What are your thoughts on eating alkaline foods? Do you believe the average American diet is too acidic?

This is an old, old thing that becomes a fad from time to time. Here is an excerpt of an article written by one of the foremost nutrition researchers of the last century, who was a past president of the American Dental Association and wrote the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston A. Price: Said Price: "An important source of misapprehension is the literature and teachings of faddists.

Such, for example, is the misapprehension of many people that they must use only alkaline producing foods and that a great danger is associated with the use of acid producing foods. In the primitive races I have found practically no difference between the acid balance meat diet of the isolated Eskimos of the far north and the less acid vegetable and milk diet of other groups as efficient factors in the control of caries. .. Our bodies have a mechanism for maintaining proper acid and alkali balance in the blood and this varies through only a very narrow limit whether the balance of the total food eaten is acid or alkaline."24 What is important for the prevention of tooth decay--and Price stresses this point over and over again--is adequate minerals and fat-soluble vitamins, whether from animal foods, seafood or dairy products, and the absence of refined foods, especialy white flour and sweeteners.

Price actually published a paper on this subject, "Acid-Base Balance of Diets Which Produce Immunity to Dental Caries Among the South Sea Islanders and Other Primitive Races,"25 in which he compares the amount of acid ash and alkaline ash minerals in the diets of primitive Swiss, Gaellics, Eskimos, native Americans and South Sea Islanders. In all but the South Sea diet, acid ash foods predominated. But the important point is that the overall mineral content in every primitive diet was at least four times, and sometimes more than ten times, higher than the mineral content in the modernized diet.

Price made it clear that the aklaline diet idea had caused much suffering: "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. .. 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 develoment 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. "26 http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/right_price.html.

I don't believe it's an issue at all. Our stomachs are around pH 2, and can be lower. PH is measured on a logarithmic scale, so the acidic food that we eat isn't even close to this.

Otherwise it would burn our mouth and esophagus. Plus, our body is so good at overcoming differences in environment, and this small thing is so easy to overcome that a thing such as a slightly acidic diet can't really affect us that much. I also like to factor in the joy I get from eating what I choose, so I eat food no matter what its acidity.

The "Eat for your blood type" theory is based on this, but there's not a great deal of experimental support. It's more of an Eastern medicine theory.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.