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book review – the Acid Alkaline Balance Diet

bowl of baby spinach leaves

book review – the Acid Alkaline Balance Diet

Written by Felicia Drury Kliment, from New York, this book promises to be an excellent read: ‘An innovative program that detoxifies your body’s acidic waste to prevent disease and restore overall health’. However, after a couple of chapters it becomes clear that it is the sort of book that is unquotable.

Early on she ascertains that there are three types of digestion among the population. A group of people who have a lot of acid in their digestive systems, and so digest food faster than the group who have low acid in their stomachs, or those who have a moderate amount of acid.

This can be tested using what she calls the Metabolic Type Niacin Test, in which an individual would swallow a 50mg niacin tablet on an empty stomach, and wait half an hour to monitor the results – if your skin turns red and you feel hot and itchy you have an acid metabolism, if you feel warm with better colour and feel euphoric, you have a balanced metabolism, and if nothing happens you have a grain eating or alkaline metabolism.

Different foods for different types of metabolism

selection of kangaroo meat cuts at a butcherAbout a paragraph is written about instructions for each metabolism types. A meat eater (or acidic metabolism), should eat large amounts of red meat, and limit rapidly digested foods that contain vitamin C like fruit, lemon juice, vinegar. They should also not eat leafy green vegetables, and this of course is where we parted intellectual company. Meat eaters should also limit B vitamins.

bowl of baby spinach leavesA grain eater should eat a mainly vegetarian diet as well as fowl or fish which is more easily digested than red meat. They should include vitamins that are quickly digested such as Niacin, magnesium, folic acid and vitamin C. This type of eater can eat large amounts of green vegetables, fruit, broccoli, potatoes and onions.

Human diseases caused by acidity

That is about all the nutritional direction that she gives with regard to each metabolism, not giving any description at all for the balanced metabolism. The rest of the book refers to nutritional causes for specific diseases such as lung disease, heart disease, mental disorders, reproductive disorders, diabetes etc. I did find that some of the recommendations for the vitamins that are important in each disease useful, however, they seemed to have nothing to do with the topic of an acid-alkaline balance. In some cases they were directly contrary to the advice that she had given earlier, for example with regard to B vitamins.

Sometimes, there is a description of the disease and contemporary understanding of the research and literature, with a small note that what is overlooked and the real cause is that these diseases are caused by the acidic waste of undigested food in the digestive tract.

There is also some sections about infrared light and magnetic pads which align the electrons in the atoms of acidic atoms and draw the acidity out through weeping sores on the body. How delightful!

Recommendation? Don’t buy it!

Out of the whole book, I found very little that could be extracted to further an understanding of nutritional health, and suffice to say, that I don’t recommend this book, and I doubt that I will ever repeat the advice in it. Although I am tempted to try the Niacin test, just to see what happens! hehe

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