Alkaline Diet

[maineguy]

Hi,

I am just starting on an Alkaline Diet and researching things and I am amazed at how I am finding conflicting lists of whether a food is alkaline or acidic - and these lists are from the books that everyone is reviewing very highly !! Is it me or are people just reading one alkaline diet book and taking the list as gospel and not reading other lists and seeing the conflicts ? Watermelon is alkaline AND acidic depending on which list you look at...Cashews are the same, tomatoes, etc....

Has anyone else noticed this and how did you resolve it ? How do we know which list to trust ? Any list that is considered the "real deal" ? Thanks.

[aa101]

hmm im finding this too!!!
and i know it is very annoying as im having to stick to this alkaline diet for the next 6 months i need some certainty..
i am also finding potato as alkaline then as acid and buckwheat, millet, almonds, mangoes, coconut, pineapples etc very good alkaline foods then sites saying they are highly acidic!!
and also, stuff like beans
im looking at alkaline recipes and they list beans in them

i suppose we just have to look at what the most reliable looking site and what the majority are saying..

but yeah ill be interested in what other have to say on this o_O

[Chronic]

After speaking to people who know what they are talking about & can talk about it for hours & hours, it basically comes down to this

Fruit - Acidic
Basically any fruit with high sugar/sweetness is acidic, no way around it.
Lemon & Lime are good though & grapefruit/watermelon are okay. This is confirmed in the taste, they aren't very sweet!

Vegetables - Alkaline

Legumes - Slightly Acidic
White beans/navy beans are on the alkaline side along with soya beans & lima beans.

Grains - Acidic


A diet very high in vegetables, combined with legumes & small amounts of fruit & wholegrains is perfect. I find.

It seems daunting at first reading about all this alkaline stuff, complete diet change & all the conflicing stuff about fruits, but it just boils down to one point, eat lots & lots & lots of vegetables everyday

I still wake up to a delicious fruit smoothie everyday & have a small amount of wholefood spelt pasta with my veggie stir frys & always adds LOTS of legumes for protein, yummy

[eranbarash]

Hi!
I started my alkaline diet about a month and a half ago, according to "The pH Miracle" book, which seems to be the main authority in this area.

According to that, as you said, high sugar fruits are acidic, and should not be a part of your daily diet, especially not at the beginning stages of your diet.

However, after your body is properly balanced, fruit as an occasional treat, not eaten with any other sort of food, can be tolerated.

Tomatoes and lemons are acidic, but they form an alkaline affect on your body, therefore, they're great.

I agree, there are a lot of confusing things going around.. And I find it quite hard to figure them out. Let's see if this forum can get me into the light!

[mochamama]

I've been reading "The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health" by Christopher Vasey, and he addresses this issue. He lists foods as acidifying, alkalinizing, or weak-acid. The third catagory lists foods that could go either way depending on an individual's ability to metabolize acids. He also explains how to test if you're one of the lucky ones who can't metabolize acid well. That could clear up this issue for you.
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[Leslie Zornes]

The reasons for some of the confusion is that even if a food is acidic to start its what it does in the body that makes it alkaline...its the ash it leaves behind. Just remember green is good, alkaline ...and flesh foods and dairy are not. Then sodas and coffee are very acidic soda being 2.5 ph.

[vencentseth]

Im just new here. I am starting an Acid Alkaline Diet. I just want to ask if what it will be its side effects? www.acidalkalinediet.com
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[DavidD]

Like some others here, I noticed confusion on alkaline diet lists: the same food acid rated on one list, alkaline rated on another list. My questions now are: how does one know the information on either list is accurate? How does one know the same food in different bodies is not producing a different pH? What long term, blind experiments were ever done on this whole theory of alkalinity being beneficial and acidity not being beneficial? What are the qualifications of the writers of the books mentioned where post-ers are claiming some of these questions are being answered? MDs, for example, do not typically study nutrition. My gastroentologist, for instance, does not believe in the alkaline diet concept and says pH varies between blood and urine (nobody here is presumably measuring pH in blood, which is where pH would count if it does count, not in the urine). Does he know what he is talking about? I do not know. I think we have to establish what we are going to accept as authority for this whole theory and what we are going to accept as proven and not proven. Otherwise, we are eating and guessing.

[DavidD]

I have experimented with diets since the 1960s and was vegetarian for 27 years. I became so, not by intention but by unconsciously stopping eating fish and meat. I also trained very hard body-building for all those years. By the thinking of the time, I should not have been able to do that, but I did. Then, just as spontaneously, I began eating fish and most recently some meat again. All those decades I have been relatively healthy. And acidic, no doubt. Now I am considering the first thought-provoked (consciously intended), rather than gut-provoked (without intention) decision to possibly change my diet to be alkaline. I should add that I have read and studied nutrition, as well as taken supplements, for more than four decades. So, some of my decision is informed, some of it is gut-motivated (just what my body wants). As I said in my previous question, I am questioning the factual basis of the alkaline diet itself. To that end, I ask the following questions:

How can a diet like this one be healthy for all human beings? The alkaline diet lists I have seen consider meat to be pretty acid-forming. One of the post-ers here pointed that out too. Yet--get this--most human beings live in an environment where vegetables and fruits are NOT indigenous. That means, without modern transportation, they would not be able to eat vegetables and fruits, much less legumes, most of the year. Without modern refrigerators, they could not store them either. That leaves what?--Meat and fish. Meat and fish are almost the sole diet of people living in the far north. Yet, they have the lowest incidence of heart disease and some other major health problems. How can meat and fish--almost exclusively--very acid-forming, we are told--be healthy? Putting this question the other way: were humans meant to migrate from the sunbelt, the narrow band of latitudes where food can be grown in the ground year-round? If you will notice, many if not all of the books on alkaline diet and many on vegetarian diet are published by authors living in precisely the sunniest regions of this planet: Australia, Hawaii, Southern California. What about that?

[klrman]

Good point DavidD and too bad to creators of this diet never jump in this forum to answer the most clever questions like yours. We are all smart though and should be able to figure out a few things. One thing for me is that regions of the world where people are living naturally on a high alkaline diet from either food, water, or both food and water seem to live almost disease free and live long too.

Take traditional greek island food. The few islands that do stick to their traditional way of eating live long and healthy lives. They eat greek salad which consists of olive oil, lemon, oregano, tomatoes, greens, onions and sometimes garlic, all supposedly alkalizing foods. They also have goat cheese in there and eat salmon to balance acidity. We all know our bodies are different in that we all experience stress differently etc, but it seems going back to greens sure doesn't hurt.

[DavidD]

Klrman, but you have simply noted another generally warm country (correct me if I am wrong) where people eat lots of vegetables and other available foods. My point was, far north and far south of the equator, people cannot get the kinds of foods, on a regular basis, that are generally considered alkalinizing. Rather, they live on acid-forming meat and fish when they live on the coasts. They get roots and leaves all year, however edible, and some berries in some locations in the warmer months. The point being, their diet is vastly different from those elsewhere on account of climate. Unless climate itself alkalinizes, we have to consider whether the pH of blood is all that important.

From another standpoint, I am increasingly persuaded that the genetic type, the somatic type, the metabolic type, possibly the blood type--but some type of type--is more important than the pH of the blood. In other words, that no one diet fits all types. That metabolism or food type matters. And that would mean environmental factors matter, because over thousands of years the environment modifies the genes. Humans migrated from, we believe, temperate climates. That means we wandered from probably our genetically or metabolically best food supply. We may not have adapted cellularly to the food supply where we landed and stayed.

Just on a minor observational note. I ride the bus a lot. I have for decades. This gives me excellent opportunities to observe people's hair and neck skin. I have noticed that Orientals are turning grey and showing drier skin than they used to. I am seeing gray hairs on people in their twenties, always accompanied by dry skin. This was not so twenty years ago. I attribute this to the junk food they eat and the fact black hair shows grey very clearly. I attribute the dry skin to the lack of fish oils and other natural sources of omega 3 fatty acids native to their diet in their home countries. My point is: our diet is aging them. My point for us is: our diet may be aging us because it is not our native (prehistoric) diet. The food our ancestors ate is the point, and in particular, the food one's own ancestors ate is every individual's point. Regulating pH is not necessarily going to get us back to the individual's ancestral diet because many mixes of foods may serve to alkalinize, yet such a diet may lack other necessary nutrients required for healthy longevity.

And I still wonder why the lists of alkalinizing foods are not consistent. But, yes, eating lots of vegetables seems consistent. Except, as I say, what of the environment from which we as individuals sprang?

[klrman]

DavidD, I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Good common sense and reasoning. Genetics must play a role, agreed. As for why some charts on alkalizing food do not agree with others and are often in conflict may be answered from a book I just ordered. Book is about the main alkalizing foods and then foods that could go either way depending on our individual metabolism's and how to test the foods that are in that "iffy" range. Once I thoroughly read through it, will post the info here to help others once tested and convinced it is actually true. I suspect whoever wrote most of the alkaline charts never took into consideration our different metabolic rates and in turn most of these charts are very general and not 100% accurate although some foods make all charts such as Alfalfa, cucumbers etc.

The one thing that gets me is that when we die, are cells rapidly turn acidic and the microbes take over, so for most of us, it sounds reasonable to try and keep our urine ph around 7.0 to 7.4 constantly so that it will in some way affect our well being in the long run. (my uneducated guess!)

[DavidD]

Klrman, thanks for the reply. I have this week heard of something called alkaline water, made with an ionizer, it seems. I have not looked it up yet, but the idea is that one drinks this and it alkalinizes the fluids and tissues in the body because, obviously, water contributes to the liquid portion of the blood in the body and the blood permeates every tissue. It would be nice to just be able to eat for energy and not worry about the charts and glug water and have it change the pH to ideal. Unfortunately, I hear the ionizer costs several thousands of dollars.

[klrman]

DavidD, thanks for keeping this thread alive too! I was just going to look into that myself about the water. Right now using a little bit of baking soda and lemon for my water and some others use coral calcium added to their water so lots of ways I guess to do it but I really don't know which way is best yet.

[DavidD]

Klrman, I see we are in real time. Way cool as some would say. I just started taking two tablespoonsful of apple cider vinegar and then gargling with baking soda to save my tooth enamel. I am hoping that vinegar may help. So, you are drinking lemon juice and baking soda. What are the proportions and are you noticing an improvement in your pH in your urine? Is there any problem digesting? Baking soda neutralizes HCL, although you are taking some citric acid (not nearly as strong) in the form of lemon juice. Coral calcium worries me because it is essentially calcium carbonate neutralizes stomach acid and may cause kidney stones, being a pretty inassimilable form of calcium, according to some at least.