Food – Helps for Digestion

by

For several months we have discussed the anatomy and physiology of the digestion system and the importance of eating based on the way God designed our body. The following is a review and listing of items important for good digestion:

  1. Meal time should be a pleasant, unhurried time to allow for good digestion.
  2. Digestion, both mechanical and chemical, begins in the mouth, so our food should be thoroughly chewed. There are no teeth in the stomach!
  3. We should eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and supper like a pauper. The breakfast should break our overnight fast, and is critical for the start of a productive day. The stomach, like all organs, needs rest. We should go to bed with an empty stomach, allowing the stomach and all of the organs of digestion and the brain to be relieved of digestion during the sleeping hours.
  4. We should avoid liquid drinks at meal times. Drinking liquids at meal times can interfere with the delicate balance of temperature and chemical regulation necessary to digest food.
  5. Our diet should be composed of as many raw foods as possible. Raw foods have the active components necessary for good nutrition. When we do cook our vegetables, it is best to lightly steam them and then use the water in soups and stews.
  6. We should allow five hours between meals to allow one meal to be processed in the stomach, and the stomach emptied before the next food is consumed. Studies have been done that demonstrate that eating between meals can result in breakfast food remaining in the stomach until nightfall when eating between meals is practiced.
  7. Adequate water is essential to health, digestion, and elimination and should be consumed between meals. An excellent formula to use to determine how much water you should drink daily between meals is to take your weight, divided by 2, and the number of ounces of water that you should drink is the result. (140 lbs. divided by 2 equals 70, so a person of this weight should drink approximately 70 ounces or nine 8 ounce glasses of water per day.)
  8. Light exercise after a meal improves digestion.
  9. From our instruction at creation, through the diet history in the Bible, through modern epidemiology, and through our anatomical design at the hand of God, man’s health would be best enhanced by a vegetarian diet.