Alkaline pH food gets sold as something your body needs. A 2024 trial in Germany tested a mineral water loaded with bicarbonate, not a food, and measured what it did to urine and blood. Its numbers make a useful ruler for what a plate of fruit, dates included, can and cannot do.
What "alkaline" means in the research
In the research, foods are sorted by their potential renal acid load, or PRAL. Remer and Manz worked out PRAL values for common foods in 1995 (PubMed 7797810), using a model built to estimate the acid the kidneys excrete from nutrient data. They ran from about 23.6 mEq per 100g for certain hard cheeses, through 0 for fats and oils, to roughly −3 per 100g on average for fruit, fruit juice and vegetables. Schwalfenberg's 2012 review lists fruits, vegetables, fruit juices and mineral soda waters among the items with a negative acid load.
Remer and Manz also found that net acid excretion tracked urine pH closely (r = .83). That is the point to hold on to. Diet moves urine.
The bicarbonate water trial
The BicarboWater study (Mansouri and colleagues, PubMed 39263192) randomised 94 healthy adults at Leibniz University Hanover. For four weeks, 49 of them drank 1,500 to 2,000 mL a day of a mineral water very high in bicarbonate (4,368 mg/L) and sodium (1,708 mg/L). The other 45 drank a water low in both. Everyone was told to keep their usual diet.
The paper lists the high-bicarbonate water at a PRAL of −63.07 mEq per litre. The low one sat at −0.89.
The result in urine was clear. The high-bicarbonate group had higher urine pH and more bicarbonate in the urine, and lower net acid excretion, within three days, and those changes held to day 28. The low-bicarbonate water had no significant effect on urine pH. In the blood, the authors describe the changes as modest in both groups.
Blood stays put, urine moves
That split fits what Gerry Schwalfenberg's review (PubMed 22013455) says about the body. Serum pH is held tightly at about 7.4, within a slightly alkaline range of 7.35 to 7.45. Urine, by contrast, may run from acid to alkaline depending on what the body needs to balance.
So if the claim is that alkaline food is required to fix your pH, the measurable change shows up mostly in the urine, even with something as strong as this water.
How many dates would match the water?
Dates make a good test case because they score well below the fruit average. Using the five-nutrient PRAL equation quoted in Scialla and Anderson's 2013 review (PubMed 23439373), 0.49 × protein + 0.037 × phosphorus − 0.021 × potassium − 0.026 × magnesium − 0.013 × calcium, with USDA FoodData Central figures:
- Deglet Noor (FDC 171726: 2.45g protein, 62mg P, 656mg K, 43mg Mg, 39mg Ca per 100g) comes out at about −11.9 per 100g.
- Medjool (FDC 168191: 1.81g protein, 62mg P, 696mg K, 54mg Mg, 64mg Ca per 100g) comes out at about −13.7 per 100g.
The trial's minimum daily dose, 1.5 litres, works out to about −94.6 mEq. Matching that with Deglet Noor alone would take roughly 795g of dates a day. At 282 kcal per 100g in the FDC record, that is over 2,200 kcal. Medjool gets there in about 690g. That is not a realistic amount to eat, and the comparison is rough anyway: the trial calculated its water figure with a different formula, from Wynn and colleagues, and Scialla notes that PRAL depends on accurate nutrient composition databases.
The sodium on the other side of the scale
The water's alkaline punch came with salt. The authors report that 1,500 mL of the high-bicarbonate water added 2.56g of sodium a day. The WHO recommends adults keep sodium below 2,000 mg a day, which is under 5g of salt. Dates sit at the opposite end, with 2mg of sodium per 100g for Deglet Noor and 1mg for Medjool in FDC.
That is the honest case for alkaline-rated food. On this evidence, it does not reset your blood. It shifts the acid load of a meal toward the base side, and fruit such as dates does that while bringing potassium rather than sodium.
Dates on the plate
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The video below, from the YouTube channel AbuAyyash Farms, is titled as a look at Medjool date farming and a date processing factory.
This article is general information about diet research, not personal advice. If you have a health condition or take regular medication, check with your doctor before making big changes to what you eat or drink.