requires fat (oil, butter or ghee). You may add spices, herbs and salt and/or vegetable bouillon. Stage B
and C foods may be cooked together in one pan.
Stage D
Beans, including mung beans (dhals), lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, fresh lima beans and others.
Add fat or oil, spices, herbs, salt, and/or other condiments. Do not eat stage D foods more often than 1-2
times per week.
Important for non vegetarians: Stages C and D should be omitted if you include animal protein in
your meal. Animal protein and starch foods, such as meat and potatoes, or fish and rice, cannot be
digested properly when eaten at the same meal. Meat, for example, requires acid secretions, whereas
potatoes require alkaline secretions to digest them. When eaten in one meal, these secretions neutralize
one another, and the food remains mostly undigested. Acid reflux disease and putrefaction may result.
The amount of stage A and D food eaten should small, while the stage B and C quantities should be
more substantial. If desired, food items from stages B, C and D may be eaten together. The total amount
of food at lunchtime should not exceed two cupped hands full.
Lunch does not always have to consist of all four stages. In fact, it is easier on the digestive system to
have only 3-5 main types of food in one meal, such as a raw salad, vegetables and rice.
You should also, try to avoid eating two concentrated food items in one meal, such as rice with
potatoes, rice with bread, beans with cheese, pasta with cheese, or chicken with bread or another starchy
food. Eating beans with rice, or barley with almonds, however, is a compatible combination.
Lunch should always include a substantial serving of cooked vegetables to support proper bowel
activities.
A Note on the Digestibility of Legumes, Grains and Seeds
Due to the large quantity of enzyme inhibitors and antinutritional compounds—antigrowth factors—in
legumes, grains and seeds, there is a limit to how many of them humans and animals can eat without
suffering gas-related digestive problems. The normal cooking time of half an hour to several hours for
most beans does not entirely destroy these toxic compounds. Soaking legumes, grains and seeds in water
overnight or at least for several hours, ideally with some sodium bicarbonate, greatly helps digestibility,
according to research in India.
The substances in beans that cause gas are mainly the indigestible carbohydrates raffinose, stachyose
and verbascose. These provide substrate for intestinal micro flora to produce flatus.
Many of the legumes’ enzyme-inhibitors, which protect the plants against insect attacks or fungal
infestation, cannot be destroyed by the heat generated during cooking. The protein alpha-amylase
inhibitors, for example, may represent as much as 1 percent of wheat flour and, because of their heat
resistance, persist through bread-baking. Consequently, they are typically found in large amounts in the
center of loaves. For that reason, when people eat a lot of the inner parts of bread, instead of the crusty
parts, they tend to develop flatulence.
The problem with the legume soybean is even more pronounced than that found with other legumes or
grains. With regard to soy products' production, there needs to be a balance between the amount of heat
necessary to destroy the enzyme inhibitors while still preserving some nutritional properties of the soy.
That balance is impossible to achieve. Most commercially available edible-grade soybean products retain
5 to 20 percent of the enzyme inhibitor activity (for trypsin) originally present in the raw soybeans from
which they were prepared. In addition, most of their nutrients are destroyed. Recently, the parents of twins