What's wrong with PB&J?

Jellies, jams, fruit butter, sugar, honey, syrups, molasses, etc., on bread, cake, or at the same meal with cereals, potatoes, etc., or sugar with cereal, will produce fermentation. Hot cakes with honey or syrup is an abomination.

The practice of eating starches that have been disguised by sweets is also a bad way to eat carbohydrates. If sugar is taken into the mouth it quickly fills with saliva but no ptyalin is present. Ptyalin is essential to starch digestion. If the starch is disguised with sugar, jellies, jams, syrups, etc., the taste buds are deceived and carbohydrate digestion is impaired. Monosaccharides and di-saccharides ferment quicker than polysaccharides and are prone to ferment in the stomach while awaiting the completion of starch digestion.

Sweet fruits with starch result in as much fermentation and the same fermentation products, as does sugar, jellies or syrups. We do not feed these with starches. Wm. Henry Porter, M. D., in his book, Eating to Live Long, says that eating fruits is "one of the most pernicious and reprehensible of dietetic follies," but even he admits that fruits eaten without other foods are all right. He claims fruits prevent digestion of the other foods. He only needs to understand food combining.

For the reason that fruits of all kinds should not be combined with other foods, we must condemn as violations of the neurochemical laws of digestion the ever-increasing number of fruit-breads--raisin-bread, fig-bread, prune-bread, banana-bread, fruit in coffee-substitutes, etc. These things have but one excuse for existence--they induce the eater to take more bread and thus result in the sale of more of this food . They produce indigestion in everyone.

An inactive saliva is poured out abundantly upon dry or powdered meat, to moisten it and aid in swallowing; but no saliva is poured upon fresh meat. Similarly, much saliva, active in this case, is poured out upon dry starch, both to moisten and digest it; but no saliva is poured out upon boiled or soaked starch.

It has been known since Beaumont made his experiments, that pieces of metal, stone, etc., placed in the human stomach, do not excite the secretion of gastric juice. It is also true that non-starch substances, although they may occasion the secretion of copious amounts of saliva and may be well chewed, do not excite the production of an active digestive juice in the mouth. Even in the case of sugar, a carbohydrate, no ptyalin is secreted when this is eaten. To eat of sugar, white or brown, jellies, jams, honey, syrups and molasses, sweet fruits, etc., with bread or other starch is to invite fermentation.

Major Austin says: "foods that are wholesome by themselves or in certain combinations often disagree when eaten with others. For example, bread and butter taken together cause no unpleasantness, but if sugar or jam or marmalade is added trouble may follow. Because the sugar will be taken up first, and the conversion of the starch in the bread into sugar is then delayed. Mixtures of starch and sugar invite fermentation and its attendant evils."

Most of us are aware that no digestion of sugar, syrup, honey, etc., takes place in the mouth and stomach. Such being the case, why should sugars of any kind be delayed in the stomach awaiting protein or starch digestion. Fermentation is inevitable when this is done.

Sugar with starch rneans fermentation. It means a sour stomach. It means discomfort. Those who are addicted to the honey-eating practice and who are laboring under the popular fallacy that honey is a "natural sweet" and may be eaten indiscriminately, should know that this rule not to take sweets with starches applies to honey as well. Honey or syrup, it makes no difference which, with your hot cakes, honey or sugar, it matters not which, with your cereals, honey or sugar to sweeten your cakes,