OH! Magazine - Australian Version April 2015

WHAT IS THE ALKALINE DIET? DR JOANNA www.drjoanna.com.au ( Nutrition ) Dr Joanna explores this popular nutrition fad. he Alkaline Diet is often touted by celebrities as their secret to feeling and looking so fabulous. It’s called the alkaline diet – or sometimes the alkaline-ash diet or alkaline-acid diet – and proponents claim it can help you to lose weight, have more energy, reduce your risk of many chronic diseases including cancer and have stronger bones. Sounds pretty awesome doesn’t it? T The theory is that the typical modern Western diet is affecting the acid load on the body, with knock-on negative health effects. Foods that we eat are either acid forming, or alkaline-forming with some being more or less neutral. The diet advises limiting the consumption of acidforming foods, including meat, dairy, highly processed foods, alcohol, grain products and refined sugar (although this is actually not acid or base-producing). Instead, the recommendation is to eat plenty of foods that are alkaline-forming, predominantly fruits and veggies. So the question is, does it work? Unsurprisingly, lots of people will lose weight by following that advice, but not as a result of any change in body acidity. Clearly, cutting out processed foods, added sugar and alcohol while packing your diet with veggies and fruit is a positive health move and will, more than likely, reduce your kilojoule intake and boost your nutrient consumption. For these changes, this diet certainly gets my tick of approval. However there is more to this than meets the eye. Acidity and alkalinity is measured using pH on a scale of 1 to 14. Neutral is a pH of 7, below 7 indicates acidity, and above 7 is alkaline. Our blood is slightly alkaline and although it can vary very slightly, the body has sensitive systems to ensure it stays within the range of 7.35 and 7.45. I have heard people dramatically announce that their body is acidic, having had their blood tested. This is just not possible as they would be severely ill, or dead! In contrast, other parts of your body are acidic, purposefully. For example, your stomach has a pH of about 3.5, sometimes even lower, which is necessary to start the process of breaking down the foods that you eat. It also helps to kill off any micro-organisms that may make you sick. Your skin is also slightly acidic as this also helps control the types of microorganisms that live on our skin, so is an important factor in the skin’s barrier functions. Where the pH can vary is in urine. Your kidneys play an important role in balancing the acidity in the body and what you eat certainly affects this. There is some evidence to show that eating in a way that assists the acid-base balance in your body does have health benefits. It reduces the risk of kidney stones and other kidney problems, may be important in bone health (although a 2011 review found no association between dietary acid load and osteoporosis), may help to reduce muscle wastage with age, may improve heart health and brain function, and has even been associated with less lower back pain. There seems little doubt that understanding more about our acid-base balance is crucial to health. But the question is how to do this. In the diet world, we tend to oversimplify things like labelling foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. In the case of the alkaline diet the acid-forming foods are suddenly the bad guys, while the alkaline-forming foods are the good. This puts meat as a bad guy – but also fish, a food that is almost always thought of in favourable terms, at least from a nutritional perspective. Also despite the fact that meat is acid-forming, a high meat intake is not associated with poor bone health. In fact quite the opposite is true. So the picture is more complex than this diet suggests. So what can we take home from the science? The first thing is that there is little doubt typical modern diets with a high animal food intake, not nearly enough plant food, and roughly a third of kilojoules coming from non-core discretionary foods (think cakes, biscuits, chips, soft drinks, junk food and so on) are not good for us. They are also acid-producing and this may explain some of the negative health effects. But the acid-forming potential of a food is not a sole criteria for judgment as good or bad! Rather, it is the balance of foods in our diet that is important, and there are other characteristics of the food that have to be taken into account. For example, meat may be acid-forming but it also delivers protein, iron, zinc and a wealth of other nutrients. The problem therefore, is not meat itself, but the lack of plant food consumed alongside. So instead, think of increasing the alkaline-promoting foods, chiefly veggies (especially leafy greens), fruit, nuts and consider using legumes more often as these are neutral. These foods have many benefits and most of us are not eating enough. Cut down on how much salt is in your diet as this is acid-producing, and drink more water to help your kidneys work effectively. But there is no need to take expensive supplements claiming to be alkaline, or to follow an entirely vegetarian diet unless you want to for ethical reasons. The bottom line is that yes acid-base balance is important, but so is everything else we know about nutrition. Eat a whole food diet with plenty of plant food and you’re on the right track! ( OH! MAGAZINE ) APRIL 2015 15

OH! Magazine - Australian Version April 2015 | Page 15