Easy to digest or Difficult to Digest: Good Question
In HOLISTIC NUTRITION we are very conscious about our food, especially if It gets digested properly. Only Easy to digest food healthy and nourishing, because it gets completely digested and the body gets all the nutrients. This is because the nutrients like proteins, carbohydrates and fats in easier-to-digest food items ban be properly broken down to their components by our digestive enzymes. According to Ayurveda, easy to digest food includes warm, soft, boiled and pureed foods like vegetables, lentils, rice and ripe fruits. Food items, which are difficult to digest, are avoided, like raw, solid and sticky food items such as raw vegetables, bread, eggs, cheese and other animal products.
Easy to digest: different from Person to Person
Whether certain food items are easy to digest, depends on various individual factors. First and foremost, your current DIGESTION POWER determines which food items are easy or difficult to digest for you. You have your own digestive enzymes and juices, which determine your personal digestive spectrum, formed by the eating habits of your ancestors. For example, if your ancestors have eaten a lot of cereals, cereal products like bread and cakes are easier to digest for you, than for someone, who is from a fishers family, who consumed less bread in the past centuries.
Easy to digest: This depends on your personal Digestion Power
Your digestion capacity is also determined by your personal lifestyle and eating habits. During stressful times, your digestion power suffers. Food items, dishes and drinks, which are normally easy to digest, suddenly become difficult to digest because less digestive enzymes are produced. Your digestion power also suffers from wrong eating habits such as too acidic food. Alkaline and easily digestible food is recommended to strengthen your digestion.
Easy to digest: Boiled and Seasoned
Boiled and warm food, seasoned with digestive spices, are always easy to digest, especially when we mash it. By cooking part of the digestion is already done and adding herbs and spices induce the production of digestive enzymes and juices. Porridge, vegetable stew or apple compote is considered easy to digest. On the other hand, anything raw, solid, hard, heavy and sticky is difficult to digest. A good measure of digestibility are meals and drinks, which babies can consume, when they get weaned from mother’s milk.
Easy to digest or difficult to digest: An Overview
Here you will find a list of all foods items that fall into the categories easy or difficult to digest according to Holistic Health Systems like Ayurveda, Chinese or Arabic Medicine. In any case, anyone who suffers from indigestion or a serious disease should only eat food, which are easy to digest.
Easy to digest:
- Cooked
- Warm
- Hot
- Soft
- Pureed
- Light
- Airy
- Liquid
Light Food: Easy to digest food items
- Warm water
- Tea
- Porridge
- Clear soup
- Vegetable stew
- Clear vegetable broth
- Clear meat broth
- Puree
- Boiled vegetables
- Boiled red and yellow lentils
- Sweet ripe fruit/ compote
- Boiled rice, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, tiger nut and millet
- pudding made from plant- or nutmilk from chiaseeds, rice and millet flour
Good question: Is my food easy or difficult for me to digest?
Difficult to digest
Food items, dishes and drinks which are difficult to digest are those, where the food is difficult to break down by digestive juices and enzymes.
These are usually complex proteins or carbohydrates. Anything can also be difficult to digest, when
- the specific food item is outside the digestive spectrum. There are no digestive enzymes and juices for digestion
- the digestive power is generally weakened by poor diet and constant stress
- there are unfavorable combinations of food with milk or dairy products, eggs, meat or fish
- the food is prepared in a difficult to digest way with lots of fat or flour
- the food is produced synthetically and is not suitable for human beings in general
In General Difficult to digest:
- Solid
- Compact
- Heavy
- Hard
- Sticky
- Cold
- Frozen
- Fried
- Warmed up
Difficult to digest food items:
- Unfavorably combination of milk and dairy products with fruits, meat, fish and eggs
- Cereals and their products like wheat (also bulgur, couscous and saitan) spelled, kamut, emmer, oats, rye and barley
- Fermented food like cheese
- Milk and other dairy products from animals like cheese, curd cheese, yogurt and kefir
- Meat, fish, seafood and eggs
- Chocolate
- Bananas
- Unripe hard fruit
- Raw food
- Nuts
- Hydrogenated fats, including margarine
- Processed food and fast food of all kinds
