Can you explain how a lot of websites describe apples as being alkaline, when they aren’t? When I search “Apples are not alkaline” I get a lot of results saying how they are.
No big deal; how do I like them apples? Not very often.
california jobcase and Mangetout are quite right that apples in general are not alkaline: in fact, they’re distinctly acidic. (As you can pretty easily tell from a bite of any apple.)
Even the very-not-tart Delicious apple is quite acidic, and very different in flavor from foods that are actually approaching alkaline.
Avocados and broccoli, for example, have a pH around 6.5. Cooked spinach can be slightly alkaline. Those are the types of flavors we’re talking about for non-acidic foods.
If you can find any variety of apple that’s even slightly alkaline, I’ll undertake to eat a bushel basket of them at one sitting.
Couldn’t say definitively but I always feel sick a while after eating apples.
Well, there’s a shit ton of inaccurate and misleading information about just about everything on the internet (except here at the Straight Dope, of course).
Beyond that, AFAICT, the confusion arises from a widespread misunderstanding among “nutrition dilettantes”—you know, the ones who are always concerned about vaguely defined “toxins” and “additives” in foods*—about the concept of “alkaline forming” foods.
IANA nutritionist, but AFAICT from skimming some actual nutritionist-authored articles with titles like “Effect of a supplement rich in alkaline minerals on acid-base balance in humans”, the deal is that certain foods, even if they have low pH and hence somewhat acidic flavor, contain alkaline minerals such as potassium, magnesium or calcium. These “base-forming” or “alkaline forming” minerals, which are often found in vegetables and fruits such as apples, can help to maintain the body’s acid-base balance and avoid effects like low-grade acidosis and consequent bone-mass decrease.
Nutrition dilettantes tend to be very attracted to anything that purports to maintain some kind of physical “balance” or correct “imbalance”. So I think what happened is that some of them started the notion that “apples are alkaline”, meaning that they increase alkaline formation in the body, and weren’t careful to avoid confusing that with the actual pH levels of apples themselves, which are quite acidic.
*Mind you, I’m not saying anything against the general principles of the very sensible Michael Pollan-style whole-foods/slow-food movement. But that’s a far cry from believing all the “Food Babe”-type bullshit about “chemicals” and “toxins” and “cancer-fighting enzymes”.
Just eat the variety that you ate back then. Many new varieties, but the old versions taste the same.
There’s a bunch of ideas out there about how certain foods are ‘alkalizing’ - including apples, vinegar and lemon juice - all of which are definitely acidic.
I haven’t done very much more than skim the writing on that idea, but it looks to have at least some of the attributes of woo.
Yes apples and lemons are acidic, but they happen to be alkalizing in terms of urinary pH:
http://www.direct-ms.org/pdf/NutritionGeneral/Remer%20and%20Manz%20Acid%20Base.pdf
Interesting.
One of the more common and biochemically ubiquitous organic acides is actually named after apples (malic acid, from the Latin/scientific term for apples), presumably because apples have a lot of it.