No, that's definitely not related to what I'm talking about. I don't believe I've ever seen any good evidence related to the notion of "alkaline" and "acidic" foods. The top result for "dissociated diet" doesn't sound credible at all, to me. (Sure, it offers reasonable advice, like "eat lots of vegetables", but its reasoning is completely made up, as far as I can tell.)

And, the example meal plan on the same first result page is for a 1200 calorie diet! That's a massive caloric deficit for any adult; of course you'll lose weight if you follow it!

I was specifically talking about a study on sugar and fat and how they might trigger cravings and overconsumption, and possibly also cause metabolic effects that can cause weight gain and other problems, and not at all about alkaline/acidic food combining theories.

Sorry, IIRC it was called alimentación disociada in Spanish. I tried the probable translation, made a search and assumed the links were pointing to the same thing. I just browsed the book 20 years ago and it said nothing about ph, but about avoiding certain mixes of proteins, carbs and fats. The owner of the book said it had helped him a lot, but I didn't take much interest because that guy was not exactly thin and low-carb worked fine for me... actually it seemed like a softened keto diet, designed to make it a little funnier.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I've got several friends who believe in various forms of the pH diet. They also tend to be folks who believe in a lot of other woo, so I'm a bit trigger happy in shooting down pH-based diet theories (those diets are particularly ridiculous because they often categorize quite acidic foods into the alkaline category and vice versa). If there's ever been a good study about it, I'd certainly read it.

I think there's a lot of superstition in general, but one could certainly have independently noticed that eating sugar or fat alone (say butter or honey) is somewhat self-regulating. You get sick of it pretty quick. But, put them together in a pie or pastry or donut or something and suddenly it gets really easy to eat hundreds of calories worth of sugar and fat in a few quick bites.

Its part of the Fit for Life diet and that's debunked [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fit_for_Life#Controversy