Kale. Avocado. Celery. Cucumber. Lemon. Spinach. Notice a pattern here? No: it’s not just that these foods are all the ingredients for an insipid green juice; they’re all ‘alkaline’.
Alkaline is in inverted commas because, as online nutrition coach and NYT journalist Max Lugavere points out, “This quality is determined by the pH of their ash residue, not the actual acidity of the foods.”
Nonetheless, proponents of the Alkaline Diet believe these foods, once digested, bring your body’s pH back down to a more basic position on the acidity scale, thus improving your health.
This is why they eat such foods as fruits, nuts, legumes and vegetables, which are ‘alkaline’, and moderate their consumption of meat, poultry, fish, dairy, eggs, grains and alcohol, which are more ‘acidic’.
But… While it is true that the body’s natural pH level should be slightly alkaline (between 7.35 and 7.45), medical websites like Healthline say there is no solid evidence that “replacing acid-forming foods with alkaline foods can improve health.”
Max Lugavere is stronger in his criticism, explaining how—while it’s true that the foods you eat leave an “ash” residue known as metabolic waste—it doesn’t matter whether this residue is alkaline or acidic because it has to pass through your stomach—a highly acidic zone with a pH of 3.5—before it breaks down and nutrition is extracted.
Which is why changing the pH of what you eat can change the pH levels of your urine (the byproduct of metabolic waste) but can’t change the pH of your blood—or why, as Max Lugavere points out, if there was then you wouldn’t want to eat it.
“There is no food anywhere that will change your blood pH to any significant degree. If there was, it’d probably kill you.”
To read the full rant, check out the Instagram post below. And remember: Max isn’t saying “Alkaline” foods like fruits, nuts, veggies and legumes are unhealthy—he’s saying the reason they are healthy has nothing to do with the pH of the metabolic waste they produce.