Article by ross
Even natural health magazines and newspaper-nutritionists get it wrong. And frankly it’s lazy. Lazy research, lazy journalism and misinformation that people with a platform feel is acceptable to feed to the public.
There is such an attempt to discredit the alkaline diet, yet millions of people have regained their health and conquered health challenges with it.
And what’s the problem? (Well, it’s almost entirely about point #5 below, but we’ll get onto that)…
The alkaline diet is all about eating and living clean, with real whole foods, natural foods and a focus on cutting out the crap that is directly responsible for millions of deaths each year. Why is this not acceptable to some?
So I finally felt it was time to put a few things straight.
Five Things the Media Needs to Know About the Alkaline Diet:
1: It’s Not About Changing Your pH
Did you hear that?
It’s NOT ABOUT CHANGING YOUR PH!
99 out of 100 articles from doctors, mainstream ‘health experts’ and the media say the alkaline diet is not valid because you can’t change the body’s pH. They say that the body has an intricate system in place to always maintain your pH level – no matter what you eat.
This is 100% true.
This is not the aim of the alkaline diet. You are not trying to make your pH more alkaline.
The entire focus of the alkaline diet is to give your body the nourishment and tools it needs to MAINTAIN that pH.
Whenever I read an article about the alkaline diet online or in the print media and they start with that premise, you know you might as well ignore the rest of the piece.
If folks like me who believe in living alkaline DID think we were trying to make our body pH 8 or 9 then we would be nuts. And we’d be dead.
Incredible stress occurs in the body when our body has to constantly take the action needed to maintain our pH.
This is the basis of chronic disease and the myriad health challenges most people face. It causes inflammation, immune imbalance, yeast and candida overgrowth, digestive damage, weakened bones, premature aging, cell death and so much more.
The sooner the media understood that the alkaline diet is about eating the foods that will support your body, and eliminating the foods that stress the body (it’s as simple as that), the better.
p.s. it’s not about changing your pH. It’s not about changing your pH. It’s not about changing your pH.
➞Takeaway Point: you can’t change your pH. The goal of the alkaline diet is to feed your body the nutrients and nourishment it needs to MAINTAIN your pH.
2. It’s Not Really a ‘Diet’ It’s a Lifestyle
The media so often bundles the alkaline diet up in it’s weight loss guides, or reviews of ‘top ten diets this summer’.
This is not what the alkaline diet is. In fact I wish it wasn’t called the alkaline ‘diet’.
My Live Energized approach to the alkaline diet is: it’s lifestyle that nourishes your body with every tool it needs for you to thrive and live your best, most energized life.
If you want a quick fix, that’s fine – totally. But the alkaline approach is all about a lifestyle. It’s about abundant long-term health and vitality.
Especially the way I teach it.
I believe that health = energy = happiness. It’s as simple as that.
Living alkaline is not about losing weight and looking good. It’s about feeling energized, full of vitality, strong and vibrant – and losing weight and looking good will be a nice by-product of that.
I believe that when you have energy, every area of your life can grow and improve.
When you have energy you wake up earlier, you have time to have a delicious, healthy breakfast with your family, you perform better in your career, you think clearly, your mood is enhanced.
You have time to enjoy your interests and hobbies, waking up earlier and staying up later without crashing in front of the TV.
Your relationships, career, finances, health and happiness all improve when you have that abundant, all-day, natural energy.
This is what the alkaline diet LIFESTYLE is all about.
And this is what Live Energized is all about.
And what I am all about.
And I LOVE it!
And remember, it’s not about giving everything up and living a perfect life of salads and juices.
You never have to be perfect, you never have to give up all of your favourite foods.
You can still go out with friends, you can still eat at restaurants and have a blow out, you can still enjoy treats and cheat days. You can still have a life!
It’s about living consciously, living 80/20, making the right choice when it makes sense and having a treat when that makes sense. It’s about getting the good in as a priority and letting the bad stuff take care of itself.
It’s about loving your body and loving the way you feel and letting that guide your food decisions.
➞Takeaway Point: it’s about making healthy changes, sustainably, so that you can get energized, healthy and happy and keep it that way – without giving up everything you love.
3. Fruit Juices are NOT Alkaline
This one bugs me.
The headline reads:
Get Alkaline Now With Our Quick-Fix Juices…
Sounds good to me, where do I start?
“Green” Juice for Summer?
Yum, sounds delicious! What’s in it?
Per person you get the juice of one apple, 165g of pineapple alongside the green stuff (broccoli stalk, kale and spinach).
Don’t get me wrong, the broccoli, kale and spinach is great. Awesome in fact.
But you’re drinking it with FOURTY-THREE GRAMS OF SUGAR).
A can of coke contains 39 grams.
Now, I am not saying that the fructose in the juiced fruit is like-for-like comparable to the high-fructose-corn-syrup in the cola, but it is not far off.
Research has proven that fructose without fibre (ie. Juiced fruits) causes absolute havoc in the body.
The world is wising up to the fact that we should not be consuming juiced fruit (yes, even when we juice it ourselves) – but of course, there are a lot of people who have built their business on saying fruits in juices is healthy.
Fruit contains sugar. That’s a fact.
Fructose, glucose, sucrose, galactose…they all have the same result in the body: inflammation, acidity, insulin resistance and more. Whether they are ‘natural’ or not doesn’t matter.
Fruits, generally, are not alkaline forming, so we shouldn’t be juicing them to remove the fibre.
We should eat them in moderation, in-season and whole – with the fibre intact.
➞Takeaway point: stop juicing fruit – it’s not alkaline and it’s not healthy.
4. It IS Scientifically Proven
I love it when the media and mainstream nutritionists claim that the alkaline diet is unproven and there is no research to back it.
Again – lazy.
If they had looked even for a second, they would see hundreds and hundreds of research papers proving the alkaline diet is valid and beneficial for health.
Here are just a few:
Research Title: Influence of nutrition on acid-base balance–metabolic aspects.
Takeaway Quote: “Nutrition has long been known to strongly influence acid-base balance.”
Author: Remer. T
Published In: European Journal of Nutrition 2001 Oct;40(5):214-20.
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Research Title: The Role of Mitochondria in Cancer and Other Chronic Diseases:
Takeaway Quote: “The evidence appears to be strong that an alkaline diet high in antioxidants would help prevent chronic degenerative disease and cancer, and lead to a better quality of life.”
Authors: Dorothy D Zeviar; Michael J Gonzalez; Jorge R Miranda Massari; Nina Mikirova;
Published in: Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
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Research Title: A higher alkaline dietary load is associated with greater indexes of skeletal muscle mass in women:
Takeaway Quote: “This study found a more alkaline diet was positively associated with muscle mass in women suggesting a role for dietary acid–base load in muscle loss.”
Authors: A. A. Welch, A. J. MacGregor, J. Skinner, T. D. Spector, A. Moayyeri, A. Cassidy
Published in: Osteoporosis International
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Research Title: Influence of diet on acid-base balance:
Takeaway Quote: “It is well established that diet and certain food components have a clear impact on acid-base balance.
For adults, the following factors are involved: 1) the chemical composition of foods (i.e., their content of protein, chloride, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium), 2) the different intestinal absorption rates of the relevant nutrients, 3) the metabolic generation of sulfate from sulfur-containing amino acids, 4) the grade of dissociation of phosphorus at the physiologic pH of 7.4, and 5) the ionic valence of calcium and magnesium.”
Author: Remer T
Published in: Semin Dial. 2000 Jul-Aug;13(4):221-6.
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Research Title: Diet, evolution and aging–the pathophysiologic effects of the post-agricultural inversion of the potassium-to-sodium and base-to-chloride ratios in the human diet:
Takeaway Quote: “Any level of acidosis may be unacceptable from an evolutionarily perspective, and indeed, that a low-grade metabolic alkalosis may be the optimal acid-base state for humans.”
Authors: Frassetto L1, Morris RC Jr, Sellmeyer DE, Todd K, Sebastian A.
Published in: European Journal of Nutrition; 2001 Oct;40(5):200-13.
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Research Title: The Alkaline Diet: Is There Evidence That an Alkaline pH Diet Benefits Health?
Takeaway Quote: “From the evidence outlined above, it would be prudent to consider an alkaline diet to reduce morbidity and mortality of chronic disease that are plaguing our aging population.”
Author: Schwalfenberg GK
Published in: Journal of Environmental and Public Health
That’s just a tiny collection. There are many research articles proving the alkaline diet’s benefits here
At the very least – do you even need proof to:
– eat more: vegetables, greens, salads, nuts, seeds, healthy oils
– eat less: refined foods, junk foods, sugar, fast foods, takeaways
– drink more: water
– drink less: alcohol, soda
– exercise well, stay stress free
Do you need research to tell you that’s a good idea? Probably not, but the evidence is there too.
➞Takeaway Point: the alkaline diet has been researched and proven over and over.
5. And What It All Comes Down To…No Big Pharma or Big Food Companies Can Make Money From It
There is no financial gain to popularise the alkaline diet in the media. There is abundant evidence of food being able to heal just as well as many conventional medical treatments (see the research on turmeric for starters).
You can’t bottle the alkaline diet and patent it.
The pharmaceutical industry can’t patent kale.
And remember there is hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce at stake if people stand up and stop consuming cheap meat, grains, dairy, sugary drinks, fast foods the way we have for the past hundred years.
There is no huge corporate-level revenue available here.
The very essence of the alkaline approach puts whole food, natural, locally grown where possible, organic where possible, real-as-close-to-the-earth eating and living at the fore.
➞ Takeaway Point: There is no big-buck, big-food profit centre here, so don’t expect to see the mainstream ever truly adopt a natural approach to health!
It’s up to us to exercise our choice, live consciously, eat consciously, be aware of our body, how we feel and to ignore the marketing, the half-truths (margarine is heart-healthy? McDonalds gets the Heart Foundation tick? Fats are bad for you?), and the alterior motives of the media, government and pharmaceutical industry and take the power over our health into our own hands.
We’ve never had greater access to information, knowledge and choice.
Let’s live healthy, live energized and thrive!
Ross
