Robert O. Young

Young's website states he attended the University of Utah on a tennis scholarship and studied biology and business in the early 1970s. He did not graduate. He then performed missionary work for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years in London. Young, who is not a medical doctor, has received doctorates for naturopathy and nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health (formerly American College of Holistic Nutrition), a defunct correspondence school that was not accredited by any agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. The prosecution at his 2016 trial said his doctorate was purchased from a "diploma mill", and it was pointed out that he had gone from a bachelor's to a doctor's degree in eight months.

Young has residences in Alpine, Utah and Rancho Del Sol, an avocado and grapefruit ranch in Valley Center, California, with his wife, Shelley Redford Young.

Young promotes an alkaline diet based on notions that are not compatible with the scientific understandings of nutrition and disease. He claims that health depends primarily on proper balance between an alkaline and acid environment in the human body, and that an acid environment causes cancer, obesity, osteoporosis, yeast overgrowth, influenza, skin disorders, and other diseases. Young writes about pleomorphism, a school of thought that was prominent in late-19th-century microbiology that asserts that red blood cells transform into bacteria when the surrounding environment becomes acidic—an idea that was proven wrong with the development of germ theory. Young's fundamental claim is that the human body is alkaline by design and acidic by function, and that there is only one disease ("acidosis") and one treatment (an alkaline diet).

Young's books recommend a low-stress lifestyle and a high-water-content, high-chlorophyll, plant-based diet. He recommends moderate intake of high-carbohydrate vegetables, some grains, and fresh fish. Young recommends abstaining from "acidic" foods—sugar, red meat, shellfish, eggs, dairy, processed and refined foods, stored grains, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, coffee, chocolate, and sodas—because he believes that such foods overload the body with acidity and cause disease. Young claims that disorders such as weight gain, water retention, high cholesterol, kidney stones, and tumors are all life-saving mechanisms for dealing with excess acidity in the body.

Research supporting alkaline diets, like that promoted by Young, is limited to in vitro and animal studies. A number of recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses in the medical literature have concluded that there is no evidence that alkaline diets are beneficial to humans.

According to a book review by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, some aspects of his diet, such as the emphasis on eating green leafy vegetables and exercise, would likely be healthy; however, the diet overall "is not a healthy way to lose weight." Quackwatch describes Young's claims as "fanciful".