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| Meat is considered an acidic food and a big no-no for those on the alkaline diet. Lemons are acidic in nature, but are said to be alkaline-forming in the gut – but this is just another bit of sciency news not proven by science. Filepic |
Read Part 1
Analytical people would retort that the dead friends surely also had other things in common, such as being married, car drivers, beer drinkers, and of course, they all spoke English, et cetera. The point is that it is very easy for gullible people to quickly associate a correlation with a cause, whereas in reality no such link exists.
And simple correlations and a heavy dose of pseudoscience are basically the foundations of the Alkaline Diet invented by “Doctor” Robert Oldham Young, the best-selling author of a series of books based on something called the “pH Miracle” – over 4 million books have been sold, making him a multi-millionaire.
You will be reading some bizarre stuff about this gentleman in this article so it might help to note that Robert Young isn’t a real doctor of any kind – his doctorates are from non-accredited sources or purchased from a diploma mill, though that didn’t stop him describing himself as a “distinguished” microbiologist and biochemist.
Simple falsehoods
The elemental premise of the Alkaline Diet is that acidosis (excessive acidity in the blood) is the cause of all diseases and nothing bad can ever happen to a body if the body (blood) pH is in an alkaline state.
In light of the range of diseases known to medicine, this is clearly fantastic and untrue. Also, the human body maintains itself in a mildly alkaline state anyway (pH between 7.35 to 7.45) – simply because this is the optimal environment for enzymes to work.
Hence, although Young is correct in that all normal, healthy bodies are indeed alkaline, he fails to mention that sick bodies are also alkaline as that is always the natural blood/tissue configuration to avoid a potentially dangerous condition known as homeostatic imbalance.
Young then proposes that to maintain the body’s alkalinity, it is necessary to eat alkaline foods – even though some of the foods listed by him are actually acidic so the advice is somewhat inconsistent.
Note this requirement to eat alkaline foods is pointless – that is because the body will always maintain blood within the normal alkaline range regardless of what is eaten (all ingested food is always rendered acidic initially by the digestive juices).
Anyway, according to Young, the reason for maintaining an alkaline state is because if the body got too acidic, something called pleomorphism would happen in the human body.
A little description of pleomorphism is now in order. The concept was originally devised by a French doctor, Pierre Jacques Antoine Béchamp, in the 19th century. Lacking modern day equipment and observational tools, he came up with the idea that “very small” enzymes called microzymas are the basic elements of life in cells – and these microzymas produce proper enzymes and cells when “evolving” in favourable conditions in a host body.
However, if the host environment becomes hostile or unfavourable, then these same microzymas will instead decompose its host tissue and cells into pathogenic bacteria – this change from normal body cells into bacteria is his example of pleomorphism.
Béchamp’s concept therefore does not allow for external bacteria to be the cause for any disease as “pleomorphic bacteria” were supposed to be created by an “unbalanced” body itself.
This idea was somewhat popular at the time and set him seriously at odds with Louis Pasteur who determined external invasive germs are the causes of diseases when they infect the body.
Ultimately, the existence and efficacy of antibiotics proved that Pasteur was indeed correct and very few people now follow Béchamp’s discredited notions.
To be clear, some unusual bacteria can exhibit a limited form of pleomorphism in response to environmental factors. For example, the bacterium deinococcus radiodurans can change size depending on the amount of nutrients available – and helicobacter pylori can exist in both a helix-shaped form and a circular form. But regardless of their shapes, they always remain members of their own bacterial sub-species – they cannot change and become a different species due to pleomorphism.
Young’s concept of pleomorphism, however, is that human red blood cells can somehow turn themselves into pathogenic bacteria if the body is too acidic – and transform back from bacteria into red blood cells when conditions are alkaline.
Despite Young’s claims that he can demonstrate these forms of pleomorphism, the transformations have never been independently observed.
And pleomorphism does not explain the range of bacteria observed to be causing diseases in humans, unless you are prepared to accept that human blood/tissue cells can transform back and forth into the various species of germs that cause cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, meningitis, gonorrhoea, et cetera. In short, this is absurd pseudoscience of the woo-woo category.
It gets weirder – Young also says that viruses are “molecular liquids or gases (venom) that can be created by chemical imbalances in humans”, even though all known evidence (including electron microscopy) has shown that viruses are externally-derived infectious pieces of genetic material covered by a protein coat (called a capsid), which is sometimes further surrounded by a casing of lipids. This is not unlike saying that someone can catch AIDS or develop avian flu spontaneously without any contact with humans or birds.
But what gets Young into the OMG category are his notions that “cancer is not a cell but a poisonous acidic liquid”, a “cancer is a systemic acidic condition that settles at the weakest parts of the body – not a localised problem that metastases” and a cancer “tumour is not the problem but the solution to protect healthy cells and tissues from being spoiled by other rotting cells and tissues”.
In summary, Young claims that there is no need to excise malignant tumours even if they are about to undergo metastasis as counterbalancing the “acidic liquid” is enough to cure cancer.
‘Curing’ cancer
And this was exactly what Young did to a young Briton, Naima Houder-Mohammed, who believed his ideas would cure her of breast cancer. She went to Young’s pH Miracle Ranch in California in 2012 and paid him US$550 (RM2500) per intravenous infusion of diluted sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), among other costs – she underwent 33 such infusions over 31 days. Needless to say, the painful treatments had no effect on her cancer.
In the end, Young had extracted US$77,000 (RM343,000) from Naima before she became so disillusioned and ill that she eventually returned home to die. Not unexpectedly, there are no verifiable accounts of any terminally-ill cancer patients surviving longer than their prognosis after receiving Young’s treatments.
In 2016, Young was finally convicted on charges of practising medicine without a licence and now faces jail time. Records of other cancer patients paying him huge sums of money were also found during the legal investigation.
Why?
Knowing what we know now about Young’s indefensible behaviour and ideas, a valid question may be: why was Young’s Alkaline Diet so successful in persuading millions of people to eat “alkaline” food?
One answer is that he had a good, fancy story to tell, even if it was scientifically meaningless. Many people fell for it because like all pseudoscience, the Alkaline Diet offered a seemingly wondrous, easy remedy to endemic problems such as bad dietary habits, bad health and fear of disease.
It would also appear that many people on the Alkaline Diet must be somewhat susceptible, especially if they really think that acidic fruits such as lemons and limes fit into the “Most Alkaline” group of foods as recommended by Young.
The Alkaline Diet also formed the basis of the rather irritating Clean Eating movement which is now morphing into the Wellness movement – but in reality, these are all fads, just like the Atkins Diet, South Beach Diet, Paleo Diet, et cetera.
Regardless of how it is branded, all the bloggers, writers, publishers and other players involved are only repackaging and re-selling mostly common-sense dietary advice – some of the recipes may be helpful but the basic information is usually advice which is available for free from various government health websites. Beware also that a degree of pseudoscience would often be injected into the marketing mix, along with lots of new buzzwords, glowing self-congratulatory testimonials and pretty pictures of healthy people.
Your own diet fad?
If you want to break away from the endless cycle of diet fads, the suggestions are pretty simple. Research a few good government health websites from around the world and make a list of the healthy ingredients (with the recommended daily amounts) that interest you – these are the stuffs you would like to eat.
From the ingredients, search food cooking websites for recipes – these are the dishes you want to make.
If you can, adapt existing recipes or create new cooking ideas yourself – it’s fun, it’s creative and it’s easy.
And why not create a funny title for your diet? Examples might be: The Human Bean Diet, One Direction Diet, Take That Diet, or Stairway To Heaven Diet. It is a way to maintain interest in your own diet – which you should expand with new ideas and recipes over time.
Oh, and estimate as best as you can the calorific values of each dish (after allowing for the Thermic Effect of Food) so you have an idea about how much you have eaten – do not exceed the number of daily calories needed to maintain health, at least not so often that the diet becomes meaningless.
From the past record of global diet fads, if you have done some good research and figured out some tasty recipes, your own fad diet is likely to be just as plausible and effective as any other. That is because you would have done exactly what fad creators do, apart from introducing the marketing and pseudoscience (which I hope you never will).
As for me, it seems that colleagues often think I lack passion and intensity – but that’s probably because they haven’t seen me alone with a succulent rare steak. That is definitely on my list of healthy foods even if it is deemed “acidic” by a fake doctor.
http://www.star2.com/food/food-news/2017/02/26/what-lies-in-our-diets-part-2/
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