Diet for The Five Tibetans?

In 1939 Peter Kelder published his book ‘The Eye of Revelation” about the discovery of the monks who developed The Five Tibetan Rites. In this book he also revealed the health-giving diet secrets of the monks which is fairly similar to what we call “Food Combining” today.

Listed below are the main details of the monks’ diet:

The monks ate wholesome, good food in the following manner:

• They were vegetarians but ate eggs, butter and cheese in sufficient quantities to 'serve certain functions of the brain, body and nervous system'. They had no need of meat, fish or fowl since they are strong and virile from practicing the Rites.
• One of the secrets of health they describe is to only eat one type of food at a meal, to avoid clashing in the stomach. Sometimes Colonel Bradford ate a meal consisting only of bread. At others he had fresh fruits and vegetables, or just a feast of one vegetable. At first he missed the variety of foods to which he was accustomed but after a short while came to enjoy the benefits he gained from sharing their diet.
• The monks said you should keep starches, fruits and vegetables separate from meats, fish and fowl.
• Starches clash with proteins. If you eat bread (starch) with meats, egg or cheese (protein) a reaction is set up in the stomach which not only causes discomfort, but more importantly contributes to a shorter lifespan.
• You could however have several kinds of meats to a meal. You can have butter, eggs and cheese with the meat meal, but nothing sweet or starchy - no cakes, puddings etc.
• Alternatively you could have all starches together, bread, butter, pies, cakes, puddings, fruit and fresh and cooked vegetables.
• Butter is neutral, it can be used with a starchy meal or with a meat meal. However milk mixes better with meat.
• Coffee and tea should always be taken black
• The Lamas never ate whole eggs unless they were involved in hard physical labor, in which case they might eat one, medium boiled. However they did eat lots of egg yolks, discarding the white part. They say that one should never eat the while part unless involved in hard manual labor as the egg whites are used only by the muscles. The egg yolks on the other hand are used by the brain, nerves, blood and tissues. They recommend eating them raw not during a meal, but before or after it!
• You must eat slowly, chewing your food to almost a liquid before swallowing it. They said food must first be 'digested' in the mouth to obtain the full nourishment of the food.
• By obtaining the full nourishment from the food, less food needs to be eaten overall.
• Around the same time (1933) Dr William Howard Hay published a ground-breaking book, A New Health Era in which he maintains that all disease is caused by autotoxication (or "self-poisoning") due to acid accumulation in the body:

Now we depart from health in just the proportion to which we have allowed our alkalies to be dissipated by introduction of acid-forming food in too great amount... It may seem strange to say that all disease is the same thing, no matter what its myriad modes of expression, but it is verily so. William Howard Hay, M.D.

Dr William Howard Hay, creator of the Hay diet, was born in Hartstown, Pennsylvania, USA in 1866. He graduated from the University of New York in 1891, and practiced medicine for the next sixteen years.

He then became very ill, and was diagnosed as having Bright’s Disease, high blood pressure and a dilated heart, and thought his career was over. He decided to treat his symptoms himself by eating a healthy, natural diet, and after three months, he felt much improved, to the surprise of his doctors. His experience strengthened his belief that the medical establishment was approaching the treatment of disease in the wrong way; that it should be attempting to remove the cause of illness rather than treating the end-results of a condition.

By 1911, Dr Hay was convinced that he had discovered a successful treatment for diabetes. For the next four years, he treated his patients through diet, and successfully demonstrated that people could achieve optimum health with the correct diet, providing there was no irreversible organic change. He thus developed over the years the dietary system now known as the ‘Hay Diet’.

His assertion was that disease had one underlying cause: an incorrect chemical balance in the body, caused by the production and accumulation of acid end-products of digestion and metabolism, which the body is unable to eliminate. The result of this is a reduction in the body’s alkaline reserve, which causes a breakdown in good health. He maintained that there were four main causes of this accumulation of acid end-products: over consumption of meat; over-consumption of refined carbohydrates, e.g., white flour and refined sugar; ignorance of the laws of chemistry in respect of the digestion of foods; and constipation. He taught his patients that, although people could build up a tolerance of incompatible foods, they did so at the expense of the body’s vitality. He also taught the importance of daily baths, exercise, fresh air, rest, and sunshine.

Despite Dr Hay’s enormously successful treatment of many seriously ill patients with his system, it was criticized vehemently by the medical establishment, which, at that time, was focused on the germ theory of disease, and the increasing use of drug treatment. However, he defended his system courageously, continuing to treat patients, and lecture, until his death in 1940.

The Hay Diet, also known as ‘food combining’, consists of five basic rules:

1. Do not eat carbohydrates with proteins and acid fruits at the same meal.
2. Eat vegetables, salads and fruits as the main part of your diet.
3. Eat proteins, starches and fats in small quantities.
4. Eat only whole grain and unprocessed starches, excluding refined, processed foods such as white flour, white sugar, and margarine.
5. Allow an interval of at least four to four and a half hours between meals of different types.
6. The above information about Dr Hay and his diet is from http://www.vitaminuk.com
   

In my next post you can read an interesting article on Food Combining written in “The Skeptic” Magazine Vol 16, No 2 in which the work of Dr Hay and others are basically trashed! I thought you’d find the two opposing views as interesting as I did.