Underseer
Contributor
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alkaline_diet
While alternative health in general is stupid given that science is a proven method of making valid health claims and abandoning that necessarily results in health claims of unknown veracity, but even by alternative health standards this one always struck me as eye-gougingly stupid.
First, anyone who took high school chemistry knows that alkaline is the word for rare earth elements. The correct word for substances of a high pH value is "basic" not "alkaline." Right off the bat the name is an indication that you are not dealing with a valid science claim. Worse, this claim ignores basic elementary-school biology.
Cold-blooded animals become lethargic if the environment is not at some optimal temperature. Warm-blooded animals can remain energetic at a wider range of temperatures, but there is a tradeoff. If our internal temperature or pH varies by even a little bit, we lose the ability to process oxygen and we die. This is basic to the definition of warm-blooded, and every elementary school child should learn this at some point. Our bodies go through a lot of trouble to make sure our internal blood pH remains the same regardless of what is going on[ent]mdash[/ent]including changes in what we eat[ent]mdash[/ent]because we would die otherwise.
If it were possible to change our blood pH through diet changes, doing so would kill us.
Thus we have two possibilities: either the alternative health nuts are right and it's possible to change blood pH through diet, in which case going on an alkaline diet would kill you, or else alternative health nuts are wrong and an alkaline diet can't possibly change your blood pH and they're just taking your money.
Carl Sagan, Neil Tyson, and others have argued that science knowledge protects us from charlatans, but in this case even the most basic (pun intended, sorry) grade-school understanding of science should have prevented this bit of pseudoscience from ever becoming popular in the first place, and yet it didn't.
What the hell is wrong with people? Why has basic education failed to protect us from these predatory lunatics?
article said:
While alternative health in general is stupid given that science is a proven method of making valid health claims and abandoning that necessarily results in health claims of unknown veracity, but even by alternative health standards this one always struck me as eye-gougingly stupid.
First, anyone who took high school chemistry knows that alkaline is the word for rare earth elements. The correct word for substances of a high pH value is "basic" not "alkaline." Right off the bat the name is an indication that you are not dealing with a valid science claim. Worse, this claim ignores basic elementary-school biology.
Cold-blooded animals become lethargic if the environment is not at some optimal temperature. Warm-blooded animals can remain energetic at a wider range of temperatures, but there is a tradeoff. If our internal temperature or pH varies by even a little bit, we lose the ability to process oxygen and we die. This is basic to the definition of warm-blooded, and every elementary school child should learn this at some point. Our bodies go through a lot of trouble to make sure our internal blood pH remains the same regardless of what is going on[ent]mdash[/ent]including changes in what we eat[ent]mdash[/ent]because we would die otherwise.
If it were possible to change our blood pH through diet changes, doing so would kill us.
Thus we have two possibilities: either the alternative health nuts are right and it's possible to change blood pH through diet, in which case going on an alkaline diet would kill you, or else alternative health nuts are wrong and an alkaline diet can't possibly change your blood pH and they're just taking your money.
Carl Sagan, Neil Tyson, and others have argued that science knowledge protects us from charlatans, but in this case even the most basic (pun intended, sorry) grade-school understanding of science should have prevented this bit of pseudoscience from ever becoming popular in the first place, and yet it didn't.
What the hell is wrong with people? Why has basic education failed to protect us from these predatory lunatics?
