Meal planning on the Hay Diet

Meal planning is important for anyone who wants to save money on food, reduce wastage, and ensure they’re getting healthy food and balanced nutrition, and losing weight if they need to. We all learn about balancing meals, making sure we have protein, fat, carbohydrates and fibre in every meal, but with the Hay diet the balancing is done over the day rather than each meal, and the principles of food combining are followed.

The main aim of the Hay diet is to ensure your blood is alkaline rather than acidic, because it is acidic conditions that tend to lead to conditions such as arthritis, and the way to do this is to make sure you have at least one “alkaline” meal a day. This is a meal based solely on fruit, vegetables or salads, but to make it more interesting you can add a small amount of milk, soy milk, or yoghurt. It’s often easiest to have this for breakfast, but a mixed salad at lunch or vegetable stir-fry or vegetable soup is also good.

Your remaining meals can be one protein meal and one starch meal, which means your meal can have a concentrated protein source (such as meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese), or a concentrated starch source (such as bread, pasta, rice, potatoes). In either meal the amount of protein or starch is small (3-4 oz), and about 70-80% of the meal is taken up with vegetables, fruits or salad.

If you are overweight you will lose weight on this diet, but once you are at your ideal weight you will stay there. There are many people who have been on this diet for over 70 years.

A good book I would recommend is called The Food Combining for Health Cookbook, by Jean Joice and Jackie Le Tissier. It’s a sensible book with great recipes, and unlike some books it doesn’t over-complicate things with hundreds of silly rules.

Here are some ideas. A = Alkaline meal, S = Starch, P= Protein.

Day 1:
Breakfast: Alkaline muesli (see below) – A
Lunch: Pumpkin soup with a good wholemeal or rye bread – S
Dinner: Creamed chicken with steamed vegetables, followed by fruit salad and cream or yoghurt– P

Day 2:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs or better still, Jean Joice’s Egg Savoury with some cherry tomatoes– P
Lunch: Baked beans on toast (homemade without tomato sauce), or mushrooms on toast – S
Dinner: Parsnip and Swede bake, followed by baked apples with ginger – A

Day 3:
Breakfast: Fruit and yoghurt – A
Lunch: Small steak and large salad – P
Dinner: Lentil and herb burgers with mashed potato and vegetables – S

Note: no alcohol with an alkaline meal. Wine is fine with a protein meal, and beer or cider are fine with a starch meal, but all alcohol is in strict moderation.

Alkaline muesli
This recipe uses a tablespoon of oats, but since it is such a small amount it can still be classed as an alkaline meal. For one serving:

1 tblsp oats (not instant), soaked overnight in 3 tblsp water (preferably spring water)
1 eating apple
juice of 1 lemon or 1/2 an orange
1 tblsp well-chopped almonds
3 tblsp milk
fruit or berries in season (if desired)

Soak the oats overnight, then add the grated apple, lemon juice, almonds and milk. Add any fruit you like, if desired. Mix and serve.

Snacks
If you want snacks during the day, try a piece of fruit or a FEW nuts.