ist Iry­na Storozhenko.

The main rule of sep­a­rate nutri­tion is to sep­a­rate foods that are digest­ed in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments. As you know, some foods need an acidic envi­ron­ment, while oth­ers need an alka­line one. And the whole secret is that they should not be mixed.

By adher­ing to cer­tain prin­ci­ples, you will eas­i­ly digest food, absorb more nutri­ents and not store excess, and you will be able to lose weight.

10 main principles of separate nutrition

1. We eat pro­tein and car­bo­hy­drates at dif­fer­ent times. That is, in one meal you can not eat fish with por­ridge, meat or cheese with bread, or eggs with pota­toes, etc.
2. Acids and starch — sep­a­rate­ly. For exam­ple, legumes, breads, pota­toes or bananas should not be eat­en togeth­er with cit­rus fruits and oth­er acidic fruits.
3. Sep­a­rate acids from pro­teins. Also, do not com­bine acidic foods, includ­ing toma­toes, with meat, fish, cheese, eggs.
4. Pro­teins are not friends with fats. If you decide to eat fish, eggs or meat, refrain from using but­ter or veg­etable oil.
5. Sep­a­rate starchy and sug­ary foods. Jam or hon­ey, sug­ar grat­ed with fruit will not be a good fill­ing for pies. Avoid eat­ing por­ridge or bread with sweets.
6. One kind of pro­tein at a time. Do not com­bine pro­tein foods — it is opti­mal to eat one high-pro­tein food at one meal. The body absorbs dif­fer­ent pro­tein prod­ucts in dif­fer­ent ways, so by com­bin­ing, you com­pli­cate your diges­tive process.
7. “Incom­pat­i­ble” prod­ucts. In the sys­tem of sep­a­rate nutri­tion, there are three prod­ucts that strict­ly must be con­sumed sep­a­rate­ly from every­thing — this is milk, water­mel­on and mel­on.
8. Lots of meals. Since in this sys­tem many prod­ucts can­not be com­bined in one meal, you can orga­nize your meals every 2–3 hours, alter­nat­ing pro­teins, car­bo­hy­drates, veg­eta­bles, fruits. Small meals also improve diges­tion.
9. Don’t drink water while eat­ing. Water dilutes stom­ach acid, which is essen­tial for diges­tion and the absorp­tion of nutri­ents from foods. It is rec­om­mend­ed to drink 15 min­utes before meals and at least 30 min­utes after.
10. Chew thor­ough­ly. A large piece of food takes more time to digest, but small, well-chewed food is quick­ly enveloped in gas­tric juice and digest­ed with­out caus­ing you dis­com­fort.

All these rules will help orga­nize your nutri­tion in such a way that it will be eas­i­er for the body to absorb foods, not to put too much “in the side”, the state of your diges­tive sys­tem will nor­mal­ize. As a result, such a diet will allow you to lose weight.

Separate nutrition: criticism and contraindications

Like many oth­er diets, the prin­ci­ples of sep­a­rate nutri­tion have been ambigu­ous­ly accept­ed by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty. And if you have read our mate­r­i­al about this sys­tem, you cer­tain­ly need to know every­thing about its dis­ad­van­tages. Here are the main ones:

• Her­bert Shel­ton pro­posed a sin­gle sys­tem for all mankind. Accord­ing to many nutri­tion­ists, this is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong, because we need to take into account the char­ac­ter­is­tics of our body, the pres­ence of chron­ic dis­eases, age and oth­er nuances when choos­ing a diet.
• The author of the sep­a­rate food sys­tem also did not have a med­ical edu­ca­tion, was repeat­ed­ly arrest­ed and fined for con­duct­ing lec­tures and med­ical prac­tice with­out a license. This approach to the pro­fes­sion, of course, casts doubt on his the­o­ry.
• Back in 1935, sci­en­tists showed that the pan­creas pro­duces enzymes for digest­ing food in a com­plex and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, com­plete­ly regard­less of what exact­ly was eat­en — car­bo­hy­drates, fats or pro­teins.
• The split diet has been sub­ject­ed to ran­dom­ized tri­als. The sub­jects were divid­ed into 2 groups and fol­lowed 2 dif­fer­ent diets for 6 weeks. The first group — the prin­ci­ples of sep­a­rate nutri­tion, the sec­ond — sim­ply reduc­ing the caloric con­tent of the diet. Results in weight loss and glu­cose and cho­les­terol read­ings were about the same in both groups. On this basis, sci­en­tists con­clud­ed that the divi­sion of food in itself does not make any sense — reduc­ing its calo­rie con­tent helps to lose weight.

If you decide to try a sep­a­rate diet, remem­ber that this diet has a num­ber of con­traindi­ca­tions. You should not adhere to it for peo­ple with chron­ic dis­eases of the gas­troin­testi­nal tract, kid­neys, liv­er, patients with pan­cre­ati­tis, chole­cys­ti­tis, as well as preg­nant women and dia­bet­ics.

Or maybe you already have expe­ri­ence of sep­a­rate nutri­tion? Tell us about the results in the com­ments!