The Whole Food Blog

While there is much confusion about pH balance, it is important to understand how alkaline foods and acid foods affect overall health. There are several different ways to measure pH levels, but here we are talking about what happens to foods after they have passed through the digestive system.  Once the nutrients have been turned into energy you are left with either an alkaline ash or acid ash in the bloodstream, depending on whether you consumed alkaline foods or acid foods.

Your body is so efficient that it will not allow the pH balance of your blood to deviate far from 7.4.  This is considered the optimal pH and your body will do whatever is necessary to maintain that balance.  Unfortunately, this means that your body often has to seek out the best possible sources of alkalinity to counteract excess acid in the blood, and that source is usually calcium from your bones.  So, you can begin to see how your body benefits from more alkaline foods to draw upon in order to manage a healthy pH balance.

This is why experts recommend a daily diet consisting of 80% alkaline foods and only 20% acid foods. When there is a lack of alkalinity in the diet to help manage that delicate blood pH balance, then the body has to pull calcium from bones in order to neutralize excess acid in the bloodstream.  This may cause bone weakness as well as other possible challenges to fitness.

It’s not easy to consume an 80/20 ratio of alkaline foods to acid foods every day, but it is possible to at least take steps in that direction.  As you research this topic more, you will find that the benefits of a healthy pH balance are numerous and the dangers of an imbalance are even more so.  To gain a better understanding of how your daily diet affects your alkaline/acid balance, take the Alkaline Food Test for your own personal results.