Is Your Diet Killing You?

The modern diet is irrefutably unhealthy. Consumers eat far too many refined and ultra-processed foods, excess protein and grains, and insufficient amounts of fruits and vegetables. The results are shocking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases account for 7 out of 10 deaths in the United States today. And because our diet directly shapes our health, many of these deaths are entirely preventable.

Cancer, for example, has increased by a staggering 440 percent in the U.S. since 1900, when a person had a 3 percent to 5 percent lifetime chance of developing or dying from cancer. Today, that lifetime risk has risen to 38 percent to 40 percent. This reveals an 8-to-10-fold increase in an individual’s chance of receiving a cancer diagnosis over the last 126 years.

Much of that is due to a decline in deaths from other causes. If fewer people die of typhoid or cholera in their 30s, then more live to old age and succumb to chronic illnesses. But viewed alongside the modern shift toward ultra-processed foods, environmental chemical loads and chronic metabolic disease, these numbers highlight a massive transformation in human health over the last century.

Food is a main offender, and the overwhelming majority of our meals are of the starchy, sugary, unhealthy fat and chemical variety. The ingredients are foreign to the human body, lacking many essential nutrients. An often-overlooked fact is that they also consist of acid‑reacting elements.

In “We Are What We Eat: The Horrific American Diet,” Stephen Flurry wrote, “Around the turn of the century, the standard American diet was about 50/50. Fifty percent of the food people ate was alkaline, and 50 percent was acidic. [I]n the 1980s, it became 90 percent acidic and 10 percent alkaline. Today it is closer to 95 percent acidic! This has had devastating consequences on your health.”

The best diet for longevity and staving off disease is the alkaline diet, which includes about 80 percent alkaline and 20 percent acidic foods. Shockingly, this is nearly the exact opposite of how people eat today.

A study by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition estimated that diets before large-scale agriculture was introduced had nearly double the net alkaline load of the modern diet. This massive daily cushion of alkaline minerals kept the body’s internal systems balanced. Modern industrial food processing flipped that natural baseline upside down, stripping away those essential protective minerals to extend shelf life.

But the human body still needs that natural alkalinity. Without it, organs must constantly compensate for a net-acid load they were never designed to handle. Consequently, diseases have exploded.

What Is Alkalinity?

A pH value stands for potential of hydrogen, which measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is on a scale from 0 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral. Anything lower is acidic, and anything higher is alkaline. Human blood needs to stay slightly alkaline, at a pH around 7.4.

Think of your body as a household maintaining a strict savings account of alkaline minerals, such as calcium, potassium and magnesium, which it stores in your bones and tissues. When you eat a diet heavy in ultra-processed foods loaded with industrial starches, refined sugars and sodium phosphate additives, you have a positive Potential Renal Acid Load (pral). This forces your body to constantly withdraw from its mineral reserves. It leaches calcium from bones and amino acids from muscle tissue to neutralize the net acid and protect your kidneys.

Naturally acidic foods, though we should limit them in quantity, contain many nutrients that our bodies need for good health. Beef, chicken and fish have a high pral value, containing a lot of protein and phosphorus, while providing lower amounts of potassium, magnesium and calcium. They are extremely healthy but should not be eaten in excess.

Fruits, vegetables, leafy greens and plant proteins, such as lentils, beans and nuts are the opposite. They have a negative pral value, which means they’re alkaline in the body.

Fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi are naturally alkaline-forming. Kefir, yogurt and buttermilk are mildly acid-forming, but fermentation can make certain minerals, including calcium and magnesium, more readily available, while retaining potassium. These are some of the same minerals that help give alkaline-forming foods their advantage. In sensible amounts, fermented dairy can contribute valuable minerals without adding nearly the acid load of meat or hard cheese, complementing rather than replacing alkaline-forming foods.

You can increase vegetable consumption through juicing, or add apple cider vinegar, squeezed lemon, limes or oranges to your water to modify your body’s pH levels. Comprehensive green powders (wheatgrass juice powder, spirulina, chlorella and barley grass), most herbal teas, figs, prunes, dates, raisins and unsulfured molasses can greatly aid your daily alkaline load.

The goal of an alkaline diet, rich in nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and, potentially, anti-cancer agents, is to protect bone density, muscle mass and renal workload from chronic strain. Added benefits include reduced inflammation, improved cardiovascular health and a lower risk of high cholesterol, hypertension, kidney stones, stroke and cognitive decline.

The case for an alkaline diet is far stronger and more substantial than most people realize. A 2012 review published in the Journal of Environmental Health found that the alkaline diet reduces morbidity and mortality from numerous chronic diseases and ailments.

“We Are What We Eat” includes a chart outlining acid and alkaline foods. It doesn’t label foods as “good” or “bad,” nor does it say you must cut out meat or grains. All real foods have a place in the diet—in the right balance. This chart shows whether foods leave behind acid or alkaline ash when digested, helping you aim for a healthy 3-to-1 alkaline-to-acid balance on your plate.