Principle #1: Eat only fruit until noon
Food-combining purists say that fruit is best eaten on its own. Your liver works hardest to eliminate toxins between midnight and midday.
Digesting fruit doesn’t require action by the liver, so to support optimal cleansing, traditional food combiners consume fruit alone in the a.m. hours.
Fruit is a great replenisher of fluids after a night of rest and moves quickly from the stomach into the small intestine. A fruit breakfast leaves the stomach ready for a more varied lunch.
As extreme as this sounds, I have found eating fruit for breakfast works for me.
But, I combine fruits with protein fats and leafy greens.
As a general rule, sour or acidic fruits (grapefruits, kiwis, and strawberries) can be combined with “protein fats” such as avocado, coconut, coconut kefir, and sprouted nuts and seeds.
Both acid fruits and sub-acid fruits like apples, grapes, and pears can be eaten with cheeses; and vegetable fruits (avocados, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers) can be eaten with fruits, vegetables, starches, and proteins.
I’ve also found that apples combine well with raw vegetables. Leafy greens (spinach, kale, collard greens), along with the vegetable fruits noted above, are my go-to staples. They are the magic foods that combine well with every food on the planet. I blend them together in green smoothies, cold soups, and salads.
As melons digest faster than any other food, a food-combining motto is “melon on its own or leave it alone.” I find I tolerate melon with other fruits, but discover what works best for you.
Unfortunately, sweet fruits do not combine well with concentrated starches and proteins, which typically take three to five hours to digest. Fruit is often recommended for cleansing, but when it’s trapped in the longer digestive cycle of concentrated food, fruit ferments and produces acid and alcohol, which feeds yeast, fungus, and bacteria.
After you eat a starch or protein meal, it’s best to wait at least five hours to have fruit.
