I heard some talk along these lines today:
http://healthandscience.eu/index.php?op ... Itemid=198
This sounds all kinds of fishy, but I can't seem to find a good source to refute it properly.How does sugar skew the body’s vitamin and mineral balance?
The refinement of sugar canes strips them of around 40 vital nutrients, leaving the white sugar with nothing else than empty calories. In our intestinal system, the white sugar is broken down into fructose (that is passed on to the liver) and glucose (that is absorbed quickly in the bloodstream). Glucose is used to produce the energy molecule, ATP. This requires a number of enzyme processes that depend on B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, and other minerals. However, as white sugar is refined, the body must collect vitamins and minerals from other parts of the body. In this connection, our bones serve as the primary “mineral bank”. Consuming sugar, in other words, is like making constant cash withdrawals, and unless we make sure to replace what we take out from our account, we risk going bankrupt, figuratively speaking.
Sugar, soft beverages, and the acid-base balance
If we consume too much sugar, it weakens our bones. Moreover, sugar leads to an acid build-up in the bloodstream, which requires a tightly regulated pH value. Base-forming minerals like calcium and magnesium are dispatched in the blood and subsequently discharged with the urine. Our bones lose calcium, magnesium, and other minerals on that account, and the problem is made worse by consuming soft beverages that contain phosphorus, which belongs to the group of acid-forming minerals.
I mean, if nothing else, glucose is surely found in many foods that are a poor source of calcium, is it not? Ergo, consuming any such natural foods ought to be just as calcium-depleting as white sugar, right?
That the body's pH can somehow be swung from "basic" to "acidic" is of course unquestionably hooey, but I confess that I am not so well-read as to discount the possibility that calcium is expended in the natural course of maintaining said pH.