Know What You Are Eating - Alkaline And Acidic Food

 

Types of Food
There are 2 main types of food: acidic food and alkaline food. Examples of acidic food are meat, fish, prawns, chicken, bread and flour. Alkaline food are vegetables, milk, seaweeds, fruits and egg white.

It cannot be confused that acidic food contains acid, but rather, it is the end product of this food after digestion and assimilation that contains acid. For example, lemon is acidic initially, but they produces alkaline ash after digestion. The latter is what we are concerned about, as it is the end product that affects our body.

More on the lemon issue, it has to be highlighted that this only applies if the fruit is plucked from the tree in the ripened state. If they are unripe (green) and turn yellow due to rotting, these fruits becomes acidic after digestion.

This fact holds true not only to lemons, but to many others such as pineapples, mangoes, peaches and apples. Be sure to buy fruits that are ripe, and not rotting.

So, back to the topic of acidic and alkaline food, which of the two should we eat? In fact, both types should be taken in moderation for good health. According to Dr. Ragnar Berg of United States, "Everyday's meal should have the proper proportion of 20% acidic food and 80% alkaline food."

Whether your body is acidic or alkaline depends mainly on the food you consume. A healthy body is slightly alkaline (pH7.3 to 7.4). It is highly important that you should know what type of food you are eating so that you can achieve the healthy balance of 80% alkaline and 20% acid.

Recent studies have shown that patients with high acidity in their urine have a slower rate of recovery from various diseases as compared to patients with low acidity in their urine. Experiments have also been done on animals to study on this area. Alkalinized and acidized animals have virus injected into their body. The alkalinized animals were found to have suffered slight damage and quickly recovered. Acidized animals, however, suffered diseases or death.

It can be concluded that a high alkaline body is the first line of defense against diseases and death. An overly acidic body can accelerate the ageing process, reduce immunity to sickness and disease, and cause system degeneration.

Diseases and Conditions caused by acidic body
There are so many diseases and conditions that may be caused by an acidic body. Though this may not the only factor, but it is a major contributing factor.

Some of these diseases are:

• Constipation
• Muscle pain
• Acnes
• Skin Allergy
• Pigmentations
• Kidney diseases
• Heart disease
• Hypertension
• Hyper-cholesterol
• Headache
• Cancer
• Gastric
• Gastro-intestinal disorder

So how do our body gets acidic? When we have high intake of meat, eggs and animal products, this imbalance cause an over-acidic pH. One of the fastest way to ensure proper pH balance is by consuming spirulina, a blue green algae termed as a superfood due to its high density of nutrients. This health supplement is 100% alkaline and can reduce the acidity in your body.

Alvin Ng writes articles on several health topics for Health Session ranging from nutrition to diseases to body systems, and invites you to read more of these articles at healthsession.com

There is no other way to improve your health than to understand what your body needs. Learn with us as new discoveries and researches provide a greater knowledge to better health. Read the original article at Alkaline and Acidic Food.