Food Combining for Health: The bestseller that has changed millions of lives. Doris Grant

even trying to do so; without feeling hungry; without wearisome calorie counting; and without resorting to crash slimming diets, appetite-suppressors and dangerous fat-reducing drugs. Dr Hay warned that all so-called fat-reducing remedies ‘should be avoided as you would the plague’, as they are a snare and a delusion, and their very slight results are paid for at a fearful cost in vitality and health. His warning received ample confirmation in a report by the consumer magazine Which? of 13 April 1983; it had harsh words for certain quick-slimming products which not only fail in their objective but also have unpleasant side-effects.

      Attempts to lose weight quickly are not recommended. Any change in the diet should be made gradually. To start losing weight it is therefore sufficient just to become accustomed to separating the incompatible classes of foods into different meals. When this separation is well established, the number of alkali-forming meals should be increased. An excellent and easy way of doing this (if desired) is to make breakfast consist solely of fruit, or fruit and yogurt, making the fruit one kind of fruit only. Doing so will cause no drop in energy for the day’s work – the energy for today is provided by the foods eaten yesterday; eating a large breakfast actually ties up some of one’s energy during the morning. Dr Hay always counselled that ‘the best breakfast of all is no breakfast at all’! – but not if eating orthodox meals.

      Many people are not at all hungry for breakfast, but sheer habit forces them to eat. Dr Hay always taught: ‘never eat anything of any kind at any time unless you feel really hungry … you will get far more nourishment out of foods that are eaten when you are very hungry than if these same foods are eaten without proper hunger’. This excellent rule is not only of importance for slimmers but also for everyone who is health conscious. Dr Cleave considered it of such importance that he listed it as rule number one in his Natural Diet for Health (The Saccharine Disease, page 188): ‘Do not eat any food unless you definitely want it.’ It is a fact that most of us eat far more food than we need. There is truth in the saying that ‘we live on a third of the food we eat – the doctor lives on the other two-thirds!’

      There is no need to go without any good, unprocessed, unrefined, whole food while reducing weight, provided that it is eaten compatibly. Even the so-called fattening foods, bread and potatoes, can be eaten with impunity provided that the bread is wholewheat bread (preferably home-baked – see Part Four), the potatoes are cooked in their skins and the skins eaten, and care is taken not to ‘plaster’ both the bread and potatoes with too much butter. Fats should be used with care by slimmers, especially in the form of full-fat cheeses; the cottage cheeses are best, as long as they contain no added salt. The intake of salt should be drastically reduced in the diet of slimmers (and considerably reduced in the diet of most people).

      It is well established that sodium (salt) intake is directly associated with blood pressure, and that a reduction in the dietary intake by 50mmol per day could lead to a 50 per cent reduction in the number of people needing anti-hypertensive therapy, a 22 per cent reduction in the number of deaths from stroke and a 16 per cent reduction in the number of deaths from CHD. Unfortunately, it is the salt hidden in crisps, packaged and convenience foods that causes most of the problems – foods that are eliminated from the Hay diet.