Regardless of the season, fad diets are always abound, but it’s only recently that one diet has drawn major controversy for its pseudoscience.
Called the Alkaline Diet, proponents of this plan claim your body’s health doesn’t simply rely on eating a healthy diet–it’s all about ensuring your body’s pH is balanced.
“According to some alternative practitioners, the shift to an acid-producing diet is the cause of a number of chronic diseases,” says Cathy Wong, an alternative health expert for About.com. “Our blood is slightly alkaline, with a normal pH level of between 7.35 and 7.45. The theory behind the alkaline diet is that our diet should reflect this pH level (as it did in the past) and be slightly alkaline.”
To help balance your pH, proponents recommend certain foods–namely heart-healthy foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes. As for what’s out, it typically includes the stuff nutritionists would tell you to avoid anyways, such as processed foods, red meats, and sweets.
Some proponents also eliminate grains, milk, and all meats as well, believing that these foods also create an acidic environment inside the body–something that could create more health problems, such as heart disease and cancer.
Why the Alkaline Diet is Wrong
While most health experts agree that cutting out processed food in lieu of vegetables and fruits isn’t a bad way to diet, many of them aren’t behind this diet due to its rampant “pseudoscience”–false claims made to sound scientific when in fact little to no research actually supports them.
“It’s good advice based on a bogus premise,” says David Heber, a professor of medicine and chief of UCLA’s Department of Clinical Nutrition. “No matter what you eat, the pH of your blood is going to stay the same.”
According to Weber, the need to balance your body’s pH is pure nonsense–in fact, it already does this naturally regardless of what you eat. And other experts, such as Ian Robey of the University of Arizona Cancer Cancer, also agree these claims are bogus, saying that anyone that claims an alkaline diet can treat conditions such as cancer are “jumping to conclusions.”
“I would be skeptical of anyone making outright claims that acidic foods promote cancer,” says Robey.
However, other experts, such as alternative health expert Cathy Wong, aren’t so quick to dismiss this diet, noting that it may contain actual health benefits–though not the ones claimed by proponents of this diet.
“Although conventional doctors do believe that increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables and reducing one’s intake of meat, salt, and refined grains is beneficial to health, most conventional doctors do not believe that an acid-producing diet is the foundation of chronic illness,” says Wong. “In conventional medicine, there is evidence, however, that alkaline diets may help prevent the formation of calcium kidney stones, osteoporosis, and age-related muscle wasting.”
Bottom line? The Alkaline Diet is probably a good way to get fit–and improve your health–but if you’re hoping it can help mitigate your risk of cancer, don’t keep your hopes up.
Readers: What is the craziest diet you’ve ever heard of?
Sources:
The Alkaline Diet: Truth or Fiction? – LATimes.com
Information About the Alkaline Diet – About.com
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