Many people blend ripe mango with milk to make a cold smoothie in the heat. A glass of chilled smoothie refreshes body and mind in an instant, and in this honey season many also like to eat ripe mango mashed with rice and milk.

It is a tasty and popular food. But have you ever wondered whether eating mango and milk together is actually good or bad for the body? Here is what Ayurveda says.

According to Ayurveda, combining fruit with dairy, especially milk, can be a big mistake. Dr Archana Batra, a dietitian and nutritionist in India, says such bad food combinations can cause systemic disorders.

If not properly treated, she says, this raises the risk of serious conditions such as impotence, blindness, insanity, infertility, digestive illness, indigestion, fermentation, putrefaction and gas, as well as toxaemia.

According to another well-known nutritionist, Neha Premji, mixing fruit with milk and consuming it can cause acidity and congestion in the digestive tract.

The fibre in fruit and the wrong digestive combination can cause severe gas, because milk is heavy and high in protein and fat and digests much more slowly than fruit. That later causes indigestion and harms gut health.

According to this expert, not only mango but some fruits such as banana, strawberry, pineapple, lemon and orange produce heat during digestion, while milk cools the stomach. These fruits turn sour when they break down in the stomach.

When milk and these fruits are combined, their opposing properties slow the digestive system. The enzyme system is disrupted, leading to the build-up of toxins. For this reason, people who often eat such fruit with milk may have more colds, coughs, phlegm and allergies.

Dr Batra adds that milk and watermelon should not be eaten together either. Both are cooling, yet milk is a laxative and watermelon a diuretic, and milk takes longer to digest than other foods.

Ayurveda warns against drinking milk with sour foods, because the stomach acid needed to digest watermelon curdles milk. This unsuitable combination causes digestive problems and confuses the intelligence of the cells, which can lead to various illnesses.

She says that not only sour fruit but sweet fruit too should not be mixed with milk. On the same subject, Indian Ayurveda expert Dr Diksha Bhavsar Savaliya has advised in an Instagram post to eat mango only as a fruit and not to mix it with any other food.

Mixing mango with any food can cause fermentation in the gut, which worsens acne and other skin problems, and eating other food with mango also increases digestive trouble.

So eat mangoes at least an hour before or after a meal. To keep the body cool and as a refreshing drink, you can also mix a teaspoon of basil (tulsi) seeds with mango, which cools the body further and helps prevent acne.

Based on a report by HealthShots.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.