When it comes to your overall health, your diet is essential. The foods you eat affect your mental, physical, and emotional health. So, it’s about time diet gets put at the top of your priority list. That's why alkaline foods is the topic of discussion today!

Western diets tend to be highly acidic. Have you noticed that it's more common to find processed, fried foods, and red meat than fresh fruits and vegetables? There are ways to replace these acid-forming foods with alkaline foods that can help improve our overall health and longevity.

Your body needs certain minerals and nutrients to function properly. If your body is lacking necessary nutrients, you’re giving health issues an Open House invitation. There are several food options that can help you get on track when it comes to proper nutrition.

Next time you visit the grocery store, ditch the processed foods and go over to the produce aisle instead. Your stomach (and really your body and mind as a whole) will thank you later!

Sometimes we can forget about nutrition — there are a million things happening in our lives on a daily basis. Upgrading your diet and getting some exercise can make a world of a difference. When you combine exercise with healthy ingredient choices and hydration, you’ll see changes in your health that are here to stay.

What Is the Alkaline Diet?

The Alkaline Diet’s premise is that the food you eat can alter the pH of your body. Foods that you consume can either be alkaline, neutral, or acidic.

If you eat foods that are more acidic, your body’s pH levels can become more acidic. If you eat foods that are more alkaline, your body’s pH levels can become more alkaline. Simple as that!

People who have adopted the alkaline diet believe that more acidic residue will leave you prone to illness, while those with more alkaline in their bodies will be more protected overall. Acidic residue includes protein, phosphate, and sulfur, while alkaline residues leave calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

Unfortunately, in today’s diet culture, we eat more acidic foods than alkaline foods, which means that the alkaline content in someone’s pH levels isn’t enough to neutralize all those acids. Ideally, your meal should be around 75% alkaline and 25% acidic to create a nicely balanced pH.

Why Are Alkaline Foods Important?

Alkaline foods generally have more of a positive effect on your body than acidic foods. Some examples of alkaline foods are nuts, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. That’s right, we’re talking about non-processed food; clean foods for the win!

Health Benefits

Studies show that alkaline-based diets can have many benefits.

For instance, an alkaline diet might help to preserve muscle mass as you age, after a study showed that a higher intake of potassium-rich foods, like fruits and vegetables, helps adults maintain muscle mass.

Another study that was done showed that women who had a diet that was higher in acidic foods for 14 years were at a greater risk of developing diabetes.

Balancing your pH levels is no joke, the end goal here is incorporating a healthy, balanced, and nutritious diet into your lifestyle.

Alkaline-Friendly Foods

Here are a handful of some foods that can help get you started!

1. Green Leafy Vegetables

Green leafy vegetables are said to have an alkalizing effect on the body. Plus, leafy greens are packed with nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, antioxidants, fiber, folate, vitamin K, magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium.

These nutrients can support eye health, immune function, and blood pressure. You can begin to incorporate different leafy greens into your diets with simple salads, vegetable soups, and even just snacking on some veggies. Some alkaline green leafy vegetables are spinach, kale, celery, cabbage, and collard greens.

2. Citrus Fruits

What? How could a citrus fruit, which tastes like it is highly acidic, actually be alkaline? Don’t sweat the technicality, just trust us on this one. In fact, adding lemon to your water produces a slight alkalizing effect!

Lemon, limes, and oranges have a good amount of vitamin C that helps to detoxify the system and promotes immune health. One of the lemon’s main fibers is pectin, which helps to lower blood sugar by slowing down the digestion of sugar and starch.

3. Nuts

On top of nuts being highly alkaline, nuts are a good source of protein, fiber, and healthy fats — protein-lacking vegetarians rejoice!

Meats are generally more acidic, so reducing or eliminating them from your diet might be a good move if you aren’t a fan of meat to begin with. Nut protein is an easy way to add some essential amino acids to your diet (AKA the building blocks of protein that your body can’t make on its own).

Vegan and vegetarian diets should incorporate nut protein into their diet alongside other meat alternatives like tofu and quinoa to make sure they get all nine essential amino acids from their food.

Nuts are an easy way to get some of the same nutrients from meat, without the meat. What a deal!

4. Root Vegetables

Alkaline root vegetables include sweet potato, beets, radish, turnips, and carrots. They are also a great source of dietary fiber, and they can help to lower cholesterol and help lower the risk of heart disease. You can usually substitute root vegetables for refined grains.

5. Cauliflower and Broccoli

Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts are a great way to work more alkaline foods into your diet. They are known to help balance pH in the system, and are nutrient-rich, too, with loads of vitamins A, C, and K. Broccoli also carries a good amount of protein and fiber.

Vessel Health’s Mission

We believe that information is everything. Unfortunately, information about our health isn’t always the simplest to understand, even though it’s one of the most important pieces of information we need to understand.

Vessel was formed by nutritionists, doctors, and research scientists working together to try to improve health, vitality, and longevity. With Vessel, you can track your health and make the necessary changes needed to improve it.

Our approach here at Vessel is to help people understand their health. When people understand the ins and outs of their own well-being, they can make easy adjustments and changes that result in real, measurable improvements.

How Vessel Works

Vessel has gone through extensive research and literature reviews to determine the exact way to measure each nutrient, hormone, and function that it tests. We constantly update our information based on the research that continuously is done to make sure that we are providing the most up-to-date results to support your overall wellness.

Based on your results, Vessel’s team then can make recommendations on what you can change in your life to become a healthier version of yourself. We use algorithms to identify the correct foods, supplements, and activities that you can begin to work into your day-to-day routine to see improvement in overall health.

A Vessel wellness card has 15 colorimetric assays (used on pee sticks) and six lateral flow assays (used on pregnancy tests), and paired with the app, you can be more proactive in making positive changes in your health with Vessel’s Wellness Card.

From measuring pH to cortisol levels to helping you monitor your nutrients, we can help. You can learn more about a Vessel membership here.

In Conclusion

A more alkaline diet emphasizes mindful eating and fresher ingredient choices. Vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes are a must for anyone’s diet, but they aren’t stressed enough in today’s diet culture. Drinking plenty of water while limiting sugars, meats, processed foods, and alcohol can help alkalize your body and balance your pH levels.

There are plenty of other alkalizing foods you can include in your diet, too, but these are some of the easiest.

By using Vessel Health’s Wellness Test Card, you can track your pH, Sodium, Hydration, Vitamin C, , Magnesium, Ketone A (AcAc), and Ketone B (BHB) + more levels. This way, you know what kind of changes you need to make to your diet in order to achieve that sweet, sweet acidic/alkaline balance!