On Tue, 9 Sep 2008 14:34 Kathryn Rosenthal wrote:

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ashley Moran" 
>> Hi Kath
>>
>> What was causing your body to be acidic?  What specifically is acidic,
>> your blood?  (I don't know anything about this issue.)
>
>Hi, Ashley.  ....My body was acidic due to my diet at the time 
>my cancer was growing.
>
Kathryn

You report your body was acidic. How did you measure
this? Ashley asked if you measured its acidity by checking
the pH of your blood. Is there any other measure?

The list you provided records Parmesan cheese with a score
of 34.2 and spinach with a score of -14. As I read your list
these scores do not reflect the pH of these foods.

Indeed, Cordain refers to the scores as representing the 
"potential renal acid load" of the foods. In normal healthy
digestion, these foods would have processed through the 
stomach where gastric acid with a high pH (1 to 2 - it's
mainly hydrochloric acid) would have been added to them.
So whatever the pH of the foods when taken in, their pH
would have become quite different in the stomach.

But Cordain is not referring to the pH of the food, but to
the net effect of the food (or more specifically those parts
of the food that are routed, as part of normal digestion,
through the kidneys) on the kidneys. From what I read in
your quotation from Cordain, the kidneys use calcium 
from the body's calcium store (the skeleton) to neutralise 
the pH of the part of the food that it processes.

(This could mean that William's suggestion that raw meat
and cooked meat could have different effects (potential
renal acid loads) may not be borne out.)

If this is so, then referring to the whole body as being acidic
is more a metaphor than a reflection of any pH test. As I
read it, saying "my body was acidic" is another way of saying
"in processing food X through my kidneys, my body took 
more calcium from my bones than it added".

Calcium is transported to and from the bones through our 
blood. At any one time some bones are taking calcium from 
the blood and other bones are giving it up. Bone buffers 
the blood against excessive pH changes by absorbing or 
releasing alkaline salts (such as calcium phosphate). 
Blood itself has a pH of around 7.4 - that is, it's alkaline. 
If blood pH reaches a pH of 7.0 you have severe blood 
acidosis and your symptoms will be coma and death. 
So the blood is normally not acidic.

So far so good, but two things are not clear to me.

1. what characteristics of a food other than its pH 
(either before or after processing in the stomach) could 
cause that part of it that is processed by the kidney to 
extract calcium from our bones?

2. related to that, how is it that the pH of the food
no guide to is potential renal acid load?

Can anyone explain?

As a practical footnote, the quotation from Cordain points
to the healthiness of wholly fresh salads - my personal
staple. So, getting bogged down in the science is not
really necessary. Just eat palaeo!

Keith