Why lunch makes you sleepy: foods that don't go together

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STOMACH
Proteins and carbohydrates are digested differently: proteins need an acid environment, carbohydrates an alkaline one. Eaten together, they get in each other's way: the food lingers, ferments and poisons the blood with the products of that fermentation. The body throws enormous effort into this struggle — and that is where the sleepiness comes from.

The main rules of combining

• Proteins apart from carbohydrates. Meat, fish, poultry, eggs and cottage cheese — not together with bread, porridge, potatoes or pasta. Meat goes with vegetables and greens, not with a side of potatoes.
• Vegetables are not mixed with fruit. Fruit should be a meal of its own, not a dessert: eaten after lunch, it ferments on top of the other food.
• Melon and watermelon — strictly on their own: two hours after a meal and two hours before the next one.
• The best time for protein is around midday, between twelve and one: this is when gastric juice is produced most actively.

What a proper lunch looks like

Build it on one of two patterns. A protein lunch: fish or poultry with a large green salad, no bread. A carbohydrate lunch: porridge or potatoes with vegetables, no meat. Both are filling; the difference is that after a lunch like this you still have energy left.

By the way, the main "forbidden combination" is one we eat every day — the sandwich: protein and carbohydrate in their purest form.

Test it on yourself

Don't take my word for it — test it. For one week simply observe: after which combinations do you feel heavy and sleepy, and after which do you feel light? Your body will answer faster than you expect.

Where these rules come from

The system of food combining rests on the work of the physiologist Herbert Shelton, who spent decades observing how different combinations of food are digested. I have tested these rules on thousands of my students and patients: heaviness, heartburn and sleepiness after eating disappear for most people within the first two weeks — with no medicines at all, simply by moving foods into separate meals.

What goes with what: a short cheat sheet

• Meat, fish, poultry, eggs — with green and non-starchy vegetables: salad, cabbage, cucumbers, courgettes, herbs.
• Porridge, potatoes, bread — with the same vegetables and vegetable fats, but without meat.
• Don't mix fats with carbohydrates: bread and butter is a familiar combination, but a heavy one.
• Fruit on its own; don't put sweet fruit and dried fruit together with proteins.
• Milk by itself, not as something to wash food down with.

If you slip

You can't cancel a festive table, and you don't need to. The rule is simple: before and after a heavy mixed meal, give your stomach a rest — a longer pause, water, light vegetables. One wrong meal is not a disaster; the disaster is when every meal is wrong.