Talk:Umeboshi

Appropriate tone
The alkalinity of acidity of a food depends on what is presented to the kidneys and liver as the end-product of digestion, thus the alkalinity and acidity of an individual's diet does play an important role in homeostasis. Umeboshi plums appear to contain a good deal of sodium and potassium. Additionally, many pickling agents are, in the end (once organic acids have been "burned") alkaline. This article is a total mess. The sections of health benefits and alkalinity need to be completely deleted or rewritten, this is not cool. Not cool at all. Someone needs to actually try a delicious umeboshi and then complain. The Japanese eat them, and they seem pretty on-the-ball. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.156.217 (talk) 23:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the author of the "Alkaline food?" section as well as the commenter below may be missing the point that there's quite a difference between "alkaline" foods and "alkaline-forming" foods. Lemons and oranges, while high in citric acid and are thus sour and acidic, are in fact alkaline-forming fruits when digested and assimilated by our bodies, as are apricots, which ume is closely related to. They are alkaline-forming because they cause blood pH to go up (becoming more alkaline). It's no great mystery and the research exists to show this.

It is naive to think that an acidic food necessarily causes one's blood to acidify. One must not forget that food doesn't just get directly absorbed into the blood (imagine getting an intravenous drip of lemon juice going directly into your circulatory system); rather, foods are digested and filtered and transformed into other substances by means of complex processes before being absorbed.

And as mentioned below, I agree that the tone used in this section is quite inappropriate. 207.216.207.26 (talk) 07:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

70.122.216.176, I totally agree with everything you're saying. I've seen some things list lemons and limes as "alkaline foods" too, and I remember thinking "did these people ever take elementary school chemistry?" I think there's a kind of person who desperately wants there to be secret miracle foods that cure everything, rather than just eating a balanced and varied diet. However, the tone of some sections of the article is inappropriate now. The best thing to do would be go through the literature and see if we can find something that actually says "no, this sour and acidic fruit doesn't make your blood alkaline", and then put it in the article without making it sound like a rant. Also there might be some legitimate research on chemicals that are actually present in ume, which would deserve more space in the article than railing against some pseudoscience. —Keenan Pepper 07:32, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

fresh green sour plums
i typed in sour plums and was directed to this page. there is another kind of sour plums, eaten mostly in central asia, especially in Iran, called goje sabz (green plums). if you google sour plums you will find pictures of them

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=677&tbm=isch&tbnid=Y7uvGJ52N_tkLM:&imgrefurl=http://www.tasteofbeirut.com/2010/05/sour-plums-jarareng/&docid=Ky5L5ZiYu7ZC5M&imgurl=http://www.tasteofbeirut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/MG_8965-550x373.jpg&w=550&h=373&ei=hGGwT8rvKeWhiQKFwt30Aw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=459&sig=115386626407289172926&page=1&tbnh=149&tbnw=198&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0,i:106&tx=98&ty=93 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 01:44, 14 May 2012 (UTC)