The Food Combining Chart: What Goes Together & What to Eat Alone

Food combining is the simplest change I ever made to how I eat, and this chart is the whole of it on one page. Print it, put it on the fridge, and after a week or two you will not need it. The reasoning, the history and how I actually eat are in how to food combine.

How to read the chart

• •Circles that overlap go together in a meal. Circles that do not touch are kept to separate meals.
• •Fruit on its own and on an empty stomach. Melons and durian are eaten alone, even among fruit.
• •Protein and starch in separate meals. This is the one most people find hardest, and the one that changes the most.
• •Non-starchy vegetables go with almost anything. Potatoes, pumpkin and corn count as starches, so they follow the rule above.
• •Leafy greens, lemon, lime, herbs and spices go with everything, fruit included.

See how it goes for you

It is not a diet and it is not a list of good and bad foods. Nothing on it is forbidden, and nothing on it is forever. If your digestion is sensitive, it is worth trying for a while and noticing what changes. The goal was never to eat this way for good. The goal, for me, is a digestion strong enough to enjoy everything, and the chart is one way of giving it a quieter stretch on the way there. If you have a history of disordered eating, or you are working with a practitioner on how you eat, please read it with them rather than on your own.

Where the chart comes from

The rules are older than the chart, and they come from two places. The pairings to keep apart go back to Ayurveda, set down around two thousand years ago. The rules most of us met first, protein apart from starch and fruit on its own, are barely a hundred years old and came from William Hay and then Herbert Shelton. I drew this version so the practice would fit on one page, and the history, which is lovelier than the chart, is in where food combining comes from.

Where to go next

• •Wondering how to food combine for optimal digestion? is the full post: the principles and how I apply them.
• •How to Food Combine is the book: what I worked out by living with the chart, and the way I put a plate together on an ordinary day.
• •Eating for your cycle, because what your body asks for changes through the month, and the chart works alongside that rather than instead of it.
• •Intuitive eating, for the woman who would like a gentler place to begin than any set of rules.

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