Should you eat an acid diet or an alkaline diet? Should you drink alkaline water? Up until very recently, these were questions that were only asked to me by other professionals in my field, but lately, the general public started asking me these questions, so I decided to finally write an article about it. So get ready to bust some acid-alkaline diet myths.
Is an alkaline diet the panacea that will give you great health, no cancer, and weight loss? Or is that just pseudopscience? The short answer: pseudoscience, used to do 2 things:
- Promote vegan propaganda (sorry, I say it like it is. And by “sorry”, I mean “not sorry.” :))
- Sell you multi-level-marketing products that don’t work.
There’s even a book written called “Alkalize or Die.” Now, that’s a little extreme (and false), isn’t it?
But before we do some mytbusting, we first need to know what an alkaline diet is.
What is an Alkaline Diet?
An alkaline diets means eating foods that supposedly alkalize the blood. I say “supposedly” because you can’t really alkalize the blood with food. But that doesn’t stop a lot of ignoramuses from saying it does. Science be damned.
And alkalizing foods would be only fruits and vegetables. But wait – there are exceptions to that rule. Things like quail eggs, and egg whites are also alkaline. Should we eat those? Oh, and of course, things like meat, fish, dairy, and grains are acidic. So we should avoid those… right? And wait – dates, figs, spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, cranberries, and other fruits are acidic. Should we avoid those too? These last few fruits and veggies (and others) aren’t really mentioned as being acidic by alkaline-diet zealots.
Hmm…. The logic here is starting to crack.
Acid Alkaline Diet Myth #1: An Alkaline Diet Prevents and Reverses Cancer
This is by far the most common myth I hear when it comes to an alkaline diet. The rhetoric goes “cancer grows in an acidic environment, so if you eat alkaline foods, you will prevent and even reverse cancer!!!” (Added exclamation marks for both added enthusiasm, and added sarcasm).
According to one study, cancer makes the body acidic, not the other way around. An acidic body doesn’t make cancer. The alkaline zealots got the whole “chicken or the egg” thing wrong.
Myth #2: An Acidic Diet Causes You to Lose Bone Density, Which Leads to Osteoporosis
This is another common myth. Here’s how this one goes: “when your body is acidic, it has to pull calcium from the bones to neutralize the acidity, and make you alkaline.” False again!
The kidneys are the organ with the biggest “say” in how acidic or alkaline your blood is. When you eat acid-producing foods, the body quickly neutralizes them with bicarbonate (like baking soda). The result of this reaction is carbon dioxide (which you just exhale), and salt (which you just pee out). The kidney makes more bicarbonate to replace the used bicarbonate. No calcium leaving the bones here. For the geeks, here’s a study that backs that up, from the British Journal of Nutrition.
If you’re concerned about bone density, read this article about bone strength.
Myth #3: You Can Actually Change Your Blood Acidity Through Food
No, again. Your body tightly regulates how acidic your blood is. It ranges from 7.35-7.45 (that’s alkaline. Anything from 0-7 is acidic, and 7-14 is alkaline). That’s tight. And it doesn’t matter what you eat, your blood pH won’t change (however, your urine and saliva pH WILL change… not that that means a heck of a lot). The only ways to really change your blood pH are to stop breathing, stop peeing, or get kidney failure. Food doesn’t really enter the equation.
To take it a step further, different organs have different levels of acidity. You know your stomach acid? Well, it’s called “acid” for a reason. You need it to be extremely acidic to digest your food, and also protect you from infection. An alkaline stomach makes for a very unhealthy person.
Myth #4: An Alkaline Diet Helps You Lose Weight
The theory goes “acidic food causes inflammation, and inflammation causes weight gain.” Another instance of getting the whole “chicken or egg” thing wrong. Inflammation doesn’t necessarily cause weight gain. You can be inflamed and very lean. But fat gain does lead to inflammation (and even then, not all the time. There are plenty of overweight people who aren’t inflamed).
So why does an alkaline diet help you lose weight? For the same reason that every diet helps you lose weight: caloric reduction.
Conclusion
So why do some people see great health effects when going on an alkaline diet? For the simple reason that they are eating more fruits and vegetables and less junk. It has nothing to do with how acidic or alkaline it makes your body.
So my advice: when considering what to eat, whether a food is acidic or alkaline should not even enter your decision-making process.
