Hacker News Reader

Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stomach-c... suggests Mongolian, Japanese and Korean diets are the worst. What do their diets have in common? High traditional intake of distilled alcohol, pickled foods, and meat. IIRC pickled foods are alkaline and weaken the stomach's acidic environ, exposing stomach lining to compounding damage from alcohol, chilli, etc.

View on HN

Pickles usually contain vinegar for preservation, which is highly acidic. So they are often acidic, not alcaline, and won't weaken anything

OK so pH from pickling per se is out... but highly salted foods can be basic. Seawater is basic and Japanese consume loads of fish. Anyway, even if that's the the cause, it's the only similarity I can think of between those three worst performing diets. Maybe also consumption of ferns?

Salt does not affect the pH of a solution. pH is the ratio of H to OH atoms in a solution, salt is NaCl, which provides neither.

Seawater is alkaline, not acidic due to dissolved coral structures (carbonate hardness). Acidification of seawater is a major concern for coral life since they can't deposit calcium into their skeletons below like 7.4 pH

Aha! Makes sense. So why might those three countries have the highest stomach cancer incidence?

I don't think I'm qualified to make those assessments

The Japanese and Koreans aren't dying early though.

Japan is a blue zone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com