Another Reason to Eat Your Veggies

One of the biggest problems that I see on a daily basis is elevated cortisol levels. One of the side effects of elevated cortisol is acidity. Having high levels cortisol makes your body acidic. Your body tries to always maintain its ph balance and cortisol shifts that balance to the acidic side. Your blood ph is always maintained in a tight range so when the blood is too acidic the body will pull alkaline materials such as calcium from the bone.

When your body is in an alkaline state it is less likely to get sick and it becomes much easier to build muscle, burn fat, and lower your cortisol. The best way to make sure that your body is in an alkaline state is to eat your veggies. All foods have an impact on the acidity of your body. For the most part the only foods that are alkaline are fruits and veggies. So if you are eating your meats(which are acidic) it is important to eat your veggies in order to balance your ph. If you have problems with stress and sleep it is very important to eat enough veggies.

How many veggies should you eat? If you look at books on Paleolithic nutrition you will find that most scholars state that Paleolithic people ate around 100 grams of fiber/day from fruits, veggies, and root vegetables. 100 grams of fiber/day is a lot considering that the RDA for fiber today is around 25 grams/day. I would recommend that you shoot for 6-12 servings of veggies/day and make sure to rotate the sources of veggies so that you are eating a wide variety of foods.