DAY 46 This Alkaline Year: Vegan, Vegetarian & Alkaline

Yesterday I read in the Boston Globe a  good article about a society formed by vegans  to encourage each other, and younger persons, to be herbivores.  I feel that’s all well and good as far as it goes, but couldn’t help noticing that a lot of their substitutes for meat consisted of soy products, all of which are very acidic.   I appreciated the article because it helped me to understand more of what I’m doing, still very successfully at Day 46. 

Alkaline eating offers more choices than the simple ones of whether to eat meat or seitan.   It means ingesting primarily the hundreds of foods that are alkaline-forming. (See Day 21.)  Most of the choices that herbivores make are exactly right for maintaining the blood at proper alkaline levels throughout the body, with the exception of soy-based products such as tofu.  And the story didn’t indicate where vegans stand on the sugar issue. 

What has fascinated me ever since I became interested in eating alkaline a few years ago, is the question of whether this extensive cluster of choices can be effectively carried on over a lifetime, or whether it is best adopted as a prophylactic. To guard against or to prevent disease is a question on which prospective studies could be done to benefit humanity. 

I’m not certain that any eating regimen can prevent disease unless it is accompanied by improvements in mental health.  George Vaillant,  in Aging Well (2002),  wrote: “The concept that involuntary coping mechanisms like projection and delinquent “acting out” may mature into altruism and sublimation . . is a very modern concept that has evolved only in the past forty years. For such transformation becomes visible only through the vantage point of the prospective study of lifetimes.”  He then noted that “evidence  that defenses could continue to mature into late midlife seemed clear” in all three cohorts of Harvard’s eight-decade Study of Adult Development.”

That said,  I strongly believe that our food choices affect our mental health; this is best seen in the behavior of alcoholics, those who eat too much sugar, and in those who do not feel in control of their eating choices.   So I’d encourage anybody who’s keeping a food journal to reflect on the changes in their own coping mechanisms along with different eating choices.