>Saurday October 12 from 7:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. there will be a raw food >workshop at ALFI, The Living Foods Institute in Glendale, CA. ... Some of their dishes have been featured on "Eliza's Raw & Wild Food Show" shown here >locally on cable in Santa Monica. ... That is "Elysa's Raw & Wild Food Show" and it is also shown on cable (channel 27) in Albuquerque. Elysa creates remarkable recipes and she gives great attention to presentation, but many of her recipes are badly combined according to Natural Hygiene food combining rules. I see "recipes" from other NH sources that are also improperly combined. I am new to NH and my friend/teacher is very rigorous in following the rules. What is the feeling out there about strict adherence? Can you follow the rules 100% of the time or is it too limiting? I have seen posts stating a person eats nn% raw, so do people also eat nn% properly combined? Is combining still considered required (could I be learning out of date material) or is it perhaps only necessary during a cleansing period? And who was it who first said a raw (soaked) grain can be combined as a fruit and how could that be? Soaking may break down each entity into more digestible forms, but does a starch break down enough to become considered a sugar? Wouldn't a cooked grain break down also, just faster? If a grain is so "transformed," that implies one shouldn't be combining it as a starch. Any opinions and references will be gratefully accepted. Personal observation: From what I have learned so far, it seems to me that our bodies can handle improper combining -- it is just not optimal (like our bodies can handle meat, but animals are not a good (and are often a harmful) source of nutrients for us). Is that a fair statement? patric http://www.unm.edu/~patric/vsnm.html Vegetarian Society of New Mexico