Understanding the Alkaline Diet: A Simple Guide for Healthier Living

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The alkaline diet is about eating less acidic foods, like meat and cheese, and more alkaline foods, like fruits and veggies. People who like this diet say it can lower the chances of getting long-term health problems like cancer, weak bones, kidney issues, and high blood pressure. But some experts say there's not enough proof that it really helps.

How the Alkaline Diet Works

The alkaline diet wants to balance the pH levels in your body. pH measures how acidic or alkaline something is. Here's how it works:

• pH values range from 0 to 14.
• Up to 7 is acidic, 7 is neutral, and above 7 is alkaline.
• People who support this diet say raising your body’s pH can lower the risk of some health issues.

Too much acid in your body can lead to mild acidosis over time. This might raise the risk of illnesses like cancer, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Some studies suggest that eating more alkaline, or non-acidic, foods could help lower these risks. But it's not clear if the acidity itself causes these problems.

For example, animal studies show cancer cells may grow more in acidic environments. But human studies haven't proved if alkaline diets can really prevent or treat cancer.

Also, changing your body's overall pH with diet is hard. Different parts of your body have different pH levels. For instance, your stomach's juices are very acidic to help with digestion. Your blood pH is tightly controlled by your kidneys and lungs. It's usually between 7.35 and 7.45, and if it goes too high or low, it can be dangerous.

While adding more alkaline foods like fruits and veggies to your diet is healthy, there's not enough proof that a full alkaline diet is best for your health.

The Alkaline Diet's Questionable Origins

The person who made the alkaline diet popular was Robert Young. He wrote a book about it in 2002 called "The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health." But in 2016, he got in trouble for practicing medicine without a license.

Guidelines of Alkaline Diet 

The alkaline diet doesn't sort foods by how sour or not they are, but by how they work in our bodies. It looks at something called potential renal acid load (PRAL) to measure this. PRAL tells us how much acid a food makes in our bodies.

For instance, oranges are sour, but they have a negative PRAL, so they're seen as good in the alkaline diet. On the other hand, salmon might not taste sour, but it makes acid in the body, so it's not recommended on this diet.

What to Eat and Drink on the Alkaline Diet

The alkaline diet focuses a lot on fruits and veggies. The idea is to eat foods that have negative PRALs (which means they don't make your body too acidic) and avoid foods with positive PRALs to stop your body from getting too acidic.

Foods and Drinks to Enjoy:

• Fruits: Go for apples, unsweetened apple juice, dried apricots, bananas, figs, raisins, prunes, dates, unsweetened grape and orange juices.

• Vegetables: Load up on beets, beet greens, Swiss chard, dandelion greens, kale, leeks, mustard greens, spinach, and turnip greens.

• Herbs and Spices: Try fresh dill, dried basil, coriander, curry powder, oregano, and parsley.

• Sweeteners: Stick to honey and marmalade.

• Beverages: Drink water, mineral soda water, tea, and some types of coffee.

• Fats: Olive oil and margarine are seen as okay.

Why Does it Matter?

The focus here is to keep your body's acidity in check by choosing the right foods. This means eating more alkaline foods and fewer acidic ones.

Foods and Drinks Not In the Alkaline Diet

When you're following the alkaline diet, it's best to steer clear of foods that can make your body more acidic. Here's what to avoid:

• Animal Proteins: This includes things like dairy, eggs, fish, shellfish, poultry, and red meat.

• Nuts and Seeds: Especially watch out for peanuts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds.

• Starchy Foods: Say no to brown rice, oats, pasta, breakfast cereals, rice, whole wheat bread, bran, and rye.

• Legumes: Lentils and peas are on the list of foods to avoid.

• Sweets: Skip gelatin-based desserts and puddings.

• Beverages: Avoid colas and pale beers, as they can make your body more acidic.

Meal Ideas for the Alkaline Diet

If you're following a strict alkaline diet, your meals will mostly be made up of fruits and vegetables. Here's an example of what a day of eating might look like:

• Breakfast: Enjoy a vegetable hash with a side of banana.
• Lunch: Have a kale salad topped with avocado, blueberries, tomatoes, red onion, and a dressing made from lemon juice and olive oil.
• Snack: Grab an apple and pair it with some herbal tea.
• Dinner: Cook up a delicious vegetable stir-fry served over cauliflower rice.

Alkaline diet benefits

Advantages of the Alkaline Diet

The alkaline diet is beneficial because it focuses on nutrient-rich foods like fruits and vegetables. Here are some health advantages of including more alkaline foods in your diet.

May Boost Heart Health

Switching to an alkaline diet might help your heart stay healthy in several ways:

Reduced Fatty Foods: The alkaline diet encourages eating fewer fatty animal foods like red meat and cheeses. Instead, it focuses on plant foods that are rich in fiber.

Increased Fiber: Fruits and vegetables, which are central to the alkaline diet, are packed with fiber. Eating more fiber can help lower LDL-cholesterol levels in your blood, which is important for heart health.

Meeting Dietary Guidelines: A recent study discovered that people following a lower PRAL diet (which means they're eating more alkaline foods) were more likely to meet the national guidelines for heart-healthy nutrients like potassium and fiber. They also consumed less saturated fat, a type of fat that can raise LDL-cholesterol levels.

Rich in Potassium, Low in Sodium: Alkaline foods like fresh fruits and vegetables are high in potassium and low in sodium. This balance can help lower blood pressure levels, which is beneficial for heart health.

May Prevent Kidney Stones 

Eating lots of animal protein can make your pee more acidic, which might raise the risk of kidney stones. But if you eat less meat, fish, and chicken, and more fruits and veggies with potassium, your pee becomes less acidic. This can help prevent kidney stones from forming or coming back.

Is the Alkaline Diet Safe?

Even though the alkaline diet focuses on healthy, nutritious foods, it's not usually the best choice for everyone's health. Here's why it might not be safe for everyone.

It Lacks Protein

The alkaline diet doesn't include animal proteins and doesn't have enough plant-based proteins, so it's hard to get all the protein you need. Protein is super important for keeping muscles and bones strong, helping you grow, and keeping your immune system healthy.

Following a strict alkaline diet isn't the best idea for everyone's health, especially for those who need more protein in their diet, like kids, pregnant or breastfeeding people, and older folks.

It Eliminates Entire Food Groups

While it's okay to cut out certain foods if you have a health condition like celiac disease, it's generally not a good idea to remove entire food groups from your diet without a good reason.

If you follow an alkaline diet and cut out animal proteins and dairy, you might miss out on important nutrients like calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12 over time. This super strict diet can also make you think about food in a not-so-healthy way, as you're cutting out whole groups of nutritious foods for no clear reason.

Plus, sticking to a strict alkaline diet means most of your meals will be made up of fruits and veggies. While these foods are packed with vitamins and minerals, you won't get enough calories just from them.

So, following an alkaline diet can make it hard to get all the nutrients you need, and it might not be great for your physical and emotional health in the long run.

Conclusion

The alkaline diet suggests eating foods that are low in acid, like fruits and vegetables, to supposedly balance the body's pH levels and reduce the chance of long-term illnesses.

Having more fruits and veggies in your meals can help prevent chronic diseases, but there isn't strong evidence that directly connects eating alkaline foods to better health. It's not necessary or recommended to follow a strict alkaline diet that cuts out proteins, dairy, and grains in order to have a healthy, balanced diet.