The rising acidity of the stomach will neutralize the saliva, destroy the salivary amylase, and bring starch digestion to a halt. If no protein is taken with the starch, no acid is poured into the stomach and starch digestion proceeds on schedule. There is enough oxalic acid in spinach to delay or suspend starch digestion. All of this means that those grand old combinations, the mainstays of every boarding house lady in the land, of citrus fruits and cereals for breakfast and meat and potatoes at dinner, will have to go. So, also, will have to go those other popular favorites, sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, and similar combinations.
Retarded digestion favors fermentation and putrefaction of the foods eaten.
Certainly there can be no sane reason why one cannot eat his foods in such combinations as place the least tax upon the digestive glands. Nobody has ever charged, so far as I know, that one cannot get all the food required or that the food will be lacking in essential nutrients if the food is combined according to a few simple rules that have their basis in the physiology of digestion. It might be thought that the manufacturers of Alkaseltzer are behind the effort or that the maker of some other antacid is trying to preserve his market, but I doubt this. I think that the medical profession is behind the effort and that they discredit all effort to find a physiological mode of eating because of their ingrained hatred of Hygiene. They have been fighting Hygiene and slowly retreating before its relentless advance for a hundred and thirty-five years.