If you have decided to eat for energy, you may have begun to hear more and more about the pH levels of your food, and how they can affect your overall health. It has been said that a diet higher in acidic foods can result in an increase in stiffness of the joints and muscles, as well as an increase in headaches. If you are interested to know what your pH levels are, you can test your urine with pH papers, available at any pharmacy or drug store.

It is true that foods with a high acidity will be less beneficial to you than if you were to dine on a diet with a higher concentration of alkaline or non-acidic foods. And while you might think it would be relatively easy to determine which raw foods have a high acidity level and which do not, there are always a few trick foods that will make it very difficult to guess.

For instance, you might assume, based on the sour taste, that a lemon would certainly be highly acidic. The truth is, lemon juice is in the low end of the alkaline scale – it is not the most alkaline food to be sure, but it certainly is not acidic in your system.

A high energy diet, of course, cannot forgo all acidic foods when maintaining a raw diet, but it is a good idea to limit your intake of highly acidic foods as much as possible.

Raw foods can even have differing pH levels within the same food groupings. For example, high levels of acidity can be found in some nuts and legumes like walnuts, peanuts and lentils – which can certainly be a healthy part of a raw diet. Other nuts, like filberts and brazil nuts, are less acidic; and nuts like almonds are actually very high in alkalinity.

There are also some vegetables that are fairly high in acidity, including asparagus, green olives and artichokes. Again, these food items can be successfully incorporated into a healthy raw food diet for effective eating for energy, but care should be taken to include highly alkaline foods on the same plate, including most leafy greens, or other items like carrots, beets or cucumbers.

Surprisingly, most fruits are moderately to highly alkaline, with the notable exception of the very popular blueberry. This little fruit has an incredible number of benefits for the body when eaten raw, so it would be a mistake to remove it from your raw foods diet. But again, balance is what you are going for here, so for every heaping helping of blueberries you eat, make sure you include some alkaline fruits, like figs, raisins or prunes (highly alkaline), or peaches, bananas and avocado (moderately alkaline).

Avoiding acidic raw foods altogether is not practical or advisable for most people. These items often contain other benefits that you would be harder pressed to replace in a raw foods situation. But on the whole, you want your meals to be heavily favored towards an alkaline pH level, for optimal health and good eating.