Starch and Acids

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 6, 1903

There are a few things that interfere with the digestion of starches. One of them is acids; therefore nature never combines acids and starch in the same food. Starch dissolves only in an alkaline liquid. By adding acid to masticated bread, digestion entirely stops. That is the reason why acid foods should be eaten at the close of the meal after the starch has been digested.

Starch foods eaten with acids lie in the stomach, just as starch added to water would lie in the bottom of a glass, insoluble and inabsorbable. It is possible, therefore, to overeat and yet be poorly nourished. It is not the quantity that is eaten, but the quantity that is properly prepared and assimilated by the system, that benefits.

Acids of all kinds should be taken at the close of the meal. Albumen needs acid to digest it. The pepsin in the stomach acts only in the presence of acid. By eating the grain at the beginning of the meal, mingling sufficient saliva with it, the starch is digested in from five to twenty minutes. By eating the fruits at the close of the meal, after the starches are digested, they supply the extra acid which aids materially in the digestion of albumens.—Selected.