Who knew it was so simple?

My mom recognizes that I’m known far and wide for my cutting-edge thinking with regard to diet and nutrition, and how I’m always ready to do what needs to be done to bring truth and wisdom to you, my fourteens of readers. It is in this vein in which I’ve tried Stillmans (fail), VLCD (mega fail), and of course who can forget the Pink Diet, in which I only ate or drank foods/beverages that were pink (okay, not big in terms of weight loss, but at least the mai tais were tasty. Hey, they’re kind of pink!).

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that my mom came running over to me eagerly a few days ago, after she came across a most illuminating article in the paper, entitled “Eat This and That!”

Now, this is different from the “Eat this not that!’ people, who’ve made a career – a lucrative one, it seems – out of informing the apparently clueless populace that yes, eating the wizened and desiccated bag of apple slices from Hardees rather than the Super Mega Monster Cheese-Buster ThickBurger will save you approximately 4,000 calories. Who knew?

Anyway, the basic premise of this article revolves around food combining. For those of you not in the know, this means that when you combine certain foods, there can be a synergistic effect, in both negative and positive ways. For example, with the Atkins diet, you’re warned to not eat any carbs with your proteins lest you want to blow up like a jellyfish that’s been left to fester out in the sun on a hot summer’s day. Conversely, eating celery with pretty much anything cancels out most of the calories due to the vigorous digestive processes required to do anything with the celery.

This article suggests that by combining certain foods, you negate the detrimental impact of one of them. To wit:

“In a perfect world, you’d eat healthily all the time, but let’s get real.

The good news: Consuming certain nutritious foods with harmful foods can help minimize the damage.”

And so we have the following suggested combinations: hot dogs and sauerkraut. A high-fat meal plus grapes. Salty food plus chocolate. And for the coup de grace: fried chicken (!) plus cherries, of all things! Two of the most perfect foods in the world!

Well. This completely changes things for me, as I’m sure it does for you. Now, while the article doesn’t mention anything about weight loss specifically, we all know that good health and nutrition go hand in hand with being svelte and lean and losing weight, yes? Right? I will report back.