Mediterranean Diet

The Hay Diet is a dissociated diet introduced by Dr. William Howard Hay in 1911. It is based in the premise that food combining is one important cause for health problems.

The Hay Diet says that the combination of food affects the body because of the acidity caused by the digestion and metabolism of those mixed foods.

This acid condition produces a lowering of the body’s alkaline reserve, the depletion of which is cause of intoxication.

The Hay Diet divides foods into three types. They are:

• “Alkali forming foods” such as fruits and vegetables. Even acid fruits as lemons leave alkaline salts in our body.

• Proteins such as meat, fish, eggs or cheese. These type of food yields acid sub products in the body.

• Carbohydrates are also acid forming. Grains, potatoes, all foods containing flour, and all foods containing sugars (sucrose), but not the natural ones that can be found in fruit.

Diet Hay’s theory is that protein and starch foods, even both being acid forming in their end products, they require different conditions for digestion. Therefore, they should never be combined.

Another version of the Hay Diet says that protein food are acid producing and carbohydrates, alkaline. And this is the reason why they cannot be eaten together.

The Hay Diet has no scientific backing. Most of the food that cannot be combined are naturally mixed and cannot be separated. Beans and other legumes, for example, contain proteins and starch. Some people lose weight following the Hay Diet, but it is the result of an unbalance diet and a dangerous lack of the calories intake that can harm our health. Luckily, not much people can follow the Hay Diet for a long period of time.

Chart from “How to Always Be Well”, Dr. William Howard Hay

The Mediterranean Diet, on the contrary than the Hay Diet, is a balanced and flexible diet that you can accommodate for all the occasions and follow all your life. Is has been proof during thousands of years by millions of people.