The notion that foods like meat and whole grains, which are high in “acid ash” minerals, such as phosphorus, contribute to an “acid” condition in the blood and hence to osteoporosis and other diseases, has been around since Dr. Price’s day.
In a published article, Price pointed out that all the diets of the healthy primitive peoples he studied contained a preponderance of “acid ash” foods, yet these people showed no signs of bone problems. He dismissed the theory as bogus, noting that the important thing is to obtain high levels of all the minerals–both “acid ash” and “alkaline ash”–in the diet.
The maintenance of the proper pH in the various parts of the body is a complex process involving many feedback loops and a variety of nutrients. Adequate protein is very important in maintaining this homeostasis. Read on.
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THE ACID-ALKALINE THEORY
Price was dismissive of certain dietary theories that had become popular in his day. One concerned the use of mostly alkaline foods (fruits and vegetables) instead of acid foods (meat and whole grains) as a way to prevent dental caries. This theory was suggested by a Dr. Martha Jones in a paper entitled ” Our Changing Concept of an Adequate Diet in Relation to Dental Disease,” and has appeared in many forms thereafter, even raising its hoary head in health books today.
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
Having analyzed the diets of the various groups, Price noted, “It is of particular significance that when all of the foods of these various primitive groups are reduced to their chemical and activator content they are found to be relatively equivalent. This strongly indicates the direction in which the dental profession can profitably move in the matter of the prevention of decay.”27 Unfortunately, the majority of the dental profession today has no inkling of this fundamental principle.
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