The Acid-Alkaline Hypothesis: The claim is that certain foods are Alkaline and certain foods are acidic... The claims:
For optimal human health, we need our bodies to be Alkaline
We achieve this by avoiding all acidic foods and eating plenty of alkaline foods
Alkaline foods look like fruits and vegetables.
Acidic foods look like animal products, particularly red meat.
However, this entire hypothesis rests on one giant question... Can the foods we eat significantly impact the pH of our blood?! The irrefutable answer to that question is... NO! Absolutely not. In fact, there has never been a single scientific study that has shown we can impact our blood pH through diet. How they track: Followers of the Alkaline Diet use Urine pH strips to tell them if they are Alkaline or Acidic... Does anyone see the huge problem here?! Urine pH does not tell you anything about your blood pH! The body tightly controls what enters the bloodstream. Anything that it doesn't want there is removed very quickly via a number of different processes. One of those processes being... excretion. Via urine. Of course, your diet can impact your urine pH but that does not mean it is impacting your blood pH in any way at all. Blood pH: Why does the body carefully regulate blood pH at right about 7.4? Because if your blood pH changes significantly... You die! Above 7.7?! Dead. Below 7.0?! Dead. With that information, how would it make any sense that evolution would allow us to face almost certain death simply by making the wrong food choice?! It doesn't. Which is why it is not true. If we could significantly impact our blood pH our species would have died off a long time ago. Indigenous Cultures: There are examples of indigenous cultures throughout history and over 230 contemporary indigenous cultures that get anywhere from 68% to almost 100% of their calories from acidic foods. Namely, animal proteins. According to the Acid-Alkaline Hypothesis, these people should be dying of cancer left and right. Yet, chronic Western diseases are almost completely absent in all of these cultures... Interesting. Cancer: The big, bold, claim is that cancer needs an acidic environment to thrive. However, virtually all of the cancer research done in vitro, in labs across the planet, is conducted in environments meant to mimic healthy, human blood, perfectly balanced with a pH of 7.4. And the cancer cells grow just fine! As you can see, there are almost endless ways to successfully debunk the Acid-Alkaline Hypothesis! All that said... Eat your leafy green vegetables!! As many as you can stomach! Just know that the benefits have nothing to do with whether or not they are Alkaline...
