The perfect summer dinner? Allegedly, the body cannot digest lettuce as well in the evening as it can during the day. But is there anything to it? A nutrition expert explains.
Salad is a popular summer meal, especially in the warm season. Healthy, easy to prepare and light. However, one hears again and again that it is better to forego it in the evening, as raw vegetables are said to cause digestive problems at a late hour. But is there anything to the myth at all? We asked a nutritionist to explain it to us in more detail.
"The digestion of raw food is basically an elaborate digestion process," explains Franziska Dopf, graduate nutritionist from Eat Clever Forever. "Fruits and vegetables contain antibodies that serve as protection from natural enemies in nature, so to speak. These are difficult to digest and ferment, which can lead to abdominal pain, flatulence or diarrhea." The emphasis is on can. "It always depends on the amount you eat and how well your body can cope with it. Every intestine is different. However, a healthy person should not be able to cope with it badly in the evening either."
Dopf goes on to say: "Salad - generally raw fruit and vegetables - is alkaline and totally healthy. It simply takes longer to digest raw vegetables. Especially in the evening, because digestion goes to sleep overnight, like much in the body. It has not as much power as during the day. " The expert explains that this sleep mode also differs from person to person. But basically you can expect digestion to slow down from around 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. It would be best not to eat anything for at least three hours before bed. In this way you can prevent the food - as the saying goes - "heavy in the stomach".
"It is very important to eat it slowly and chew it sufficiently," says the nutritionist. "This way you can do a lot of preparatory work and make even harder-to-digest food easier on the gut. My tip would be: You should just try to eat sensibly. It's about not shoveling in completely late in the evening. It's difficult to generalize: For people with For sensitive intestines, it is certainly not so advisable to eat raw vegetables in the evening. You should just try out whether you are fine with it or not.
