Food Combining Food List

Proper food combining is important for efficient digestion. Efficient digestion is important for good health and well-being, along with disease prevention. Most diseases start in the colon, because food isn’t moved out, it sits there too long, rots, and toxins leach back into the bloodstream… Sounds fun doesn’t it?

By eating proper food combinations, the body is better able to digest the food, absorb the nutrients from the food, and then efficiently eliminate the waste.

As I mentioned in a prior post, if you’re looking for a good book on food combining with simple rules that also keeps real life in mind, I highly recommend:

The “rules” of proper food combining are simple:

1. Eat fruit on an empty stomach, usually in the morning. Wait 20 – 30 minutes before eating something else, or if later, wait three hours after you’ve eaten something else.
2. Eat protein with neutral foods, not starches.
3. Eat starches with neutral foods, not proteins.

You will see in the list that items like dressings and oils are in the neutral list. Through Marsden’s research and experience, minute amounts of overlap between proteins and starches will not disrupt digestion, when kept in moderation and a minute amount means a minute amount. If you can only eat salad drenched in dressing, that doesn’t fit into proper food combining.

What fits where?

I wrote out this list as provided in Marsden’s book, and have added to it as we find other foods and figure out where they go:

Proteins:

Free-range poultry
Fish & Shellfish
Quorn and TVP
Soya milk
Tofu (beancurd)
Free-range eggs
Cheese
Soya/Edemame beans
Peanuts
Peanut butter
Almonds
Brazil nuts

Neutral:

All non-starchy vegetables —
Basically all veggies except potatoes, corn, yams, sweet potatoes which fall under starches.
Baby corn
All salad foods
Herbs and spices
Yogurt
Salad dressings/mayo (drizzle)
Coconut milk
Coconut cream
Buttermilk (small amounts)
Cream (small amounts)
Butter (small amounts)
Spreading fats (small amounts)
Olive oil
Tomato
Avocado
Nuts and seeds (see exceptions in both other columns)
Green beans
Beansprouts
Broad beans
French beans
Mangetout
Petit pois
Runner beans
Peas (see exceptions)
Nut and seed oils
Pesto
Tahini
Small amounts of alcohol

Starches:

Oat porridge
Breakfast cereal
All grains (including barley, buckwheat, couscous, oats, quinoa, rice, and rye)
Breads
Buns
Corn
Rice cakes
Soda bread
Pita bread
Matzos
Crackers
Pastry
Flour
Biscuits
Cakes
Maple syrup
Molasses
All pasta
Chestnuts
Tiger nuts
All pulses (except soya/Edemame)
Hummus
Mushy peas
Dried peas
Processed peas
Marrowfat peas
Milk
Sweet desserts

Source:

Katherine Marsden, The Complete Book of Food Combining. Piatkus; New edition, May 5 2005.