Acid-Alkaline Re-Balancing Tips

Anyone can use the Acid-Alkaline Health re-balancing principles to adjust how they eat to make their meals more nutritious and more balanced. No matter how you prefer to eat, acid-alkaline health principles will support you in identifying missing elements or excesses in your current eating preferences, and it will help you find the balance you desire.

If you eat animal protein as a main food:

The important thing is to balance the animal protein and fat with plenty of vegetables and some whole grains. This is the main thing needed. So, if you are satisfied with animal food as a regular food in your diet, consider adding some balancing elements: vegetables (raw and cooked), whole grains such as rice or millet, barley, and plenty of fruit. For the fun of it, why not try a few days per week where you have beans in place of meat, chicken, pork or cheese?

If you are a lacto-ovo vegetarian:

Use plenty more vegetables, raw and cooked, and whole grains. See if you can put whole grains at the center of many of your meals with protein from plant sources such as beans, tofu, tempeh comprising your main supplementary source of protein, and much smaller amounts of cheese, dairy and eggs.

If you are vegan:

Create an anchor to your eating by placing whole grains at the center supported by vegetables, and place protein-rich vegan foods such as beans, tofu, tempeh, seitan, etc., more to the outside rather than the center. Alkaline-forming soups such as miso soup and seasonings such as unpasteurized miso, soy sauce, unrefined sea salt, shiso powder and sea vegetable powders can add important minerals to a vegan diet. Many vegan diets are destabilized by the regular inclusion of refined sugar. Sugar is almost impossible to balance on a vegan diet.

If you eat raw food exclusively:

Get plenty of exercise. For example, do outdoor activities like gardening, walking in the sunshine while breathing fresh country air, and on a regular basis eat some uncooked seaweed such as dulse.

Excess protein, glucose and fat/oil feed the development of cancer cells, microbes, yeast and infections.

The following general guidelines supports healthy nutrition without providing excesses of fat, protein, sugar, additives and preservatives. Consider adding these foods to your preferred way of eating:

To make them more appropriate for individual needs, the above guidelines can be adjusted by asking the following questions:

Is the person’s current condition a result of mild acid, strong acid, mild alkaline or strong alkaline excesses? Or is it a combination of several of these factors?

Generally, plant foods that are rich in sodium and calcium are strong alkaline-forming.

Plant foods that are rich in potassium and magnesium are mild alkaline-forming.

Animal meats, eggs and cheese are rich in protein, fat and/or cholesterol. They are strong acid-forming.

Strong acid-forming (animal foods)= meat, cheese and other milk products, eggs, fish, chicken, pork and all other meat, honey

Strong acid-forming (plant foods)= refined and/or concentrated sugar of all kinds, drugs, prescriptions, aspirin, fruit juice, food chemicals, additives, margarine, sucanat, chocolate, carob, soy milk, maple syrup

Mild acid-forming=beans, tofu, tempeh, seeds, nuts, nut butters, seed butters, natto, stevia, rice syrup, barley malt, rice milk, oat milk, amasake

Strong alkaline-forming = salt, shoyu, umeboshi, miso, salt-based condiments, over-cooked and salty foods, sea vegetables (whole grains are mild alkaline-forming when cooked with sea salt, served with a mineral-rich condiment and well-chewed, otherwise they are mild acid-forming)

Mild alkaline-forming = raw vegetables, cooked vegetables, whole fruits (used in excess, the sugar of juices and fruits may become acid-forming), spices, and herbs.

©2000 David Briscoe