# Scientific basis for claim that eating meat makes blood acidic & causes bone loss? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 28, 2006, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033 "2006-11-28T04:14:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033/21 "2006-11-29T02:05:56Z")
[QUOTE=Dr\_Paprika] … most meat eaters are not acidotic. Their lungs and kidneys have already compensated for the weak acid loads using normal buffering mechanisms. [/QUOTE] Thanks, that’s pretty much what I thought. Nice to have it officially confirmed. > [@Anne Neville](#): > > If you eat a non-standard diet, like a vegetarian or kosher diet, cooking skills are even more helpful than they are for someone who eats a standard diet. [snerk] Welp, I’ll pass that along–I’m sure that after 6 years of eye rolling at the mere phrase “on the Straight Dope it says…” telling her “the Straight Dope says you have to learn to cook…” will have a lot of impact. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![sumpitan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a3d4f5/32.png) [@sumpitan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sumpitan)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033/22 "2006-11-29T08:46:45Z")
[QUOTE=Cerowyn] Gorillas eat insects as well, although by volume or weight, I believe it’s a fairly small percentage of their diet (with an adult male eating something like 50 lbs/22 kg of food a day).: [/QUOTE] Although the animal food eaten by gorillas is a tiny fraction _in volume_ of the plant foods they consume, nutritionally it may be very important by containing certain beneficial / critical micronutrients not easily gotten from plant foods. I think the same may apply to us humans. One certainly does not need to eat lots of animal foods to enjoy good health, but a small amount can at least make it a whole lot easier to ascertain complete nutrition. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033/23 "2006-11-29T11:47:38Z")
[QUOTE=Duck Duck Goose] And I was even MORE fascinated to find on pp. 49-50, **word-for-word** her statements, above, about meat and acidic blood. She evidently simply copy-and-pasted it into her 2001 _Being Vegetarian for Dummies_. She also copy-and-pasted word-for-word the remarkable statement, “The countries with the highest intakes of dairy products and animal protein also have the highest rates of hip fracture”, from her 1999 _Idiot’s Guide_ to her 2001 _Dummies_. Apparently nobody ever told her that correlation is not causation. [/QUOTE] Indeed. The statement may even be true, but the cause not what she thinks. For example, if the countries with the highest intake of dairy and animal protein have significantly longer lifespans the fractured hips may be due more to the effects of extreme old age than diet. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2006, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033/24 "2006-11-30T05:09:00Z")
Yeah, that was exactly what I thought, too. If you have better nutrition overall, then people live longer and have more chances to get broken hips. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scientific-basis-for-claim-that-eating-meat-makes-blood-acidic-causes-bone-loss/382033.md?page=1)