But the keystone of food combining is to separate protein-rich foods from carbohydrate-rich foods. In order to test whether this method affected weight loss, some students of mine put two groups of people on a ' food combining diet' , with all the healthy foods recommended; one group ate them in any combination, and the other ate proteins and carbohydrates separately. Both groups lost weight, but there was marginally more weight lost in the group that followed strict food combining principles. Whether this was due to the food combining itself, or the awkwardness of the process (it isn' t easy to ' food combine' and eat out, so you can end up eating less) is unclear.