Seems a lot of fighters these days are into this; in the recent issue of BlackBelt mag, Couture is quoted as saying: "I'm taking some excellent new supplements and use a high alkaline diet with whole foods and a lot of grains..." Couture is known for his conditioning, and wouldn't screw around and waste his time with garbage. At 42 years old, he just can't afford it. A MMA school I train at has their professional fighters on a high alkaline diet. A lot of hype these days about it on other websites. Initially, I thought it was just tree-hugger shight or a pure fad; after reading an article by Berardi here , I'm wondering if there's a significant benefit to it. Anyone else have any experience with this? Heard the good, the bad? Other articles?
Even without considering the acidity/alkalinity of the diet, just look at the foods they recommend eating. Get your protein sources, red meat, chicken, whatever... and get your legumes and fibre sources... These are acidifying. Then eat lots of fruits and veggies, especially spinach, and nuts to neutralize. You should be eating as much if not more fruits and veggies as you do acidifying foods. Without even taking acid/alkaline into consideration, this is what the wise people have been saying for years. Eat your veggies. Now they've added another reason on top of the array of vitamins and minerals you get - alkalinity. Oh yeah - and for those who dismiss whey protein as unnecessary, it is a way to add a lot of protein to a diet while decreasing overall acidity. Not bad eh?
Let me guess, he went on to plug Xyience's NOX CG3? Take most professional athlete's "advice" with a grain of salt, or three. That said, I'm not a huge fan of anything that makes training or nutrition more complicated. While Berardi is generally my numero uno nutrition guy, I agree with Blake on the underlying concept. General clean eating (with meats, poultry, fish, low fat dairy, whole grains, fruits, and veggies) is hard to beat.
He actually didn't plug any of the supplements, which was nice to see. But he also didn't go into any more details about the diet. While it may make it more complicated, I'm more interested to see if there's any actual physiological benefit from it; I've even heard of athletes going to the extreme of downing some NaHCO3 prior to working out, in an attempt to "pre-buffer" lactic acid. Probably not the easiest thing to stomach.
The whole acid/base thing put me off after I read a letter in the Daily Mail from some New Age nutjob telling everyone that if you eat too much acidic food, the blood becomes too acidic and you can get athletes foot. I wish I had the picture of her. It was one of those "would you trust this woman?" kind of things. I suspect there is truth to the acid thing, but I'm not qualified to say. However, I'd bet some people, like this bird, take it too far.
