ARE ACID-FORMING DIETS DANGEROUS?

The remarkably effective way in which neutrality is regulated in the living organism has attracted attention from many standpoints in recent years. The regulation appears to be essentially physicochemical in nature, involving such a reaction between acids and bases that the hydrogen-ion concentration of the fluids bathing the tissues is practically constant. When it is recalled that our food intake, on the one hand, furnishes a variable mixture of acid and basic substances, while, on the other hand, the processes of metabolism may give rise to such acids as carbonic, lactic, sulphuric and phosphoric, as well as the base ammonia in addition to the potentially available supply of fixed alkalis, one can appreciate the careful adjustments of a chemical sort that must bemade to secure a tissue medium of approximately constant reaction out of the variables that play on it. The acid components almost always preponderate; and accordingly there are