Quote:
Originally Posted by celly123
A lemon itself is acidic in terms of pH, but it has an alkaline effect on the body which is clearly what the advice giver would've been referring to.
So lol, clearly YOU are actually not sure what you're talking about. If you did, you would know that the pH of the food is not always related to the effects the food will have on the body once oxidized.
No. That's ridiculous. The ash products affect nothing but the pH of your urine - e.g. they are irrelevant. I'm assuming this alkaline effect on the body nonsense is related to Bronstead-Lowry acid-base theory, where an acid creates a conjugate base in equilibrium.
Citric acid oxidation-reduction reactions are an essential function in the body. Without it, you would die.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle
That does not mean that the foods create acidity or alkalinity in the stomach. If you really want to work through the equations, you'd see that whatever miniscule pH-altering material is not present in sufficient quantity to significantly alter the acid-base equilibria of the stomach (or any other part of the digestive tract) - most of the acids present in foods have a low dissociation constant (mostly weak, often relatively unreactive organic acids) and stomach acid is a very strong halic acid.