diets, I find, are crashing bores, especially to hostesses, but if one follows the Hay diet it is possible to go to any dinner, public or private, and offend no one. All one has to remember is the principle of not mixing starch with protein. So one can wade one’s way happily through any festive occasion until it comes to the sweet course. I find the best way of coping with this is to leave the sweet untouched; the waiter will finally remove it, and nobody will have noticed.
I am sure that I could not, at my advanced age, cope with the work I have on hand at the moment if I were not a ‘believer’. I am playing eight shows a week in Little Lies at Wyndham’s Theatre, and the last act is a marathon. It is essential that I am really fit, and for this I rely practically entirely on the Hay diet. I am, incidentally, today wearing the jacket which I had made in 1938. It has not been let out, and I can still do the button up without any problem.
I wish the book every success, and I guarantee that anyone who follows the advice in it will derive the greatest of benefits from it.
Note
Sir John Mills wrote this Foreword for the first edition of Food Combining for Health in 1984. Since then he has continued his film and theatrical career, and at 95 has a cameo role in Stephen Fry’s film Bright Young Things.
INTRODUCTION A Personal Experience
As we eat so are we; our health is made or marred with our feet under the dinner table.
Food Combining for Health was first published in October 1984. Three months later it became a runaway bestseller as grateful and enthusiastic readers spread the word among their relatives and friends. By January 1986 it was arousing such interest that the Cumberland Hotel in London opened a buffet serving delicious Hay system lunches. The book has also created great interest abroad and, apart from an American edition selling in the United States and Canada, it has been published in Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Serbo-Croat and Finnish.
This is a wonderful tribute to the efficacy of the Hay system, and its success is constantly confirmed by the countless letters Jean and I receive from converts. Many claim that it has changed their lives – in some cases miraculously. Knowing that the Hay system does not ‘cure’ but merely allows the body to heal itself, we are continually amazed at the extraordinary inbuilt healing powers of the body revealed in these letters, and the unbelievable speed with which they often work. Readers report agonizing arthritic pains removed within two weeks; allergies and psoriasis of long standing completely gone in four days; chronic migraine and hay fever banished in a matter of weeks; two pounds of excess weight shed in one week without counting calories or feeling hungry. Many more similar cases have been reported.
It was the efficacy and speed with which the Hay system resolved my own health problems that turned me into a lifelong follower. In my late 20s, severely painful rheumatoid trouble in my joints nearly crippled me and took all the fun out of life. When all the usual medical therapies had been applied with no effect whatsoever, a doctor-cousin came to the rescue with a very unorthodox prescription. It consisted of three columns of foods – proteins, starches and acid fruits – accompanied with the instruction: ‘Don’t mix foods that fight!’
By the end of just one week this unusual prescription, conscientiously carried out, produced a totally unexpected bonus: the complete termination of nagging indigestion pains which had plagued me for 15 years. After another week there were more unexpected results: an ability to think more clearly than formerly and a great general feeling of wellbeing which inspired me to carry on. By the end of four weeks all the rheumatoid pains had gone and have never returned.
After a year I felt like a new woman. I was tireless and filled with a new energy that I had never before experienced. The more difficult the task, the more I welcomed it as a challenge to my newly found health and abilities. Yet, apart from not eating meat or acid fruits (apples, oranges, pears, grapefruit, etc.) with bread or sugared foods at the same meal, there had been no other change in my diet. I knew nothing whatsoever about whole foods, and was still eating white bread and refined sugar, to whose potential dangers I had not been alerted. This fact is of the highest significance; it provided unique evidence that ‘not mixing foods that fight’ really works. It also demolishes the claim by sceptics that any benefit derived from the Hay system is entirely due to a changeover to whole-food eating. During the past 40 years I have received many letters from life-long ‘whole-fooders’ who had been unable to resolve their health problems until adopting the Hay lifestyle.
Towards the end of my first year of compatible eating I discovered and carefully read Dr William Howard Hay’s inspiring book A New Health Era, and I found that there was much more to the Hay system than ‘not mixing foods that fight’. As a result of reading this book my diet improved still further. I felt I had set out on a marvellous adventure. I have to admit, though, that departing from orthodox eating habits was not at first a rose-strewn path. Relations and friends, especially medical friends, pooh-poohed the idea of any connection between food and health, and thought I had taken leave of my senses, whereas I was, in fact, just beginning to come to them. Friends argued that I was going to miss out on all the joys of eating: ‘What, no sugar? – no biscuits and cheese? – no apple tart? You poor thing!’
I found, however, that this way of eating was in no sense a wearisome, calorie-counting diet of constant self-denial, but was instead a delicious way of eating which ensures health and fitness, and minimizes the necessity for medical treatment. The fitter I became, the more convinced I was that we hold our health in our own hands to a very large extent.
By the end of four years of compatible eating I produced a much longed-for second child nine years after my first-born, despite warnings from doctor and gynaecologist after the first birth that I could never have any more children; there had been serious complications after an emergency Caesarean operation. But they had reckoned without the healing powers of compatible eating! Moreover, the second birth, according to the gynaecologist, was a ‘textbook demonstration of a beautifully normal birth’!
By the end of another three years I had proof in plenty of these healing powers, while writing long weekly articles on the Hay system for a well-known national Sunday newspaper – the now defunct Sunday Graphic – in 1936 and 1937. These articles continued for nine months and generated enormous interest, bringing into the Graphic office hundreds of letters every week.
The letters were an education, and most revealing: their almost monotonous burden was the virtually complete failure of medical treatment as far as the degenerative diseases were concerned; the ‘wonder drugs’ never effected the hoped-for cure. Often there were recitals of complete disaster in treatment, and of the ‘cure’ being far worse than the disease, frequently proving fatal.
As the weeks and months passed, however, there were many accounts from followers of the articles of greatly improved health. The benefits of the Hay system were often felt even within the first week. There were also reports of increased zest for living; depression replaced by optimism; digestion pains eliminated; freedom from colds; arthritic pains lessened and movement freer; and constipation a thing of the past. Many readers reported great relief from tiredness and chronic sleeplessness. One of the most unforgettable letters was from a woman of 70 who wrote: ‘I feel well for the first time in my life!’
These accounts provided convincing proof of Dr Hay’s contention: that the primary cause of disease is not the outside germ which always gets the blame, but the inside state of the body-soil, created mainly by wrong living habits and wrong eating habits.
The explanation for all this lies in the fact that the Hay system removes the obstacles created by these habits, which prevent the inbuilt healing powers of the body from restoring perfect health and wholeness. In other words, the Hay system allows the body to heal itself. The tremendous interest that this book has aroused, and the superior health and fitness that so many followers are now enjoying