Is The Alkaline Diet Menu Safe And Effective?
Despite the fact that there are many factors that alter your body’s pH balance, the most important one is whether or not you follow an alkaline diet menu. In the next few paragraphs, I will briefly outline top five foods that can make it virtually impossible for you to alkalize your body.
1. Soft Drinks
Colas and other soft drinks are loaded with sugar, which is highly acidifying. They also contain phosphoric acid, making them even more acid-forming. Besides, they’re full of empty calories, but no nutritional benefits. While energy drinks, sports drinks, and vitamin waters may have a healthier image than colas, they’re just as acidifying.
2. Coffee
Coffee is strongly acidifying, partly because it contains caffeine, a chemical that can have a number of harmful effects on your health. If you drink several cups of coffee a day, you will probably feel terrible if you go off of it abruptly. Remember, caffeine is a drug, so withdrawal symptoms are to be expected. You can make it easier on yourself by slowly replacing coffee with green tea.
3. Alcoholic Beverages
Nearly all alcoholic beverages are acidifying. According to one study, the average American drinks 28 gallons of alcoholic beverages each year. When you factor in that the average person already gets too many calories from sugar, white flour, and other nutritionally empty foods, adding alcohol in addition to everything else just makes things worse.
4. Dairy Products
When you pile dairy products on top of a diet that is already loaded of acid-producing meat, grains, and sugar, you end up making it impossible to achieve an ideal pH balance. True, dairy products are high in calcium. But there are other sources of this important mineral, including calcium-rich plant foods and bone-building tablets.
5. Fast Food
Think of the ingredients in a cheeseburger: There’s fatty meat, fatty cheese, a white-flour bun, tomato, and a few bits of lettuce. Amazingly, all of those ingredients are acid-forming, except for the lettuce and the sesame seeds on the bun. But those aren’t nearly enough alkaline-forming ingredients to compensate for all of the acid-forming ones.
I hope this article will help you realize that an alkaline diet menu doesn’t need to be terribly difficult to understand. Eliminating or even just reducing the five foods in this article will go a long way toward helping you to rapidly create a healthy alkaline diet menu.
Beth writes about health issues for her Alkaline Diet Blog. Check it out now to learn more about the alkaline diet menu.
