OMIGOD! Cried the manager of my local juice bar. I’m ruined!
The news article was all about the findings of molecular biologist Ernie Hubbard who pointed out that superstar of the alkaline diet, kale …full of all the goodies like calcium, magnesium, potassium, Vitamin K, and various healthful phytochemicals and anti-oxidants… had a dark side. Not just Kale, but also cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and collard greens—are hyper-accumulators of heavy metals like thallium and cesium.
What’s more, traces of nickel, lead, cadmium, aluminum, and arsenic are also common in greens, and this contamination affected both organic and standard produce samples.
Oh Shit.
So all those promoters of the old alkaline diet who have been telling you that you should have 80% alkaline-style foods… are suggesting you have 80% of possible heavy metal laden foods..
Oh Shit.
So.. how serious is this, and what can we do about it if we want to keep up with high levels of these vegetables?
Well. first up we can stop taking them in as juices. Juices, as I’ve said before, are concentrated to such an extent that your natural limiting function is circumvented. Erica, our inhouse Naturopath pointed out that we have evolved to eat in certain ways, and it’s the fibre we get that limits our intake of certain foods. When we remove the fibre through juicing we are massively and unnaturally increasing our intake of everything else – often in juice form – megaloads of fruit sugars and yes, heavy metals!
One could theorise that the only problem with the presence of heavy metals is related to juicing because we may be getting irrelevantly low levels in kale’s normal form.
Secondly if you are ‘growing your own’ you can ask local authorities to learn whether there really are heavy metals in your soil. I find it hard to believe that my local soil would have relevantly high levels.. but I may be wrong.
Finally, you can give up the 80/20 Old Alkaline diet rule and unsubscribe from the people selling this idea. We’ve done SO much more work on alkaline diet and simply reject this idea. The ‘Old’ diet was, frankly, simplistic, and Cassie has done amazing work evolving our new Alkaline Diet which balances power foods and alkaline foods, looks at all the areas of diet the Old diet just ignored.. and at the moment it’s gratis here!
And there’s one more point here. Dark leafy greens are our source of natural fluoride. Not the stuff they put in your water. The good stuff.
