The human body is a fascinating machine when it comes to health. There’re so many things that could go wrong and things that seem so complicated. For example: What’s the need for so many diet plans? Can food really heal you? Or worse, can food really hurt you? These are a few questions many people can’t honestly answer. They just don’t know enough about how our “two” forms of digestion work together to understand how food works in and with us.

Now, high school biology may have been a few years ago... if we even took it. Nevertheless, let’s jump back and talk about carnivores and herbivores. Carnivores must eat meat to receive the nutrition they need. They can’t digest plants efficiently. And like wise, herbivores eat plants and don’t digest meat well. So, why is this important to humans? Well, we’re a hybrid of both a carnivore and an herbivore called an “omnivore”. We can eat succulent plants when we have time to digest our food or meat when we need heavier nutrition faster or intermittently.

Fact #1: We are omnivores – Our upper GI track is designed to digest fats and proteins like a carnivore does. However in addition, our large intestine, or colon, absorbs nutritious fermented intestinal flora byproducts like an herbivore does. This is very important to know for good health. Fats and meat requires a strong acid in our stomachs in which to digest. To get a strong stomach acid requires salt. Good thing the production of this hydrochloric acid makes sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acid in the chyme as it passes through the small intestine headed for the colon.

Now, the acid in our stomach, if we’re healthy, is strong enough (at 1-3 pH) to kill disease bacteria. This acid enables enzymes, and regulates intestinal flora in the upper GI track where it can cause problems like ulcers. However, our colon thrives on a dense intestinal flora. Dietary fiber requires an alkaloid environment, produced by this flora, to be digested. Like soaking corn in lye (a strong alkaloid) to make hominy. Unlike herbivores though we don’t have an extra-long colon, sacrum, 4 chamber stomach, or ability and desire to chew cud or re-ingest factory seconds like rabbits do. This forces us to eat only succulent plant-based foods to attain any nutrition from them in our short exposure.

If we don’t use the upper GI track occasionally to stimulate a strong stomach acid, it causes other body pH problems. We start lacking sodium bicarbonate to regulate our blood pH, cell pH, and large intestine's pH. This brings us to our next fact as the pancreas likes a very alkaline environment that needs to be reset once in a while. Resetting the pancreas requires us to acidify our stomach to produce the sodium bicarbonate needed to reduce the oxidative stress of a pancreatic hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) buildup.

As omnivores, by nature, our food needs to come from both plant and animal sources to glean all 157+ nutrients we need to live in good health.

Fact #2: We overuse our pancreas – So, what puts the pancreas to work? Plainly, eating. Specifically, eating carbohydrates and lean meats. Insulin, made by the pancreas, is designed to get the sugars out of the blood. Sugar is a toxin and works like 24D does killing dandelions. In large amounts sugar will kill cells leaving fungi (aka Candida) to thrive. Insulin prevents sugar from getting to large enough amounts to damage cells by turning it into fat. In which case, the liver is left to finish the processing of storing sugars (as fat) and/or the burning of fat. Good thing here is that eating fat doesn’t require the pancreas or insulin. So, fat and fiber are the only foods that can’t make you fat by themselves. Fat requires a carbohydrate with it to be stored as fat and fiber is only digestible with the right strain of intestinal flora.

The liver was designed to digest and metabolize fat. It produces “bile” to make fat digestible in the intestinal track. This action allows fat and zinc to create and use “leptin” in the body cells and protein and calcium to produce GLP-1 in the intestine to control appetite. The secret of the liver rests in how you turn it on. It’s simple really, eat fat and maintain a healthy supply of all 76 essential minerals and bio-salts. No carbs, little lean meat, and no processed food of any kind. Just time fasting between meals to burn off the insulin in the body so that fat burning and healing can begin. So, plainly to engage the liver we need to eat good animal fat, boost our mineral intake, and fast intermittently.

(Note, ever made lye soap? Bile is like soap… lye soap. It’s made from minerals and animal fat, and it breaks dietary fat into fatty acids releasing their goodness.)

As omnivores over processing our food and limiting our food choices removes the very nutrition our bodies need to be healthy.

This leads us to fact #3.

Fact #3: We don’t know how food works – The last point comes down to end zones. If pickles (microorganisms), salad (plant fiber), breads (grain with anti-nutritional defense systems), and baked beans (seeds, again with anti-nutritional defense systems) are at one end zone then; steak (meat, fat, and amino acids), cream (animal fat), potato (soluble fiber and potassium), and salt (sodium chloride) are at the other. At the end zones our bodies know exactly what to do with these foods. The stomach turns salt, potassium, and water into hydrochloric acid and sodium bicarbonate. The steak and cream tickle the liver and pancreas to bump up the bile and enzymes for good digestion. Potato starch, in many forms, acts as a soluble fiber making it inert in the upper GI track and a prebiotic in the lower GI track. Contrary to this team we have pickles, salad, bread, and beans that turns off our stomach acid just to slide down to the colon as “intestinal flora food” to be fermented. As food ferments it feeds probiotics which create short chain fatty acids for our immune system and frees up essential minerals to make bile and a few non-essential proteins.

Eating at the 50-yard line when it comes to food means we may lack the stomach acid to avoid heartburn yet have too much acid for good fermentation in the colon. This sets us up to glean only the simple carbs (aka sugar) spiking our insulin and making us fat and mineral starved. This condition will eventually tax our mineral supplies causing a vast number of other diseases. Pizza is a common food found at the 50-yard line; its combinations of elements from both end zones makes it hard to digest. If you have weak stomach acid and get heartburn from eating pizza, taking an anti-acid may ease the pain for a moment. However, it stops all mineral absorption and hinders both fat and protein digestion.

Having been in France long enough to appreciate 2-hour multi-course lunches, I experienced how separating plant and meat foods made eating more filling as my body had time to adapt to the courses as they were served. Later I realized that the courses can be laid out for ideal digestion. Starting with low acid foods first like green salad* (enzymes, fiber, and salts), then cooked vegetables (minerals and fiber), cheese and (wheat & barley mixed four) bread (prebiotics and probiotics), meat course (minerals, protein, vitamins, and fats), and last mint tea and desert (carbohydrates) if needed. This order to eating feeds the body not just stuffs the stomach. (*salad originally meant fresh but salted vegetables)

For good mineral, vitamin, fat, and protein metabolization it pays to know how our digestion really works. Considering these three overlooked facts can save you greatly on diet plans. It’s not the number of calories you eat so much as the amount of nutrition that’s in the food you choose and whether you prepared it to digest and metabolize effectively that counts.

As omnivores we run on cycles. This includes how we absorb nutrition from our food.