No, because the body has an exquisite system for making sure that the blood maintains the proper pH, the chemical term for the concentration of hydrogen ions.
A pH of 7 is considered neutral. A pH of lower than 7 is acidic, higher than 7, basic or alkaline. Normal blood pH is tightly controlled so that it stays between 7.35 and 7.45.
“But you don’t have to do anything to achieve the right pH – nothing is as powerful as your intestinal tract to make sure the proper balance of acids and bases enters your bloodstream,” says Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School. If, by chance, the intestines fail to get it right, the kidneys also have a powerful ability to fix it, he says.
Some people fear that eating acidic foods promotes cancer, but that is false, says Karen Collins, a nutritional advisor to the American Institute for Cancer Research. The myth about acidity and cancer comes from valid observations that cancer cells thrive in an acidic environment. But that only applies to isolated cancer cells in the laboratory.
Some also fear that an acid-producing diet may trigger loss of calcium from the bones, potentially increasing the risk of osteoporosis. The data on this point are conflicting. A study published in May, in which data from five other studies were pooled, disputed this idea. But Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the bone metabolism laboratory at the USDA Nutrition Center at Tufts University, published a study in January suggesting that increasing the alkali content of the diet may attenuate bone loss.
Bottom line? Eat lots of fruits and veggies – for many reasons. They won’t make your body too acid – in fact, quite the opposite, they are broken down in the body to “bases,” the chemical opposite of acids.