[liamona]

Originally Posted by Antarananda

The whole alkalizing movement smacks of pseudoscience.

What's interesting is that this "theory" has been around for a long time, even during nutrition researcher Weston Price's time. He gave an interesting talk about it to the New York Dental Centennial Meeting in 1934:

Acid-Base Balance of Diets Which Produce Immunity to Dental Caries Among the South Sea Islanders and Other Primitive Races

"It is not my belief that this is related to potential acidity or potential alkalinity of the food but to the mineral and activator content of the nutrition during the developmental periods, namely, prenatal, postnatal and childhood growth. It is important that the very foods that are potentially acid have as an important part of the source of that acidity the phosphoric acid content, and an effort to eliminate acidity often means seriously reducing the available phosphorus, an indispensable soft and hard tissue component.

It is my belief that much harm has been done through the misconception that acidity and alkalinity were something apart from minerals and other elements. Many food faddists have undertaken to list foods on the basis of their acidity and alkalinity without the apparent understanding of the disturbances that are produced by, for example, condemning a food because it contains phosphoric acid, not appreciating that phosphorus can only be acid until it is neutralized by combining with a base.

An illustration of this is the following case: A girl was brought for assistance and study who still had her childhood face at sixteen years of age. There had been marked delay in physical development and function other than this growth factor. I was advised that the nutrition of this child had been very largely guided by the literature of the Defensive Diet League which, as one of its principal premises, has urged the keeping down of the acid-producing foods. This girl was so conscious of her underdevelopment that she disliked to go to social events with those of her age. When brought to me for assistance and correction of her facial deformity I did not deem it wise or feasible to undertake to change the position of the facial bones by use of orthodontic appliances. I depended entirely on a reinforced nutrition. We supplied mineral and activator carrying foods, with the hope that the growth factors might be in part latent and still be capable of stimulation. There was a very marked improvement in the facial development. In one year she largely developed her adult face. She is very conscious of this improvement and, instead of being reticent and reserved, she has become the leader in her group.

It is very unfortunate that medical and dental science has not looked to the primitive people earlier for standards of not only physical perfection but also of nutrition.

Indeed, while I am dictating this text I have been interrupted by a nurse who has come to inquire whether the teachings so strongly heralded by certain groups should be followed, namely, that proteins and carbohydrates should never be eaten together.

I have seldom found anywhere in the world such a high percentage of physical excellence with high immunity to our modern degenerative diseases as among these people of the South Sea Islands. Their diet practically every day consisted of eating the proteins from the animal life of the sea with the carbohydrates of their land vegetables, many of which were very rich in starch. This was equally true of the Gallics in the Outer Hebrides, living almost entirely on oats and sea foods."