Food is a sacrament, never trivial—a view that sheds new light on how you eat. Your earthly body won’t be around forever. For more energy here, forge an intuitive partnership with the fuel you feed it. Such cooperation with diet and in all areas, increases your life force, which wants you to be vibrant. Expect results. The positive changes that come from an energy-aware diet are proof of success.
—JUDITH ORLOFF, M.D.
The human body takes in an average of 5% pounds of food and drink each day. That amounts to 1 ton of solid and liquid nourishment annually. Over the course of seventy years, an average person eats and drinks about 1,000 times his or her weight. At that kind of volume, no wonder exactly what we put into our mouths—into our bodies—is so important.
So far, we’ve not been choosing too well. For one thing, our choices have made us extremely fat, and these choices have raised our risk of a huge range of health problems, many of them deadly. For another, the average American diet has suboptimal levels of a wide range of nutrients; while we may get enough to avoid deficiency syndromes, we get so little of so many critical nutrients as to increase our risk further still for many chronic diseases. Although in some cases supplements may be the key to ensuring your body gets exactly what it needs (see chapter 9), the best defense is eating right. The huge number of biological, active compounds in all foods, which interact in complex ways with each other and with the body, means supplementation cannot substitute for good food.
The eating plan in this book puts us on the right path once again, so we can enjoy lean, strong, healthy bodies. This chapter describes the best diet for permanent weight loss [low-protein, low-carb, high (good) fats—and veggies galore]. It gives you the specific alkaline foods to eat and drink and acidic foods to avoid, and presents the “house of health™” plan for eating in a pH-balanced way.
Generally speaking, you’ll get and stay slim and healthy on a diet that is relatively low in carbs and protein; rich in good, healthy fats; and focused around a wide variety of green vegetables. You should eat whole, natural, unprocessed organic foods. Processed and fast foods are all acidic, as are canned, fried, and microwaved foods. And you want a clear majority of your food to be truly alive. Live (raw) food is electron-rich. All this will keep your body alkaline, which will keep you healthy—and at your ideal weight.
Think of your body as a bank account. When you eat electron-rich alkaline food, you are making a deposit to your account, maintaining an investment in your health, fitness, energy, vitality—and weight. And when you eat proton-saturated acidic food, you are making an energy withdrawal. On the most basic level, if there’s not enough in the account to cover withdrawals, you’re in trouble! If you withdraw too much, your body has to struggle to maintain a positive balance (pH balance). When your account is completely depleted of electrons, you are dead! To keep a good balance, so you always have enough energy on hand to draw on as necessary, you need to both limit your withdrawals and make plenty of deposits (in the form of green foods, green drinks, and good fats). We’ll get to the kinds of things that take electrons out of your account, but first we’ll begin with your best bets when it comes to deposits.
The heart of this plan are the electron-rich green foods and drinks and healthy fats, and you can eat them freely. This gives you a huge spectrum of wonderful foods to choose from, and toward the end of this chapter you’ll find a more comprehensive listing of them. Here I’m going to take the time and space to detail only the most important of them.
Chapter 6 details the benefits of good fats, so here I’d just like to recommend a few foods rich in them to make a regular part of what you eat.
Avocados are a wonderful source of monounsaturated fats (80 percent), as well as protein (10-15 percent), and range of micronutrients. But they have no starch and very little sugar (just 2 percent). Avocados contain fourteen minerals, including iron and copper, which help in red blood cell regeneration. They are nutrient-dense, containing more of a variety of nutrients than many other vegetables and fruits. Avocados have more potassium than bananas, without all the sugar. They are rich sources of the phytochemicals phytosterol, which inhibits cholesterol absorption and so lowers cholesterol levels, and glutathione, which has antacid properties. Avocados are also one of the richest sources of lutein, which protects against cancer and eye diseases. UCLA research shows that avocados have twice as much vitamin E as previously thought, making them the highest fruit source of that powerful acid buffer. I recommend eating at least one a day (more is certainly OK—and up to three to five is recommended if you have serious health conditions).
Coconuts, particularly young green coconuts and coconut water, are another excellent source of good saturated fats. Coconuts are 70 percent fat, and 90 percent of that fat is saturated, while the other 10 percent is monounsaturated. Those saturated fats have given coconut a bad rap recently. But the truth is, whole natural coconut and cold-pressed coconut oils are good for you. It is only when coconut is heated, processed, and hydrogenated that the saturated fats turn into trans fat, which is harmful. (So steam-fry your food first, and add your oils, including coconut oil, off the heat.) The good fats in whole natural coconut actually help lower cholesterol and prevent arteriosclerosis, rather than increase them, as the allegations went. Coconut is 15 percent protein, and is a complete protein.
Research shows that eating coconut does not lead to high cholesterol, increased heart disease, or increased mortality. Islanders with high intake of coconut oil showed no harmful effects, but when groups migrated to New Zealand and had less coconut oil in their diet, their total and bad cholesterol levels went up while their good cholesterol levels fell. When unsweetened coconut milk or coconut oil is added to an otherwise standard American diet, many studies show there is no change in cholesterol levels—while others show a drop. Rats fed a diet rich in safflower oil had six times higher cholesterol than did animals fed coconut oil instead.
Coconut milk, made by liquefying the white meat of the fruit, is very close to human breast milk in pH and fat and nutrient content. It is an excellent source of phosphorus, calcium, and iron. It provides a natural sweetness without much sugar. You have to take care to get natural, unsweetened coconut milk that isn’t full of additives and preservatives.
Coconut water, extracted right from the hollow in the center of the nut, measures the same pH as human blood and is similar in molecular structure. It was actually used during World War II in place of blood plasma for transfusions when blood wasn’t available.
Incorporate coconut water or milk into your salad dressings, and see the recipes chapter for many other ideas on how to use coconut. When choosing coconut oil, be sure to get one that is cold-pressed.
Fresh fish is rich in omega-3s as well as protein and many micronutrients. Like all animal protein, it contains no fiber and forms acid in your body when digested, so you can’t eat it every day. But the benefits of the good fats it contains make this an important food to include in your diet. You must make sure it is absolutely fresh: newly caught, and with no “fishy” smell. And it must come from unpolluted waters. Salmon, trout, tuna, striped bass, and red snapper are among your best choices.
Seed oils like flax, borage, hemp, and primrose are high in good polyunsaturated fats. Make sure to get cold-pressed oils, as heat destroys nutrients.
Vegetables provide the vast majority of your body’s needs: vitamins, minerals, fiber, and even macronutrients like protein and fats. Some of their lesser-known components are just as critical for good health:
• Chlorophyll, which gives green plants their green color, helps the blood deliver oxygen throughout the body. I call it the blood of plants because chlorophyll is very similar to human blood in both chemical components and molecular structure, with just one central atom differing between a molecule of each. Leafy greens are especially high in chlorophyll.
• Metabolic co-factors are what your body uses for every chemical activity in the body. There are thousands of co-factors, each with its own properties and functions, and eating a variety of vegetables provides your body with a variety of them. Co-factors also aid in digestion. Heat alters these co-factors, which is why having as many of your vegetables as possible raw is important. When you do cook your veggies, the less you do so, the better.
• Phytonutrients give some plants their yellow, orange, and red colors. They help neutralize acids, act as antioxidants, and help chromium bind to sugar for energy, along with other “co-factor” roles.
You can’t go wrong choosing green vegetables like cucumber, celery, greens, the ones detailed here, and the many included on the exhaustive listing near the end of the chapter. To give you just a couple examples of the benefits that await you:
Broccoli is a great source of vitamin C; 14 ounces give just about all of the recommended daily allowance. It also contains folate, vitamin A, iron, potassium, vitamin B6, magnesium, and riboflavin, all of which your body needs. Broccoli is an excellent source of fiber, and it helps balance blood sugar levels, lower cholesterol, improve digestion, strengthen the immune system, and control weight. Like all the green and yellow vegetables, broccoli has a pH between 7.5 and 8.
Spinach is at least as good for you as it is for Popeye. It is high in vitamin A, folate, iron, magnesium, calcium, vitamin C, riboflavin, potassium, and vitamin B6. It is a great source of fiber and helps control blood sugar levels. Spinach also helps lower blood pressure and cholesterol, improve digestion, and increase immunity, and it assists in weight loss. In addition, spinach, too, has a pH between 7.5 and 8.
Choose fresh vegetables, always, and organic whenever you can. Eat them raw, preferably, and when you cook them, do it for as short a time as possible and at no higher than 118 degrees Fahrenheit if you can (enzymes survive up to that point).
Sprouts are not always green, but they are just about the best food you can eat. Filled with vitamins, minerals, and complete (and easily digestible) proteins, they are also high in enzymes, nucleic acids, and vitamin B12, which is otherwise hard to find in vegetarian sources. Seeds become more alkaline as they sprout. And there is an explosion of nutrients as they sprout. Folic acid increases by 600 percent at sprouting, for instance, and riboflavin by about 1,300 percent! Move beyond the familiar alfalfa and bean sprouts to include in your diet sprouted lentils, broccoli, chickpea, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, buckwheat, wheat, soy, and more. Try sprouting your own—-just about any bean, grain, or seed.
There are tons of alkaline foods you can choose from, as you’ll see when you get to the long listing of them closer to the end of this chapter, but here I’d like to describe just a few of the truly great ones (in terms of benefits, but also in terms of utility).
Lemons, limes, and grapefruit are very low in sugar (3 percent, 3 percent, and 5 percent, respectively). Although they are chemically acid, they have an alkalizing effect when metabolized in the body. Squeeze some into your water throughout the day to help maintain your body’s delicate pH balance.
Tomatoes also have very little sugar (3 percent) and, when eaten raw, are very alkalizing. Cooked, however, they become mildly acid-forming upon metabolism. They are rich in vitamins, as well as a substance called lycopene, which is the stuff that makes tomatoes red. It isn’t made in the human body, though the body needs it. Lycopene has gotten a lot of attention for protecting against prostate cancer. It is also an acid buffer.
Good grains are steamed and sprouted—and whole. Quinoa, and raw buckwheat, to take just two examples, are high in protein and are excellent choices to round out a meal of green veggies and good fats.
Salt. It may surprise you almost as much to find salt recommended in this plan as it does to find fat. But sodium in its crystalline structure is a foundational element that keeps you alkaline. Your cells need to be bathed in saltwater. Healthy blood is salty—nearly as salty as the ocean—and the alkaline salts therein are used to neutralize acids in the blood. Salt is important to keeping your metabolism high. Metabolism is the production of energy when electron-rich alkaline water transfers from one cell to another—a process that is managed by the salt concentration in the cells. Water always moves from a cell with a lower salt concentration (energy potential) to a cell with a higher salt concentration (energy potential) as the body seeks pH balance.
You probably blame water retention for some of your excess weight and, in turn, blame the water retention on too much salt. But your body retains water because it is dehydrated, to dilute acids. When you are retaining water, it is a signal that your sodium is being converted into potassium in the body to balance your pH, and you actually need more water, and alkaline salts, like sea salt (e.g., Celtic Salt, or RealSalt from the Great Salt Lake). The problem is, Americans in general get way too much salt in their diets—the wrong kinds of salts. We salt just about everything we prepare, then keep salt on the table to add even more. Just about all prepared and processed foods are extremely salty. Table salt, and the salt added to just about all processed foods, has itself been overly processed, destroying its electrical potential. It has no electron energy. So while you do actually need to cut out all regular added salt from your diet, you then need good salt, electron-rich alkaline crystalline salt, like RealSalt or Celtic Salt. I recommend at least 3 to 4 grams a day.
Foods that are themselves acidic, or have acidic effects on the body once they are digested, are better avoided if you wish to reach your ideal weight—and stay there. Be aware of the following acidic foods.
Consumption of animal foods, including meat and dairy, has been linked to increased risk of heart disease (and increased risk of dying of heart disease) and cancer. (Vegetable-based diets examined in the same study showed no such increased risks.)
In addition: Eating meat stimulates insulin release—an even bigger release than pasta or popcorn—so you can’t escape the dangers of blood sugar fluctuations by simply avoiding carbohydrates. Humans cannot fully digest meat, and as it goes through your system partially digested it damages the intestinal villus, leading to poor blood production and then poor body cell production.
There are many reasons for avoiding animal foods, not least of which is that it is simply dead. Anatomically and physiologically, humans are just not carnivores or omnivores; we are designed for the slow absorption of complex and stable plant food. That’s why we have long and complicated digestive tracts, rather than the short, simple bowels of meat eaters, designed for minimum transit time. We have intestinal flora different from that of true carnivores. We don’t have the teeth and jaws meant for tearing apart flesh.
It is yeast that causes the aging of meat, to get the final desired taste and texture. All meats “properly” aged for human consumption are partially fermented, and as such are permeated with acids and acid-generating microforms. Especially in the United States, animals are super-fattened with hormones, and the residues and acids from such accumulate in the fat. Red meat intake has been associated with increased risk of colon cancer, and consumption of animal fat has been linked to prostate, breast, and other cancers.
Pork is loaded with acid; pigs have no lymphatic system to move them out of the body, so metabolic acids are just stored in their tissues—your meat.
Like almost all meat grown in the United States, pork will have high levels of contamination by bacteria, yeast, and fungi and associated waste products and acids. For one thing, the grain these animals are fed is stored long term in silos, which are characteristically contaminated with fungi. Slaughterhouse conditions are also generally not sufficiently sanitary to protect against further contamination. Studies show that the majority of mycotoxins in meat are heat tolerant, so cooking won’t protect you from them.
It should go without saying, but you must also try to avoid all processed, pickled, and smoked meats such as sausage, hot dogs, corned beef, luncheon meats, ham, bacon, pastrami, and pickled tongue or feet.
Chicken, according to Consumers Union, the advocacy group behind Consumer Reports, runs about a 42 percent chance of contamination by Campylobacter jejuni, and 12 percent of contamination by Salmonella enterides, numbers which USDA research confirms. Should you need another reason not to eat large quantities of chicken or turkey, consider that they do not urinate, which means they absorb their own acidic urine into their fleshy tissue instead. Large intakes of poultry have been associated with an increased risk of colon cancer.
One egg contains over 37,500,000 pathological microforms. You can see the effects of one egg in the blood—increased bacteria and yeast—within fifteen minutes of eating it, and it can take white blood cells up to seventy-two hours to clean up the mess. Eggs from grain-fed chickens have been documented to contain acids. Eating eggs at the rate of at least one a day has been associated with an increased risk of colon cancer.
Dairy products, including milk, cheese, ice cream, cottage cheese, and yogurt, have concentrated sugars called lactose. This lactose breaks down in the body to lactic acid, which causes irritation and inflammation in the muscles, bones, and joints. A high intake of dairy products, especially cheese and milk, has been associated with increased risk of breast and colon cancer.
Sugar is a major contributor to acid production in the body, and a major contributor to obesity. And Americans eat fifty million pounds of the stuff every week.
When you eat sugar, the extra that isn’t used for energy is fermented into acids, such as acetylaldehyde, a neurotoxin and lactic acid that, if not eliminated, can cause cell breakdown, and into ethanol alcohol in the liver, which also contributes to cellular breakdown. In contrast, my research shows that a diet low in sugar will result in a body low in acid.
You have to watch out for plain old white sugar, of course, as well as all the other forms of sugar: honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, molasses, corn syrup, and more. All the simple carbohydrates are handled in the body just like sugar, so you also need to eliminate white flour, white rice, pasta, and so on. These can all, like sugar, cause an overly rapid rise in blood sugar. Always check labels for sugars; they are in the majority of packaged foods, even ones you might not suspect. Another good reason to make whatever you eat yourself!
Artificial sweeteners like aspartame (NutraSweet), saccharin (Sweet’n Low), and sucralose (Splenda), break down into potentially deadly acids in the body. For example, when you ingest aspartame, one of the ingredients, methyl alcohol, converts into formaldehyde, a neurotoxin and known carcinogen! But that’s not all. From there, it turns into formic acid, the same stuff fire ants use in their attacks. And that’s just accounting for one ingredient in just one of the artificial sweeteners.
Aspartame is particularly bad when it comes specifically to contributing to obesity. The acid component the sweetener is named after (aspartic acid) is structurally and functionally quite close to that of the glutamic acid found in monosodium glutamate (MSG)—which in turn can contribute to weight gain.
If you must have a sweetener, safer options are the herbs stevia and chicory, available at natural food stores.
Peanuts are highly acidic and contain over twenty-seven yeasts and molds. When I first wrote this, I listed all twenty-seven, and it took the next six lines of text to do so. Don’t eat them! (And that includes peanut butter.)
Corn contains twenty-five different fungi, including recognized carcinogens.
You need to avoid both brewer’s and baker’s yeast, as well as “nutritional” yeast, along with all yeast-containing foods, like beer, wine, and bread and other baked goods. Eating yeast in any form can spur microform overgrowth in your body and increase their toxic acidic wastes. Read labels carefully to make sure all your foods, condiments, and seasonings are yeast-free.
This includes soy sauce, vinegar, miso, mayo, tamari, tempeh, olives, and pickles, as well as common condiments with one or more of those ingredients, like mustard, ketchup, steak sauce, prepared salad dressings, relish, and chili sauce. All are acidic, or acidic in the body, and fermented by fungus. Soy sauce, for example, has a pH of 4.45. You also need to eliminate malted products, which are also fermented by fungus (and contain a high level of sugar) and are acidic.
Alcohol is fermented and acidic. It will make you fat. Just think of the “beer belly”—and the fact that beer (even “lite” or “low-carb” beer) has a pH of about 4.5. Wine coolers are even worse; besides all the sweeteners, you’re looking at a pH of 2.84.
All alcohol is a waste product made by bacteria or yeast. On top of that, the liver can convert alcohol into yet another toxic waste product—the acid acetylaldehyde.
The damage abuse of alcohol can do is already well known, of course, but the acid it contains does harm at even low levels.
One milligram of caffeine, injected directly into the bloodstream, can kill you. So there’s enough in 1 ounce of milk chocolate to do in six people, and enough in a cup of strong coffee to off two hundred more. That ought to give you enough second thoughts to eliminate this addictive poison from your diet, but I also want to point out that caffeine is dehydrating. You need to be fully hydrated to reach and maintain your ideal weight, and you’ll never get hydrated if you keep on using caffeine.
Even when you don’t count the caffeine, coffee is no good for you. Coffee with cream and sugar has a pH of 4.0—1,000 times more acidic than distilled water. Black is a little better at 5.09, and decaf is slightly better still at 5.22. But acid is acid, and at those levels none of it belongs in a healthy body. If you’re still not convinced, consider this: Research has shown that cancer cells can live indefinitely in coffee!
Once again, even if you’re drinking “decaf” (which, like coffee, still contains some caffeine), the acidity of the beverage should take it off your menu: regular black tea comes in at 2.79, and green tea at 4.6.
First, most soft drinks are full of sugar and other sweeteners, and that right there should be enough for you to stop drinking them. And if they aren’t full of sugar and corn syrup, then they are full of artificial sweeteners, which you should also avoid. Second, many soft drinks are caffeinated, another reason to skip them. Even those without caffeine are still bad, however, because of the acidity. Soda is saturated with protons, with a pH of about 3.0—10,000 times more acidic than distilled water. Sports drinks are among the worst—more acidic even than beer, as most sodas are. Gatorade Lemon/ Lime for instance, has a pH of 2.95. Even soda water or seltzer with no sugar or artificial sweeteners or caffeine still contains carbonic acid, and has a pH of about 2.5—50,000 times more acidic than distilled water.
One of the key components of cola is phosphoric acid, which has a pH of 2.5. That’s strong enough to dissolve a nail in about four days. To carry concentrated cola syrup, truckers must use the Hazardous Material designation reserved for highly corrosive materials. In your body, phosphoric acid leaches calcium from your bones, making it a major contributor to the rising increase in osteoporosis.
Americans guzzle an average of 44 gallons of soft drinks each year—an increase of 131 percent since the late 1970s. Forty-six percent of children aged six to eleven now drink soda every single day. No wonder we are so fat! We are pouring acid down our throats at quite a clip.
That’s bad enough as it is, but remember that the more we drink of sodas, the less we drink of what is good for us. The National Soft Drink Association noted that Americans bought and drank four times as much soda as water.
Even if that ratio were flipped, we’d still be in trouble. Since it takes 20 parts bicarbonate to neutralize 1 part carbonic acid (which is in sodas), you’d have to drink 20 cups of alkaline water to counter just 1 cup of soda, diet or not, caffeinated or not. And more water on top of that to deal with acids from all other sources!
| Product | PH |
|---|---|
| Sunny Delight | 2.81 |
| Gatorade | 2.95 |
| Coca-Cola | 2.51 |
| Diet Coke | 2.97 |
| Vanilla Diet Coke | 2.95 |
| Red Bull Energy | 3.26 |
| Twin Lab Ultra | 2.83 |
| Ripped Force | 3.22 |
| Snapple | 2.83 |
| Power Bars | 2.93 |
| 7-Up | 3.25 |
It’s got sugar. It’s got caffeine. It’s got theobromine and methyl bromine, two very toxic acids. It makes you fat. You don’t need it.
Most fruits are high in sugar, and so, despite the nutrients they also contain, are best avoided. Pineapples are 28 percent sugar; bananas, 25 percent; honeydew melons, 21 percent; apples, 15 percent; oranges, 12 percent; strawberries, 11 percent; and watermelons, 9 percent—just to give you a few examples. That much sugar will keep your body acidic. You will not lose weight, or lose it quickly, or keep it off, if you are eating high sugar fruits. (As you’ll see in the upcoming full listing of foods, some fruits are better than others, and you’ll find a few I recommend there and in the previous section on alkaline foods.)
My research shows that one 8-ounce glass of fresh orange juice has enough sugar to create an acidic internal environment in the body and shut down up to half of white blood cell activity, reducing immune system function, for three to five hours. Apple juice, too, was acidic and toxic to the blood cells because of high sugar content. I’ve found that when I take my clients off high sugar fruits their red blood cells no longer stick together, causing circulation problems, and their white blood cells are more active and healthier. The clients begin to lose weight because they are reducing the acidity of their blood.
Mushrooms of all kinds—shiitake, portobello, white, wild—must be avoided. For one thing, they are fungi. For another, they are acidic as they are digested.
Glutamic acid in MSG is, first of all, an acid. Animal studies show it can cause brain lesions and neuroendocrine disorders, leading, in animals that ingest it, to gross obesity. A recent search of the Medline database through the National Library of Medicine using the key words “obesity AND monosodium glutamate” returned 143 references, with titles like “Obesity induced by monosodium glutamate in mice” (from National Institute of Animal Health Quarterly), “Brain lesions, obesity, and other disturbances in mice treated with monosodium glutamate” (from Science), and “The induction of obesity in rodents by means of monosodium glutamate” (from the British Journal of Nutrition). That’s right: When scientists want to study obesity, one popular technique is to use MSG to fatten up the mice they are working with. As the title of one article specified, one injection of MSG is enough to wreak havoc on an animal.
There’s no real reason the human animal should be any different. And the proportion of processed and packaged foods containing MSG is staggering. Fast foods, low- and no-fat foods, canned foods, and frozen foods are all likely to harbor glutamic acid. Eating the typical American diet, you are guaranteed to be dosing yourself with MSG and glutamic acid. If you want to shed your fat, you’re going to have to get rid of this one “secret ingredient” that’s helping to make and keep you fat.
The following chart divides commonly eaten foods into six categories ranging from highly alkaline to highly acidic. For successful healthy weight loss, choose your foods mainly from those that are mildly to highly alkaline; do so and you will begin losing weight and other symptoms associated with excess acidity immediately. Avoid the acidic foods. Cut anything highly acidic out of your diet altogether, and keep foods in the mildly to moderately acidic categories to no more than 20 percent of your diet. If you want to be sure to lose weight and lose it fast, while remaining healthy, do not cross the line into the acidic foods.
| ALKALINE—Electron-rich | ACID—Proton-rich | |||||
|
Best |
Better |
Good |
Bad |
Worse |
Worst |
|
Highly Alkaline |
Moderately Alkaline |
Mildly Alkaline |
Mildly Acidic |
Moderately Acidic |
Highly Acidic |
Beans and legumes (non-stored) |
soy nuts soy lecithin |
lima beans soybeans (edamame) white navy beans granulated soy (cooked, ground soy-beans) |
lentils soy flour tofu |
seitan chickpeas kidney beans black beans |
||
Beverages |
alkaline water |
distilled water |
fruit juice, natural |
alcohol liquor fruit juice, sweetened beer tea coffee wine |
||
Condiments |
RealSalt Celtic Salt |
red pepper cayenne garlic ginger onion |
herbs most spices |
curry powder |
ketchup nutmeg vanilla table salt mayonnaise |
mustard vinegar rice syrup soy sauce MSG jam jelly yeast malt cocoa carob |
Fats (choose cold pressed) |
olive oil borage oil coconut oil avocado oil flaxseed oil evening primrose oil marine lipids cod liver oil |
sunflower oil grapeseed oil canola oil |
margarine butter ghee corn oil |
|||
Fruit |
lime lemon grapefruit coconut sour cherry |
plum fresh date sweet cherry currant nectarine cantaloupe |
orange banana pineapple peach watermelon honeydew mango apple blackberry fresh fig dewberry longberry persimmon guava cherimoya apricot papaya mango tangerine currant gooseberry grape cranberry strawberry blueberry raspberry |
dried fruit pickled fruit |
||
Grains, non-stored |
quinoa buckwheat groats spelt |
millet kasha triticale amaranth |
brown rice wheat wild rice white rice oats white bread biscuit whole-meal bread whole-grain bread rye bread |
barley corn rye oat bran |
||
freshwater fish, wild (not farm raised) |
ocean fish, wild (not farm raised) |
shellfish farm-raised fish pork veal beef chicken poultry eggs organ meats |
||||
Milk and milk products |
human breast milk |
goat milk |
soymilk rice milk milk cream |
hard cheese cottage cheese ice cream yogurt soy cheese goat cheese whey casein (milk protein) |
||
Nuts |
almond |
brazil nuts hazelnuts pecans |
walnuts |
pistachios peanuts cashews |
||
Root vegetables |
beets radish ginger |
rutabaga horseradish turnip carrot |
potatoes (stored) |
|||
Seeds |
pumpkin |
sesame cumin fennel caraway |
sunflower flax |
|||
Sweeteners |
stevia chicory |
artificial sweeteners saccharin aspartame white sugar beet sugar corn syrup molasses cane juice barley malt syrup fructose turbinado sugar brown rice syrup maple syrup honey |
||||
Vegetables |
grasses sprouts dandelion soy sprouts cucumber sea vegetables brocco-flower kale parsley |
tomato avocado green beans sorrel spinach garlic celery cabbage lettuce bell peppers collard greens broccoli endive arugula mustard greens okra |
brussels sprouts peas asparagus artichokes comfrey cauliflower zucchini rhubarb leeks watercress chives kohlrabi |
mushroom |
||
With all that in mind, exactly how are you going to fill your plate? The key is to make the foundation of every meal electron-rich green foods and mono- and polyunsaturated fats. These are the foods that will build healthy blood and maintain the alkalinity of your body. Cover 60 to 80 percent of your plate with them, with smaller amounts of grains, beans, soy, fish, and cooked vegetables. Our bodies are designed to operate on fuel in this proportion, about 80 percent of it alkaline.
So think of your ideal meal as basically a big salad, with cooked or less alkaline foods “on the side.” But don’t think of that salad as a boring pile of iceberg lettuce and tomato. With the recipes in this book to guide you, you’ll soon discover the almost infinite variety available to the creative salad maker. Using a range of colors, textures, and flavors, you’ll enjoy delicious and satisfying meals on this plan. Dressings alone can take you to every country in the world and back again; because of the healthy oils they contain, and the concentrated seasonings and flavor, you should consider them a major part of your meal. Experiment with different herbs and spices. Use the recipes in this book as a springboard to your own creations, mixing and matching, substituting one ingredient for another, adding or deleting items as you go. Pay attention to how you arranged your salad. We enjoy our food with all our senses, not just taste, and presentation is part of what makes any given meal so appealing.
As your taste buds and your system become accustomed to this way of eating, you will lose your appetite for acidic foods. The more acidic you are, the more acidic foods you will crave. But the more alkaline you eat, the more alkaline your body will be, the more energy you will have—and the more your body will crave more of that energy and that alkaline food. The better you feel, the better you’ll understand how the acidic foods pull you down, making you tired and sick, and you simply won’t want them anymore. You won’t want to feel the way they make you feel. And the energy eating this way brings you will make you more active, the other key pillar in any weight-loss plan. Finally, as you will be providing your body with all that it needs, and exactly what it needs, it will require less food intake in general, and you’ll naturally eat less without doing so consciously and without ever feeling unsatisfied.
As you practice the alkalizing principles in this book, you will watch the numbers on the scale go down to where you want them to be—and stay there. Moreover, you’ll have more energy and vibrant health than you’ve ever experienced before. You’ll look better, too, and not only because of the weight dropping off: The glow of good health will shine through. Good eating habits are essential not just to staying alive, but also to living.