The Biochemical Machine: Empowering Your Body Chemistry

"If you burden your metabolism by eating incompatible foods that disregard the laws of your body chemistry," writes Eleonora De Lennart, you poison your body. Cooking, says De Lennart, changes ("denatures") the chemistry of proteins and turns them into "bad" and "extreme bad" proteins: "unhealthy acid-builders." We can handle digesting these only if eaten on their own. The solution: "A" and "B" foods that should not be eaten together, and "Neutral" foods that may be eaten with either "A" or "B" foods. "A" foods include grains, sugar products, starchy vegetables, and some fruits. "B" foods include low-fat dairy, cooked meats and seafood, cooked tomatoes, and some fruits. "Neutral" foods include fats, vegetables, high-fat dairy, and smoked, cured, and dried meat. Nix chicken sandwiches or pasta marinara. Eat potatoes without ketchup, cereal without orange juice. To get you started, De Lennart offers 240 pages of menu plans and recipes and handy pull-out charts. De Lennart bases her method on the work of William Howard Hay, M.D. (who, she says, was misunderstood and therefore never received the Nobel prize). She refers to her "groundbreaking research" yet inexplicably gives no information about her credentials--except that her specialty is the Science of Consciousness and she wrote The Race That Should Be Human. Admittedly not a "medicine-man" or biochemist, she bases her conclusions on her personal experience and her own research (which, as far as we can tell, is anecdotal). --Joan Price