Posted by Alberto Roycor updated on February 26, 2017
Updated on February 26, 2017

The Hay Diet is a dissociated 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. He personally had important heart and cardiovascular diseases that solved losing fifty pound in three months.

The Hay Diet thesis is that the combination of food affects the body.  The origin is the acidity that the digestion and metabolism of those mixed foods cause.

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

Types of foods according to the Hay Diet.

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, that are also acid forming, as well as grains, potatoes, and all foods containing flour and sugars. You must exclude the natural ones that are present in fruit.

Hay Diet’s theory is that protein and starch foods are both acid forming in their end products. Anyway, as the require different conditions for digestion, they should never go together.

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

This Diet has no scientific backing. Most of the food that shouldn’t go together are  mixed in a natural way. You cannot separate them in ordinary life. Beans and other legumes, for example, contain proteins and starch. It is true that many people lose weight with the Hay Diet.  But it is a big risk to follow, without proper medical control, an unbalanced diet for more than four weeks, even for very healthy people. And it is also dangerous to restrict the calories below a level for more than three o four weeks. It can harm our health. Luckily, not many people can follow the Hay Diet for a long period of time.

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

The Hay Diet Chart

The Mediterranean Diet, on the contrary than the Hay Diet, is a well balanced and flexible diet. It has answers for every situation you might encounter. You can stick to and follow it all your life. Millions of people during thousands of years have tested it.