Can you please tell me more about the

acidity/alkalinity of foods?
The issue of acid and alkaline foods is a confusing one,
because there are several different ways of using these
words with respect to food.
The pH of foods
In food chemistry textbooks that take a Western science
approach to foods, every food has a value that is called
its "pH value." pH is a special scale created to measure
how acidic or alkaline a fluid or substance is. It ranges
from 0 (most acidic) to 14 (most alkaline) with 7.0 being
neutral. One way of thinking about it is that as you get
closer to 7.0 from either end, the food becomes less
acidic (6.0 vs 5.0, for example) or less alkaline (8.0 vs 9.0,
for example).
Limes, for example, have a very low pH of 2.0 and are
highly acidic according to the pH scale. Lemons are
slightly less acidic at a pH of 2.2. Egg whites are not
acidic at all, and have a pH of 8.0. Meats are also non-
acidic, with a pH of about 7.0.
Many vegetables lie somewhere in the middle of the pH
range. The pH of asparagus, for example, is 5.6; of sweet
potatoes, 5.4; of cucumbers, 5.1; of carrots, 5.0; of green
peas, 6.2; of corn, 6.3. Tomatoes fit on the pH scale
toward the more acidic end in comparison to other
vegetables. Their pH ranges from 4.0 to 4.6. However,
this range is still higher (less acidic) than fruits like pears
(with a pH of 3.9) or peaches (with a pH of 3.5) or
strawberries (3.4) or plums (2.9).
Acid-forming foods
Another way to talk about food acidity is not to measure
the acidity of the food itself, but the to measure changes
in the acidity of body fluids once the food has been
eaten. In other words, from this second perspective, a
food is not labeled as "acidic," but instead as "acid-
forming."
Although the idea of acid-forming foods goes back
almost 100 years in the research, there's been very little
research published in this area until fairly recently. In
earlier publications, acid-forming foods were often
talked about as key components of an "acid-ash diet."
The term "ash" was used much more commonly in those
days to refer to the inorganic components of a diet
(mineral elements or molecules not containing carbon)
that remained after the digestion and metabolism of
food had occurred. This ash was also commonly referred
to as a "residue" of the diet. Diets largely devoid of meat,
fish, eggs, cheese, and grains were described as
"alkaline-ash diets." These diets focused on consumption
of fruits and vegetables and also included cow's milk. By
contrast, diets containing large amounts of meat, fish,
eggs, cheese and grains were described as "acid-ash
diets."
Although the term "ash" is seldom used in current
research studies on diet, the idea of acid-forming foods
has remained a topic of research interest. A new term
has been created in the research world to refer to the
potential impact of certain foods on the kidneys and
urine acid levels. This term is "potential renal acid load"
or PRAL. For meats, a PRAL value of 9.5 has been
reported by researchers. Alongside of meats in terms of
high PRAL value are cheeses (8.0), fish (7.9), flour (7.0),
and noodles (6.7). In contrast with these high PRAL
values are the values for fruits (-3.1), vegetables (-2.8),
fruits, and cow's milk (1.0).
Researchers have been concerned about one particular
aspect of high-PRAL food intake, and that concern
involves bone health. It's always important for our
bloodstream to keep acidity under control. Our kidneys,
lungs, and other organ systems work hard to keep our
blood pH very close to 7.4. However, if presented with
too many acids from the digestion and metabolism of
food, our body will try to neutralize those acids using a
process called buffering. To buffer an acid, our body
needs to link the acid with another chemical called a
"base." Sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium are
minerals that readily form bases for our body to use as
acid buffers. One readily available source for calcium is
bone, and researchers have wondered whether a diet
that is overly acid-forming will place too heavy demands
on our bone for calcium buffers. There's some research
that suggests this process may take place over the short
run (60 days or less), but the long-term impact of excess
acid-forming foods in the diet on bone calcium is not
clear from studies to date.
One of the factors that high-PRAL foods have in
common (with the exception of grains) is their high
protein content. Meat, fish, and cheese are all high-
protein foods. Because protein is composed of amino
acids, and because amino acids can be easily converted
in the body to organic acids, it makes sense for high-
protein foods to be treated as foods that can increase
potential renal acid load. When present-day researchers
try to model the potential acid-forming nature of a diet
(meaning the potential for a diet to increase the acidity
of our urine and acid load upon our kidneys), they
always factor in the protein density of the diet.
Potassium content, calcium content, and magnesium
content are also typically factored in because these
minerals readily form bases that can be used to help
buffer acids. Sometimes researchers also look at the ratio
of a potentially acid-forming component like protein to
an available buffering mineral like potassium.
The table below summaries primary higher PRAL and
lower PRAL food groups
Food Group PRAL
Higher or Lower
PRAL
Meats 9.5 Higher
Cheeses 8.0 Higher
Fish 7.9 Higher
Flour 7.0 Higher

Noodles 6.7 Higher

Fruits -3.1 Lower

Vegetables - 2.8 Lower

Cow's Milk 1.0 Lower

Source: Barzel US and Massey LK. (1998). Excess dietary
protein can adversely affect bone. J Nutr 128: 1051-1053.
Acid-alkaline and the World's Healthiest Foods
Although the impact of foods on our kidneys and urine
acidity is definitely an important topic from the
standpoint of diet and health, it is still one very narrow
component of our body's acid-base balance. All of our
bodily fluids have their own characteristic degree of
acidity, and our metabolism works in thousands of ways
to protect acid-base levels in all of our tissue. So we
would not want to draw any hard and fast conclusions
about how to eat from studies on urine acidity and the
PRAL value of foods. However, I do believe that research
in this area supports our basic approach to healthy
eating at the World's Healthiest Foods. We place our
greatest emphasis on daily intake of vegetables and
fruits, and in this urine acidity research, we discover that
vegetables and fruits have lower PRAL values than any
other food groups. We also encourage moderation
throughout our website with respect to consumption of
meats and believe this recommendation is in keeping
with urine acidity research that places meats at the top
of the PRAL list with a value of 9.5. While the PRAL
research was not a factor in our initial construction of the
World's Healthiest Foods list, we are reassured to see
that our Healthiest Way of Eating is one that should
result in little risk with respect to potential renal acid
load.
Other approaches to acid-alkaline and diet
On other websites, especially websites interested in
macrobiotic eating, Asian medicine, and energy
medicine, you'll find detailed discussion of acid-forming
and alkaline-forming foods that do not follow this
Western science research involving urine acidity and
PRAL values. Instead, these approaches typically look at
whole body acid-base balance (rather than acidity of one
body fluid like the urine) and they talk about "toxic acidic
conditions" or the need for a slightly alkaline condition
in the body as whole. To find out more about these
alternative ways of approach acid-base balance in the
body and dietary choices, you may want to visit one or
more of the following websites:
http://www.gomf.macrobiotic.net/Info_Macrobiotics.htm
(The George Osawa Macrobiotic Foundation)
http://www.kushiinstitute.org/html/articles.html#Food%2
0&%20Healing (The Kushi Institute)
http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/ppnf/Articles/articles_list.ht
m (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation)