| | ... but you don't have to rely on potassium pills if you don't want to. Net acid production in the body (from the ingestion/metabolism of foodstuffs) can be estimated from the ratio of food protein to food potassium. All you would have to do to balance out any given acid load from protein, is to include high potassium foods (e.g., fruits & veggies) in the meal. Here's a rubric I just invented, in order to evaluate acid-alkaline balance of any given meal -- based on the ratio of potassium to protein.
20 mg potassium for every gram of protein: definitely acidifying 30 mg potassium for every gram of protein: probably acidifying 40 mg potassium for every gram of protein: possibly acidifying (or neutral) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 mg potassium for every gram of protein: possibly alkalinizing (or neutral) 60 mg potassium for every gram of protein: probably alkalinizing 70 mg potassium for every gram of protein: definitely alkalinizing
As you can see from the rubric, you can balance out the effect of any individual food, just by adding another food to it!
For instance, let's say you want to eat a hard-boiled egg but for some reason or another, you want to be sure that you do not get any acidifying effect from doing that. A large hard-boiled egg has 6.29 grams of protein and 63 mg of potassium (about 10 mg potassium for every gram of protein). That means it is definitely acid-producing. But, if you include a cup of chopped celery (0.7 grams of protein + 263 mg of potassium) -- then your snack has 6.99 grams of protein and 326 mg of potassium, or about 47 mg potassium for every gram of protein. Here's the basic physiological equation for acid production from food metabolism:
[acid load] - [base/alkaline load] = net acid production
Using a validated nutritional algorithm for foods (one which includes protein, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium), your [egg + celery] snack is estimated to be alkalinizing: the acid load is 7.173 milli-Equivalents and the base/alkaline load is 7.917 milli-Equivalents.
[acid load] - [base/alkaline load] = net acid production
By using the rubric, you can nullify all of the acidifying effect of foods that you like to eat (by adding things like celery or carrots or whatever). By doing this, you can make sure that a diet such as the Paleo diet is free from presenting your system with a net acid load (without relying on pills).
Ed
p.s., Fun with Science: An ongoing debate around here is whether you can definitely know things in advance, even things that transcend experience -- such as predicting the effect of a diet (one that you haven't even started yet) on your body.
There are subtle differences in individual metabolism and myriad, potentially-confounding constituents in food. I attempted to account for that physiological and chemical variety inside of the rubric I created (by broadening the categories, in order to become sufficiently vague: in order to achieve certainty about the matter). If you are up for a challenge, then attempt to prove me wrong in one of either of two ways:
1) find a food combination that has 20 mg of potassium per gram of protein -- but is alkalinizing (rather than acidifying) 2) find a food combination that has 70 mg of potassium per gram of protein -- but is acidifying (rather than alkalinizing)
Good luck!
:-)
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/26, 7:52pm)
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