7. Eat But One Concentrated Starch Food At A Meal.

The rule to consume but one starch food at a meal is probably more important as a means of avoiding overeating of starches than as a means of avoiding a bad combination. While overeating of starches may lead to fermentation, there is no certainty that the combination of two starches will do so.

It is insisted by many that the digestive organism has need of and invincible affinity for one form of starch at any particular time. If two or more starches are eaten at the same time, at the same meal, one or the other will be selected for digestion and assimilation and the other permitted to go untouched in the stomach, not only without itself being passed on to digestion in the bowels, but also retarding the digestion of other foods, with fermentation, sour Stomach, belching, etc., as the certain result."

There is only one kind of starch, but starchy foods differ greatly. It may be true that the starch-splitting enzymes manifest a preference for one starchy food, although I have been unable to find any physiological ground for the statement, nor have I seen fermentation result from eating two starches where they were each consumed in small quantities. I think the chief reason for not eating two starches at the same meal is to avoid overeating of starches.

Certain biochemists say that when you have taken bread and potatoes you have exhausted your starch-license. Hygienists advise but one starch at a meal, not because there is any conflict in the digestion of these foods, but because taking two or more starches at a meal is practically certain to lead to overeating of this substance. We find it best, and this is doubly true in feeding the sick, to limit the starch intake to one starch at a meal. People with unusual powers of self control may be permitted two starches, but these individuals are so rare, the rule should be: one starch at a meal.

Writing facetiously of rules for eating carbohydrates, Carlton Fredericks says: "Don't serve more than two foods rich in sugar or starch at the same meal. When you serve bread and potatoes, your starch-license has run out. A meal that includes peas, bread, potatoes, sugar, cake and after dinner mints should also include a Vitamin B Complex capsule, some bicarbonate of soda (other than that used on the vegetables), and the address of the nearest specialist in arthritis and other degenerative diseases."

For more than forty years it has been the rule in Hygienic circles to take but one starch at a meal and to consume no sweet foods with the starch meal. Sugars, syrups, honeys, cakes, pies, mints, etc., have not been tabu with starches. We do not say to those who come to us for advice: If you eat these foods with your starches, take a dose of baking soda with them. We tell them to avoid the sugars with the starches and thus avoid fermentation that is almost inevitable. In hygienic circles it is considered the height of folly to take a poison and then take an antidote with it. We think it best not to take the poison.