During the holiday season, there are all kinds of temptations to eat. Besides being very tasty, most of the treats and meals we eat have one thing in common: they’re highly acidic. Eating too many of these high-acid foods can take the merry right out of your holidays.
We have made a handy-dandy pH chart that’s free for anyone to download. It is a printable PDF that you can print and keep with you. It lists all kinds of foods that are acidic, acid-forming, alkaline, and alkaline-forming.
Here are some key points you should know. Meat is acidic. It doesn’t matter if it’s beef, chicken, turkey, fish, or anything else that was once alive. Meat is about a 5 on the pH chart, which makes it a hundred times more acidic than our own blood. Besides the acid in meat, you also have to worry about animal fat. Our bodies really struggle to break down animal fat and it tends to clog things up inside of us. The technical term for animal fat is myocellular lipids, which clog up our muscles and eventually block the transfer of sugars out of our blood. Because of this, animal fat is the leading cause of diabetes (NOT SUGAR!).
The acid in meat puts a strain on our bodies. Other holiday foods that are acidic include: cookies, sparkling beverages, potatoes, fruit cake, any pie, mochas, and so much more.
If we’re not eating alkaline foods and beverages to neutralize the acid, our body will create fat cells to store the extra acid. This causes weight gain. Nobody wants to gain weight during the holiday season!
Also, if you are eating too much acid, it might even trigger an immune system response and make you feel sick. So it’s a good idea to eat only 10 to 15% of your total diet as acidic foods.
Watch out for alcholic beverages this holiday season. Alcohol is very acidic, about a 4PH. If you add carbonation to that alcohol, it’s about a 2.5 pH! Why does this matter? Because a 4 pH is a thousand times more acidic than our own blood. A two pH is 100,000 times more acidic than our own blood! Why such a difference? That’s because a pH scale is exponential like an earthquake scale. The difference between a seven pH and six is 10 times. But the difference between seven and five is 100. The difference between 7 and 4 is 1,000. The difference between seven and three is 10,000. The difference between seven and two is 100,000.
You don’t ever want to put something that’s 100,000 times more acidic than your own blood in your body! Carbonated beverages are so acidic that they can clean the oil off of engine parts!
You should also go easy on bread. We know bread is delivious but breads is about a 5.5 pH. Whole-grain breads are better because they offer nutrition. White bread is practically pure sugar and should be avoided at ALL COSTS. It’s high calorie, plus acid, and this combination will make you fat and you’ll feel terrible!
Fruity beverages can also be acidic and high in calories. Eating fruit in general is alkaline-forming but drinking fruit juice isn’t the same. When you strip away all the fiber, you’re left with mostly sugar.
What you want to be focusing on eating this holiday season is whole fruits, whole grains, and as many vegetables as you can eat. Vegetables, even if they start off acidic, are alkaline-forming in our bodies and offer all the nutrients we need to get energy, digest food, and even improve our immune system to help fight off all the viruses that are floating around.
You should also drink lots of alkaline ionized water because it will balance out the acid that you have consumed and give your body powerful antioxidants to detoxify. In fact, drinking lots of alkaline ionized water can help you cheat a little bit. You might not feel so guilty eating that cookie if you have your bottle of alkaline ionized water by your side.
We are human and we like to eat sweet things, savory things, and there are lots of temptations around us this time of year. The key is to only eat a couple of those naughty choices and make sure you are balancing them out with whole foods, vegetables, and whole fruit. And keep your alkaline ionized water near your side. It will be your best friend to save you from a whole lot of regret this coming January.
