Wrong Food Combinations

According to Ayurveda, there are certain food combinations that are deemed incompatible. When such combinations are ingested over a period of time, they can result in disease. What constitutes a wrong food combination?

When two food items that have very disparate qualities are cooked or consumed together, it results in a wrong combination. For example, very hot and very cold foods eaten together. Another example is when milk is taken with items that are sour in nature. The sour item (be it bananas or citrus fruits) will cause the milk to curdle and there by turn it into a wrong combination.

What is the reason for wrong combinations resulting in disease? Let me try to explain without going into too many details. All substances including food items have qualities called gunas. There are 10 pairs of opposing qualities (hot/cold, dry/wet, clear/turbid etc.) For example, chilies have hot guna, milk has cold guna. When substances with qualities that are very opposite in nature are mixed together, that combination becomes unwholesome. At the same time, items with two very similar qualities if taken together can also cause problems. For example, two very hard to digest items if taken together can easily overwhelm the stomach’s digestive capacity and lead to indigestion. Hence a balance is required.

Wrong food combinations can cause anything from indigestion to skin disease. Partially or improperly digested food turns into toxins in the body and becomes the source of many types of disease.

Milk is often involved in wrong food combinations, especially cold milk. In western countries milk is often had cold. But in India, milk is always boiled and had hot. There are a very few indications when milk is taken cold. But in general, milk should always be consumed warm or hot. Cold milk causes many issues in the body, one of which is wrong food combination. Let me list some of the common wrong food combinations and if you find that there form part of your diet and you are facing digestive or skin issues, try avoiding these combinations for a while and see if you can spot an improvement!

Milk should not be had with sour fruits (like citrus, banana- that banana milk shake is doing you more harm than good), melons, mangoes, cherries, fish (fish sandwich with cold milk, a favorite cafeteria lunch item), meat (chicken sandwich or hot dogs with cold milk or cold chocolate milk).

Eggs should not be had with milk, meat, yogurt, melons, cheese, fish, bananas.

Radish should not be had with milk, bananas, raisins.

Honey and ghee should never be had in equal amounts by weight. Eg: 5 gms of ghee plus 5gms of honey. Equal parts by volume is ok. And in relation to honey, another golden rule is to NEVER heat or cook honey.

This is by no means an exhaustive list and there are many more. There are also exceptions to rules and exclusions. My hope in writing this post is to direct our attention to how we combine our foods. Each of these food items I mentioned are healthy and a good source of nutrition on its own. It is how we combine them that we need to pay attention to. So while coming up with new recipes or following new recipes from various websites, we need to take care that some basic rules of food preparation are not ignored.