December 26, 2023 by Sally K Norton

Grandmother’s Love Feels Like Pain

Three family scenes of grandparents with their grandchildren.

[This is part two of a two-part post. If you haven’t read the first one, go there first: Can We Save the Babies?]

The oxalate-educated grandmother (uncle, aunt, or step-dad) wrestles with emotionally charged conflicting realities. The trusted doctrine that vegetables are the unequivocal health pillar collides with her own jarring personal experience of pain, discovery, and a sometimes challenging recovery process.

It’s bad enough for her to be sick because of her “healthy” diet, the added mental struggle is a wound on its own. How could the very foods she served at her table with loving kindness be the hidden culprits behind her health issues?

Grief Turns to Worry

While navigating her own oxalate-induced health issues, the shock and disbelief can trigger a complex grief process. There is a sense of betrayal, and even rage: How could experts’ advice and accepted common knowledge fail her, and thus her family? Despite her best intentions, she unknowingly exposed her loved ones to harm. Her past teachings, she realizes, could lead to health issues for her precious family. It can be hard to avoid feelings of guilt and self-recrimination.

In processing the sad discovery, hopefully without self-blame, she needs time to process and acknowledge her private pain. From there perhaps she can find a strengthened sense of allegiance to her own well-being and truth.

In confronting an entrenched belief system—one she herself nurtured within her family—how does she break the news with her adult children and hope to invite them into a wholly different understanding?

Can she be vulnerable, share her heart, and be heard? Can she move forward to share her experience (and confess her feelings and mistakes) in a way that can spark interest and curiosity, and that opens the opportunity to reeducate her adult children. Does she have the influence to bring them along on this painful process of walking away from popular (mistaken) information?

It can feel like a no-win situation. Today’s lauded baby foods are loaded with high oxalate ingredients. Bite your tongue about this hidden hazard, and you’re guilty of not protecting vulnerable children.

If you speak out in hopes that family members will agree to protect children from oxalates, you either “damage” people and strain your relationships, or you feel the rejection—or both. You share your profound discovery, so dear to you, and they treat it like it’s of no consequence.

The work ahead isn’t going to be easy. Your precious news will not be cherished as a precious gem painfully dug from caves. If your news is not hated, belittled, or mocked, it might be sternly denied and ignored. Ouch!

“My son and daughter-in-law have a 2-year-old daughter and a baby. They don’t buy into the notion that oxalates are a problem. They don’t want to hear any other point of view; please help me get through to them now, while the babies are growing up.”
—Marty

“Please Spare Them”

The grandmother’s mission to protect the young ones might keep her up with worry. At this stage, parents don’t have any special authority over their grown children. We can’t tell them what to do. Other adults will have to learn hard lessons themselves. Yet her hopeful heart pleads with God, “please spare them this one.”

“Don’t Tell Us How to Feed Our Kids”

Let’s consider the grandmother’s new information from the perspective of her adult children with children of their own. For many busy parents with professional ambitions, marriage, and childcare responsibilities, there isn’t time and energy to rethink accepted opinions on food and nutrition. It’s “normal,” “fun,” and easy to give kids potatoes, berries, chocolate, and peanut butter. Cutting these foods seems too hard.

Mother talking to grown daughter and her husband. — Copyright jackf; used with permission

The virtue of vegetables is a deeply ingrained truth, imparted by the most trusted source they’ve known, their mother, and backed up relentlessly in mainstream dietary advice.

When Mother, the architect of their earliest understandings, approaches them with a concern that some vegetables are toxic, it’s more than a ripple in their family routines. It’s an upheaval.

Do they believe their Mother and attempt to swap out the high oxalate foods in their shopping carts, or decide that she has gone bonkers or joined some cult?

And if grandmother has ever been wrong—we all have—that’s the proof she’s lost her marbles and she’s now consuming “fake news.”

Even if her children accept with compassion that Mother’s story is real and revealing, the revelation probably collides with their deeply ingrained worldview, sense of stability, parental authority of their own, and the irresistible tendency to favor information that aligns with their existing beliefs. Personal pride and the desire to fit in with popular trends also favor dismissing new information that contradicts those beliefs. The adult child stopped letting Mother run their lives in high school!

Few young parents are ready be a lone voice in the wilderness. Opinions refuting this new ‘radical’ claim about the dangers of high oxalate vegetables are everywhere. Countless health blogs, diet testimonials, and mainstream nutritional guidelines have always championed the universal goodness of all vegetables.

Do Facts Matter?

But really, it’s not about the scientific evidence that high dietary oxalates lead to poor health outcomes. In the face of the unsettling possibility that a foundational notion is flawed, the resistance is partly emotional self-defense. What would they have to give up? What will they miss out on without blackberries, dark chocolate, and spinach?

Are they up for reevaluating deeply held beliefs? Admitting that they live and perpetuate distorted information? Changing habits? Become cultural misfits? Add a new worry over their children? No Thanks, Mom!!

And as an adult, we’re far more likely to listen to experts and even some guy at the gym than we are to our parents. Perhaps you’d be wise to infect the guy they listen to at the gym with the oxalate-awareness bug. Let him convince your kid to give this a try. His facts are better than your facts (wink).

Eventually, our shared culture and popular collective “wisdom” will shift. In the meantime, accepting new information on oxalates may require uncommon bravery. It’s much easier to imagine that mom is a special case. Her ideas that the children are also at risk can’t be true.

Preserve Your Relationship

Like politics and religion, nutrition is a sensitive topic. A different point of view can spark power struggles in the family. Our listening within a family is mixed up with all the emotional baggage that comes with growing up (disappointments, and some degree of trauma and dysfunction, even in the healthiest of families) and then stepping free as an independent, self-guided adult.

The adult child has an opportunity to process the discomfort and be open to learning. In the long run, it’s a golden opportunity to grow, learn, and foster deeper connections within the family. Openness to new dietary principles and awareness may arise more easily from the fertile ground of relating well and supporting each other.

But all that takes time. It won’t happen on Thursday afternoon, or from reading one article or a web page. It depends on grandmother and adult child forming a mutually respectful learning partnership through which they can navigate what amounts to a societal betrayal by ‘expert sources’, while unlearning and supporting each other in building new wisdom.

How to Create Understanding

It’s essential for grandparents to approach their family members with empathy, patience, good humor, respect, and technique. Learn to spark interest. Think hard about their values: What might inspire curiosity? For the answer, listen to your inner guidance. Without speeches, speak to those values with simple questions or revelations that can linger in their minds and hearts. Each moment is unique, and openings show up. Stay willing to make connections listen, learn, unlearn, and relearn to enhance the relationship, not tear it down.

Grandmothers can start by sharing their experience, their sense of betrayal by experts, and their guilt for promoting a plant-trusting narrative they now know to be potentially dangerous. We need to console each other over the unbearable shock.

Take the time to nurture a loving understanding of the complex emotions each is experiencing. Let the love be felt. We all want the best for the kids. Sadly, we’re not aware of the profound importance of non-toxic nutrition. The education can be a heavy lift and minds can open slowly.

At stake is more than a concern about defining a healthful diet for the young ones. It’s also an opportunity to strengthen intergenerational bonds, honor the value of relationships, and model invaluable lessons for young ones about navigating sensitive topics, being willing to change our thinking in the face of new evidence, and learning to sustain better life choices.

Patience, open communication, and loving respect for the deep emotions involved (our own as well as our family members’) are the foundation from which new understanding and new practices will emerge. By all means speak your new truth about oxalates: but the goal is not just to “make them believe.” We need to form loving partnerships to support each other in building the best lives possible for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and extend that into the world.

Let’s Help Each Other

While the food fights rage on, our growing community is learning together. Please share your personal stories of mistakes or success in bringing inter-generational family members onboard.

Many families are reporting both benefits (and dumping) in children who seemed healthy. Here is one example from an Amazon Review:

Many seemingly unrelated ailments can all be from oxalate. I have found great relief in my low oxalate diet endeavor. My husband and children have also experienced oxalate dumping after lowering oxalate. It is not rare! Our modern diet, eating superfoods year round, is affecting kids and adults alike. In summary, do yourself a favor and buy a copy of Toxic Superfoods today. I will be buying copies for my family and friends.”
-K.K., Amazon Reviewer

If you have your own thoughts on how to handle this situation, please leave them in the comments on this post.

December 24, 2023 by Sally K Norton

Can We Save the Babies?

Many of my clients are grandmothers (or aunts or sisters) who had to learn about dietary oxalates the hard way. It took a labored and often expensive and protracted search for relief from their own health issues before they discovered that dietary oxalates could play a central role in their feeling broken.

The perplexing answer to their suffering was to “quit health foods.” Sure enough, doing so is bringing them relief from joint and muscle pain, exhaustion, bladder issues, depression, and anxiety. Grandma is living the single most profound and rewarding life change ever! This is a big deal.

But for years, they taught their children the virtues of consuming foods like spinach. They were doing their best, confidently believing “all vegetables are healthy.” Their past “knowledge” did not serve them well, however. Foods they’ve long promoted proved to be the problem. Ouch! The unmanageable pain that brought them to a sea-change in their understanding may be lifting, but other baggage sets up in its wake.

While regaining their health through oxalate-aware eating, grandmothers suffer a multi-faceted psychic tumult as they wrestle with the disturbing understanding: Some of their long-cherished foods can be quite harmful to anyone, including their loved ones.

My Daughter Feeds Her Child High Oxalate Foods!

Low-oxalate grandmothers are now troubled with a heart-breaking challenge: How to save the babies from oxalate toxicity in a world unwilling to consider the possibility?

They have science and experience on their side. In my book, Toxic Superfoods, I cite various studies by experts insisting that spinach and other high oxalate foods are detrimental to a child’s development. But ignored evidence is powerless.

To protect their grandchild (or any young person, including grandnieces or nephews etc.), they must convince other adults that a high intake of oxalates can be harmful, particularly to growing children and their developing brains. Grandma’s legacy needs work!

But, humans don’t welcome change. Grandmothers busting though the front door announcing their joyous, precious news about oxalates don’t get high-fives and accolades for sharing a profound insight. Adult family members are unlikely to gleefully agree to menu changes and fall in line behind her, easily tossing aside conventional beliefs and shared traditions.

Is there any hope that the ship of the family will turn around and sail off in this new direction in time to help the very young? Attempting to change minds and hearts can be an emotionally dangerous high seas journey. Storms are ahead, dear grandma.

How do we navigate this course correction with all its potential tumult and conflict? Can grandma withstand what’s to come? Can we save the babies from oxalate damage and preserve the family relationships that are also critically important for children?

Read my next post (“Grandmother’s Love Feels Like Pain”) and explore how to understand and handle this sticky situation.

September 4, 2023 by Sally K Norton

Painful Gout, Joint Pain, and Oxalates

Do you have painful gout, arthritis, bursitis, or stiff and swollen joints?

Hands and feet showing gout inflammation

Pain is too Popular

Together, painful arthritis, gout, lupus, or fibromyalgia afflict over 53 million adults in the United States. As of 2014, twenty-seven percent of U.S. adults have chronic joint symptoms.[1] An earlier 2006 study revealed that even young people—over 8% of patients under the age of 20—complain of pain, typically in the feet, knees, or back.[2] Joint pain—arthritis and rheumatism—is the most common cause of disability in the U.S., affecting 9.1 million adults in 2010[3].

Chronic pain of one kind or another has become an expensive public health problem in the U.S., costing $635 billion in medical treatments and lost productivity in 2011 alone.[4] In 2016, Americans spent over $4 billion on pain-killing drugs that did nothing to address the cause of the pain[5]. And monetary cost estimates alone cannot begin to capture the losses associated with pain.

What if we could cheaply get out of pain? What if gout, arthritis, rheumatism, and back pain are a product of our diets—something very much under our individual control. Let’s take a closer look at gout.

What is Gout?

Gout is a form of inflammatory arthritis that can affect anyone. Sufferers experience sudden, severe attacks of pain, swelling, redness, and extreme tenderness in one or more joints, often the big toe, ankle, or fingers. The pain can have a burning quality as if the joints are on fire. Even after the acute gout pain subsides, joint discomfort may linger for days or weeks. With time, repeated attacks tend to last longer and affect more joints.

Gout and Diet

If you have gout, your doctor may be blaming your diet, and in particular the protein and salt you eat. The advice you’re likely to get? “Eat less meat and more low-fat vegetables.” Chances are such advice is tragically wrong.

Oxalate gout, a crystal-induced arthritis, as well as bursitis and tendinitis, can be caused by an oxalate-overloaded diet. Meats, fats, and salt don’t have oxalate, but dark chocolate, spinach, chard, almonds, buckwheat, peanuts, potatoes, and sweet potatoes do. Routine use of high oxalate foods can be the culprit in gout. When I had gout in college, I was a low-salt vegetarian. Thirty-some years later, I discovered that my gout was oxalate gout, caused by my vegetable-heavy diet, overloaded with oxalate.

Oxalate gout can appear, as it did for me, as a symptom of oxalate overload from my high-oxalate diet. But gout episodes can also occur during oxalate clearing as a transient symptom against the backdrop of improved health overall.

Crystals, Inflammation and Gout

Oxalate crystals forming and collecting in joints are known to trigger gouty inflammation and pain. The inflammation can be destructive to joint tissues. The accumulation of calcium crystals in cartilage (a.k.a. “calcification”) affects the elastic qualities of joints as well as their strength and stability. A lack of joint stability can cause pain. When I cut back on oxalate foods at age 49, my arthritis and long-standing foot problems (arising from weak connective tissues) finally disappeared.

Showing the opening paragraph of Dr. Simpkin's 1988 editorial about naming schemes for the sub-types of gout. Here he states that an article written by Rosenthal et. al. uses nine different terms to indicate oxalate gout. — Opening paragraph from Peter Simpkin’s 1988 Editorial from JAMA about types of gout.

Being a toxic irritant, crystals within joints lead to acute or chronic inflammation including gouty arthritis. Oxalate is one of several crystal types associated with arthritis. In 1988, Rheumatologist and editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Dr. Peter Simkin, pointed out that the medical field uses too many difficult terms including “articular oxalosis” and “calcium oxalate micro-crystalline-associated arthritis” when referring to oxalate gout. The lack of simple, clear, and consistent terms for the various types of gout, especially oxalate gout, interferes with the clinical recognition of oxalate gout.

Oxalate is Hard to See

Diagnosis distinguishing one type of gout from another is problematic and depends on elusive analysis of joint fluid. Several authors, including rheumatologist and medical textbook author Antonio Reginato, call out the difficulty of identifying calcium oxalate crystals in synovial fluid of joints because they can easily be confused with other crystals.[6] Reginato’s work helped to establish the connection between crystals in joint spaces and arthritis and other bone and joint symptoms.

Invisible oxalate nanocrystals and oxalate ions are reactive and mobile, and thus are more toxic than the “prominent” crystals that are typically discovered by pathologists.[7] Slow to notice even the visible crystals, researchers, doctors, and pathologists are even slower to imagine the possibility of toxic trace deposits of nanocrystals and other chemical forms of oxalate in tissues. Although we can’t see them, nanocrystals do the most damage because of their ability to enter cells. And collectively, they have a larger surface area that interacts with living tissues.[8] Consequently, they are simultaneously stealthy, undetectable, and harmful.

Oxalates can also collect in tissues in other difficult to detect forms. In 1967, researchers Zarembski & Hodgkinson noted the presence of a non-crystalline complex of calcium and lipid in the liver and intestine: the oxalate lipids. [9] Similarly Reginato reported findings of lipid crystals and inflammation in joint fluids from patients with gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and traumatic bursitis.[10] He explains that analysis of joint fluids is rarely performed in cases of oxalosis, although joint pain is a known problem for these patients.

Another experiment led by a Belgian hematologist exposed human serum and dishes of living human cells that line blood and lymphatic vessels to oxalate crystals. They confirmed that oxalate crystals collect in blood vessel walls and trigger the immune cell reactions associated with the pain of gout and vasculitis[11].

Accepted clinical standards seem to miss the connection between oxalate and joint pain. Gout is strongly associated with kidney stones and chronic kidney disease. Despite this association, gout patients are typically excluded from studies on oxalate kidney stones. That is unfortunate given that high levels of oxalate (promoting stones anywhere in the body) seem to encourage uric acid gout and oxalate gout.

the formation and accumulation of crystals in tissues is a hallmark of many metabolic and inflammatory conditions, not just kidney and bladder problems.

Other Reasons High Oxalates Create Pain

Based on existing science, let me explain why minimizing oxalate exposure can get at the root cause of inflammatory problems and solve chronic pain problems. Science now recognizes that crystals forming in tissues are part of the development of gout and atherosclerosis[12]. Many studies have demonstrated that calcium oxalate crystals cause renal inflammation and damage renal immune cells[13]. In fact, the formation and accumulation of crystals in tissues is a hallmark of many metabolic and inflammatory conditions, not just kidney and bladder problems.

In addition to oxalate collecting in joint spaces, tendons, cartilage, and bones, oxalate causes nerve damage that creates pain, and increases uric acid, which is also associated with joint pain and gout. Most doctors blame uric acid for gout symptoms, which is elevated in people with oxalate kidney stones.

Inflammation

When oxalic acid grabs calcium and changes into crystals, calcium oxalate nanoparticles activate human monocyte cells and enhance local tissue inflammation[14]. That process and the related cell damage stirs up defensive innate immune system actions. These actions include “foreign body” alerts and “inflammasome” reactions, which call in platelets, causing tissue damage and promoting the development of auto-immune symptoms and fibrosis.

The immune engagement caused by exposure to high levels of either oxalate ions or oxalate crystals can lead to inflammatory conditions such as intermittent and chronic pain[15]. Oxalic acid ions and crystals create free radicals in cells that stimulate immune cells to secrete an immune signaling protein called MCP-1 (Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1). MCP-1 is implicated in the development of many diseases, including cancers, neuroinflammatory diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular disease.

Aside from mechanical damage to the tissues, oxalate can also have a dramatic effect on cell physiology, including inhibiting the immune response to infection and shifting immune system toward uncontrolled inflammation.

Long before oxalates become crystals in tissues, oxalic acid damages immune cells (macrophages) and puts them in a pro-inflammatory state (with reduced cellular energy, increased oxidative stress, and damaged mitochondria)[16]. Dr. T. Mitchell’s team at the University of Alabama found damage to circulating immune cells in their human volunteers just 40 minutes after giving them a spinach smoothie with 720mg of oxalate[17].

Famous Gout Sufferers

Queen Anne (b. 1665, d. 1714)

Image of Queen Anne from Wikimedia Commons. — Queen Anne from the Workshop of John Closterman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The famously gouty monarch of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Anne, experienced bouts of pain in her limbs, stomach, and head. Today’s doctors may have said she had systemic lupus and pelvic inflammatory disease.

Anne Stuart suffered from other illnesses too—diseases associated with modern foods like tea, chocolate, and way too much refined carbohydrate: diabetes, nutrient deficiency, and probably oxalate overload.

Not only was she morbidly obese and diabetic at age 30, but pain also tormented her. By age 33, Queen Anne’s gout was a migratory arthritis affecting many of her joints, especially her feet, knees, and hands. The debilitating joint pain prevented walking: in 1702 she was carried to her coronation in a sedan chair. She was 35. She also had other forms of chronic inflammation: headaches, stomach pain, skin problems (red and spotted face eruptions that coincided with her bouts of joint pain).

Her issues suggest that her high oxalate diet was likely a factor behind her suffering.

In childhood, sickly Anne was sent to France for treatment of a serious eye condition with excessive discharge known as “defluxion.”[18] (Some of my clients report copious fluid draining from their eyes with fine grit in it.) While she lived with her French relations as a child, she was introduced to using chocolate, sweets, and tea to help her cope. Anne loved all things sweet.

She adopted a habit of a nightly cup of sweetened hot chocolate. Anne also enjoyed tea every day. Even more so than chocolate, tea was a great exotic novelty of her age, initially popular with the Dutch and French (she had Dutch family and married a Dutchman).

Irish Anglian cleric and author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) was a contemporary of Queen Anne. Swift, who frequented taverns serving hot chocolate, or “chocolate houses,” wisely blamed gout on the over-consumption of chocolate. (According to Wikipedia, Swift hoped for a church appointment in England, but the Queen disliked Swift, finding his first book, A Tale of a Tub (1704), blasphemous.)

The severity of Queen Anne’s symptoms was both cyclical and progressively worsening until her death in 1714 at age 49. Some scholars speculate that the ultimate cause of death was kidney failure.

Ben Franklin

Decades later, in 1780, American founding father Ben Franklin was bedridden with gout. Pen in hand, he asked, “What have I done merit to these cruel sufferings?” ‘Madam Gout’ had an answer. She told him his gout was due, in addition to his sedentary amusements, to his “inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea with cream, and one or two buttered toasts . . .” People had been drinking tea from china bowls (without handles) since Queen Anne’s day. When she ruled England, tea had been around for just a few decades; by Franklin’s time, tea was standard daily fare in Great Britain and its territories.

Science Explains the Connection Between Tea, Chocolate and Pain

In the early 1940’s, researchers produced dramatically stunted growth in rats by adding 16% cocoa to their normal diet. They concluded that “indiscriminate and excessive use of chocolate flavored foods, especially in a diet already low in calcium, is not to be recommended”[19]. Today it’s easy to consume a diet consisting of 16% high oxalate foods like chocolate (and lots of sugar too). Yet, chocolate is now heralded as a health food. Previous generations knew better: two of our long-favored stimulants, chocolate and tea were not to be trusted.

Healing story of Joint Pain Relief with Diet

I have heard and have witnessed many remarkable cases of relief from joint pain after the removal of high oxalate foods from our diets.

My husband who developed debilitating carpal tune syndrome in the wake of the high-oxalate diet he adopted after we met reversed it with a low-oxalate diet.

My friend Ron mentioned in Chapter 13 of Toxic Superfoods also reversed pain in his thumb joints.

Many others have shared their stories online or written me directly, as did this woman from Australia. She is over-joyed to have relief from 8-years of gout. Here is her story:

Dear Sally,

I came across your work through Dr. Bill Schindler who was being interviewed on Episode 108 of the WildFed Podcast. My ears perked up as he was describing his health issues with gout and he explained how he had discovered your work with oxalates. My eyes widened and jaw dropped! I have been suffering from gout for the last 8 years. My mind was completely blown! I felt like a 1000-piece puzzle just fell completely into place at once.

Chard (silverbeet greens), tahini, dark chocolate, almonds, and sweet potatoes were all a part of my “healthy” diet. I expected they would get my gout pain to subside.

I have now been on a low-oxalate diet for three months and my gout has entirely disappeared. My receding, brittle fingernails are looking the best that they ever have and the eczema around my mouth (which I have always had and thought was a dairy related issue) is completely gone.

Since hearing that interview, I have immersed myself in your work. I’ve read and listened to everything that I can find!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for the work that you are doing. The gratitude that I feel is beyond words. Thank you for your passion, your love, your genuine care for people, and your integrity. You are changing lives!

Reversing Oxalate Crystal Deposits in Joints: It’s not over until it’s over

Though low-oxalate eating can lead to remarkable improvement from gout and other joint and connective tissue conditions, gout can also be a symptom of oxalate clearing. When recovering from oxalate overload and enjoying overall improvements in health, the immune system’s efforts to remove oxalate from joint tissues can provoke occasional gout attacks in some people as they recover. The process can take years, but these painful episodes become less frequent and eventually end, seemingly for good.

Footnotes

[1] CDC, “Age-Adjusted Percentages of Selected Diseases and Conditions Among Adults Ages 18 and over, by Selected Characteristics: United States, 2014 Summary Health Statistics: National Health Survey, 2014 Table A-4a” (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, 2014), http://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/NHIS/SHS/2014_SHS_Table_A-4.pdf.

[2] Albert Tan et al., “Epidemiology of Pediatric Presentations with Musculoskeletal Problems in Primary Care,” BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 19, no. 1 (06 2018): 40, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12891-018-1952-7.

[3] Theis, K. A., Steinweg, A., Helmick, C. G., Courtney-Long, E., Bolen, J. A., & Lee, R. (2019). Which one? What kind? How many? Types, causes, and prevalence of disability among U.S. adults. Disability and Health Journal, 12(3), 411–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dhjo.2019.03.001

[4] Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Advancing Pain Research.

[5] “OTC Sales by Category,” accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.chpa.org/OTCsCategory.aspx.

[6] A. J. Reginato and B. Kurnik, “Calcium Oxalate and Other Crystals Associated with Kidney Diseases and Arthritis,” Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism 18, no. 3 (February 1989): 198–224.

[7] Xin-Yuan Sun et al., “Mechanism of Cytotoxicity of Micron/Nano Calcium Oxalate Monohydrate and Dihydrate Crystals on Renal Epithelial Cells,” RSC Advances 5, no. 56 (May 18, 2015): 45393–406, https://doi.org/10.1039/C5RA02313K.

[8] Xin-Yuan Sun et al., “Size-Dependent Toxicity and Interactions of Calcium Oxalate Dihydrate Crystals on Vero Renal Epithelial Cells,” Journal of Materials Chemistry B 3, no. 9 (February 18, 2015): 1864–78, https://doi.org/10.1039/C4TB01626B.

[9] P. M. Zarembski and A. Hodgkinson, “Plasma Oxalic Acid and Calcium Levels in Oxalate Poisoning,” Journal of Clinical Pathology 20, no. 3 (May 1967): 283–85.

[10] Reginato, A.J., and Kurnik, B. (1989). Calcium oxalate and other crystals associated with kidney diseases and arthritis. Semin. Arthritis Rheum. 18, 198–224.

[11] M. A. Boogaerts et al., “Mechanisms of Vascular Damage in Gout and Oxalosis: Crystal Induced, Granulocyte Mediated, Endothelial Injury,” Thrombosis and Haemostasis 50, no. 2 (August 30, 1983): 576–80.

[12] Franklin, B.S., Mangan, M.S., and Latz, E. (2016). Crystal Formation in Inflammation. Annual Review of Immunology 34, 173–202. 10.1146/annurev-immunol-041015-055539.

[13] Mulay, S.R., Kulkarni, O.P., Rupanagudi, K.V., Migliorini, A., Darisipudi, M.N., Vilaysane, A., Muruve, D., Shi, Y., Munro, F., Liapis, H., et al. (2013). Calcium oxalate crystals induce renal inflammation by NLRP3-mediated IL-1β secretion. J Clin Invest 123, 236–246. 10.1172/JCI63679.

[14] Mulay, S.R., Herrmann, M., Bilyy, R., Gabibov, A., and Anders, H.-J. (2019). Editorial: Nano- and Microparticle-Induced Cell Death, Inflammation and Immune Responses. Front Immunol 10, 844. 10.3389/fimmu.2019.00844

[15] Umekawa, T., Chegini, N., and Khan, S.R. (2002). Oxalate ions and calcium oxalate crystals stimulate MCP-1 expression by renal epithelial cells. Kidney Int 61, 105–112. 10.1046/j.1523-1755.2002.00106.x.

[16] Kumar, et al 2021 Oxalate Alters Cellular Bioenergetics, Redox Homeostasis, Antibacterial Response, and Immune Response in Macrophages.

[17] Kumar, et al 2021. Dietary Oxalate Loading Impacts Monocyte Metabolism and Inflammatory Signaling in Humans.

[18] https://www.willowandthatch.com/history-queen-anne-britain-favourite/; https://www.historyofroyalwomen.com/anne-queen-of-great-britain/queen-anne-an-unhealthy-life-part-three/

[19] W. S. Mueller and M. R. Cooney, “The Effect of Cocoa upon the Utilization of the Calcium and Phosphorus of Milk.,” Journal of Dairy Science 26 (1943): 951–58, https://doi.org/0.3168/jds.S0022-0302(43)92791-2.

Invisible Oxalate Accumulation is Hard to Detect

No news is not necessarily good news. Because no one has told us about it, hardly anyone knows about a common health problem: the excessive oxalate we eat sets up as crystal pollution in tissues and organs. Invisible oxalate accumulation is an insidious source of damage.

As researcher Susan Marengo wrote in 2008, “unexcreted oxalate is stored in structural tissues and soft organs.” Dr. Marengo was explaining that even healthy kidneys do not manage to completely clear oxalate loads coming into the bloodstream after oxalate-loaded meals and, as a result, dietary oxalate lands in non-kidney tissues all over the body. (Reference: Marengo, S. R., Zhang, A., & Traverso, E. J. (2008). Partitioning of 14C-oxalate excretion in rats during a persistent oxalate challenge. Urological Research, 36(6), 319–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00240-008-0155-3)

Other researchers have run into oxalate crystals in the eyes and thyroid gland and point out that such invisible oxalate accumulation is much more common than medical science believes.

Oxalate is not supposed to be hanging around in our flesh, skin, eyes, tendons, bones, and joint spaces, or in our kidneys. Yet it is. And, it can become a serious problem, especially for the heath of our immune systems. Our growing oxalate-aware community is seeing strong evidence of crystal accumulations in our bodies too.

Skin Release as part of Oxalate Clearing

Take for example Al, at age 70, read Toxic Superfoods at his daughter’s suggestion. Like others, he too is seeing crystals coming out of his body after he quit the high oxalate foods. Here is how he put it:

I have several places on my skin around my body that are emitting oxalates. It is apparent in my eyes and the mole-like growths on my skin. Even a 1 by 2-inches patch of skin came off which had a texture of a mass of fine crystals mixed with a bit of skin. And, as soon as I stopped the oxalates, I was getting diarrhea. The worst thing is that my urinary tract has been hurting from my kidneys all the way out.

That proved beyond a doubt that my body is completely overloaded with oxalates. They have been itching to get out!

Years of Almonds Left Rebecca with a Lot of Oxalate to Clear

Rebecca started cutting back on her almonds and other high oxalate foods in the Spring of 2021 after listening to a podcast interview I had with KetogenicGirl. It was the first time she had heard anything about oxalates. She thought, “That is me!! What if that is my problem?”

Wman's neck and finger showing rash and oxalate crystals. — Rebecca’s Neck Rash and an Emerged Crystal Resting her Finger

By summer, spots appeared on her neck that took at least three weeks to go away. And later, she was having intense neck pain, and about a week into it, a lump in her neck became very swollen and started “opening up.” When she massaged the areas, crystals emerged from her pores. The swelling and weeping skin on her neck expelled a variety of grit. The process moved all the way down both sides of her neck with a staged progression: first, sandy grit, then hard crystals that sometimes took a week or more to dislodge. Then there were crystals wrapped in sheets or calcium sheets—layer after layer after layer.

As Rebecca wrote: “They looked like they were folded up in the tissue like and accordion. Many nights I had to sleep with a cloth around my neck with castor oil because it would otherwise stick to my pillow case . It was quite awful. Between the months of October through mid-December the process moved to my face which I was praying would not happen. Since the massive release of crystals from my neck, my neck pain is so much better. My shoulders are getting better. I can see the end slowly coming for my chin and upper lip to get better. I am slowly healing . . .”

Oxalate Crystals are Hard for Pathologists to See

Copyright: teamarbeit / 123RF Stock Photo

In medical science, the phenomenon of bodies expelling crystals after taking oxalate out of their diets is entirely unknown. When my clients tell their doctors about it, a dismissive comment and no curiosity is the usual reply.

Even pathologists don’t notice oxalate crystals when examining tissue samples under the microscope. Without polarized light and specific chemical testing, the identification of oxalate is challenging to say the least. Randomly oriented and fragmented crystals are hard to see and difficult to interpret. They look like minuscule debris or bits of the mounting medium. This poor visibility in ordinary microscopy accounts for the failure to notice and identify oxalate when unsuspected. This problem is well described by pathologist Gregory A. Fishbein and colleagues, in their 2008 paper “Atherosclerotic Oxalosis in Coronary Arteries,” in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pathology : The Official Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carpath.2007.07.002.

June 13, 2023 by Sally K Norton

Herbicides in Suburbia: Stop and Inspect the Roses

Freedom from excessive toxins and proper nourishment are key to optimal health. Toxins, be they natural or synthetic, harm our health and threaten our futures. (Keep in mind that naturally occurring oxalate, heavy metals, and asbestos can create some nasty problems.) The simplest way to avoid becoming toxic is to avoid exposure in the first place.

Images showing herbicide damage to garden plants. — _{^{Garden plants showing herbicide damage in the springtime (Images from Spring 2023)}}

Oxalates Make us More Susceptible to Other Toxins

Hopefully, healing from oxalate toxicity reminds us that we must also think broadly about toxins in daily life. In a way, just zeroing in on one toxin (be it oxalates, heavy metals, mycotoxins, or some other noteworthy poison) misses the point: our cells need to be generally free to do their jobs.

An oxalate-toxic diet uses up glutathione in the body and can become a huge source of the antioxidant-deficient (toxic) state called “oxidative stress.” In test animals with calcium-oxalate crystalluria, severe tissue damage at the mitochondrial level occurs. That means the stressed cells damaged by oxalate have lower energy levels and poor function.

In today’s toxic world with diets built on industrial foods, our antioxidant status is frequently deficient. Oxalate makes it worse. Lowered tissue defenses make oxalate crystal attachment and accumulation of oxalate in tissues unavoidable.

All Toxins Matter

Toxicologists warn of synergistic effects from tens of thousands of low-level chemical exposures while having a massive blind spot regarding the potentially devastating effects of oxalate from popular foods.

Toxicologists could be the ones to warn us about oxalate, but they generally don’t study nutrition nor research literature on kidney disease (where the oxalate researchers publish). And, like everyone else, they remain oblivious to the immense problem of too much oxalate in our diets. Perhaps that is because doctors and nutrition professionals ignore oxalate.

Healthwise, trying to avoid toxins without knowledge of oxalate is futile. On the other hand, knowing about oxalate does not mean that other chemicals don’t matter, nor does it give us license to dismiss or ignore other ways humans poison ourselves.

Frustrations of an Organic Gardener

Being a chemically sensitive organic gardener, I want to point out here the ubiquitous, unavoidable, and dangerous presence of weed-killing herbicides. Not only do these chemicals impact the plants they’re designed to destroy, they don’t stay where they’re applied. They pollute our air, seep into our soils, and contaminate our food and water.

My own experience with “being green” has been a struggle. I have a deep passion for gardening and have invested time and effort over many years to build an organic garden landscape. Yet, every spring, my plants and landscape are assaulted by my neighbors’ use of herbicides.

The herbicides cause visible stress to my trees and plants. The damage is most apparent on the persimmon tree just outside my office window. Under less toxic conditions a persimmon tree creates large, glossy, smooth, symmetrical, and attractive leaves. But my tree has warped, twisted, puckered, buckled, and stunted leaves. The tormented appearance comes from impaired cell activity, irregular growth, and cell death due to pesticides. The altered biology and stress of pesticide exposure also makes plants more vulnerable to predation from insects and fungal infection.

A business behind my house employs a landscaping service that dutifully uses liquid herbicides every few weeks from April through October. This chemical treatment limits their weeds but drifts into my garden where it kills some of my plants and stresses all the crippled survivors.

Hidden Dangers of Herbicides

The reality is that no one in the suburbs can truly grow organic backyard tomatoes. Herbicide drift can carry these chemicals up to 10 miles! Sprayed by many urban users and on nearby farms, pesticides threaten the purity of organic foods and make it nearly impossible to escape the contamination of the springtime air. This stuff gets everywhere. The dream of a truly organic lifestyle can seem out of reach for those of us striving for health and wellness.

Herbicides are more than just an inconvenience to those of us who care for our gardens. These chemicals are detrimental to our health. They contaminate the air, soil, and water, posing risks to humans, pets, and wildlife. And they damage the productivity of farms and threaten entire ecosystems. Despite all that, they are used casually to maintain picture-perfect lawns.

Impact of Herbicides on Human Health

The health impacts of herbicides on humans are varied and alarming. Numerous studies have documented these effects, associating herbicide exposure with a range of ailments. A comprehensive report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate, a common ingredient in many herbicides, as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” This conclusion was drawn from several studies that linked glyphosate exposure to a higher incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Herbicides contribute to hormonal problems leading to obesity, insulin resistance, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), fatigue, and pain. As endocrine disruptors, they are suspected to contribute to infertility, premature puberty, ovarian cancer, poor quality sperm and benign testicular tumors. The most vulnerable to these effects are pregnant women, infants, and children, as exposure during these critical stages of development can lead to lifelong health impacts. Science has barely scratched the surface when it comes to recognizing the effects on our lives and well-being.

My Painful Lesson in 2011

Twelve years ago, I learned my first painful lesson about herbicides in suburbia. In mid-April 2011, despite full knowledge of my organic food garden and landscape, my next-door neighbors had their yard sprayed with “Speed Zone Lawn Weed Killer” by an unlicensed pesticide operator. The herbicide over-spray contaminated our entire property (and beyond). At the time, I was oblivious to the pesticides being used around me.

When I noticed problems in my garden plants, I contacted the county. They told me to call the State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The state investigators took plant tissue samples and confirmed that Speed Zone Lawn Weed Killer’s pesticide ingredients, Dicamba, Mecoprop, and 2,4-D were on our plants and property.

Dicamba is a general use herbicide rapidly absorbed by plant leaves on aerial application and is readily mobile in soils. According to EPA, the most common problem with Dicamba is over-spray by improper application, as occurred here. Mecoprop is a rapid acting herbicide often used with Dicamba.

2,4-D (2,4 Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) is a systemic herbicide for broad leaf plants. Although 2,4-D remains in wide use in the United States, it is restricted or banned in some other countries. The notoriety of 2,4-D comes from it being a component of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Some formulations of 2,4-D, due to the manufacturing process, contain dioxin contaminants which are recognized as carcinogenic, immunotoxic, and endocrine disruptors. According to EPA, the risk of 2,4-D herbicides is best managed by careful application.

Speed Zone did a number on our garden. The substantial damage to the plants, shrubs, and trees was visible and dramatic. Many of the ornamental plants in the garden failed to bloom, ceased to grow, were otherwise stunted and deformed, or died. Less obvious was the lost organic state of the garden soil and the contamination of foods we were growing. The garlic, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers that were not killed outright were unfit to consume, and unfit for producing seed for subsequent seasons. The soil required extensive remediation measures to return the property to a relatively “uncontaminated” state.

_{^{Damage to my garden plants in 2011.}}

My broken organic heart hasn’t fully recovered. The inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of our land were bad enough. But the anguish over the lost garden and hard work required to find justice was immense. Our case settled out of court, so in terms of public record, nothing ever happened. Sadly, every year since, we continue to sustain garden poisoning caused by other neighbors, and repeatedly by the commercial neighbor behind us. (See the photo above of my persimmon tree’s springtime torment, just outside my window.) The business, the county, and the state have not been willing to help find a resolution. Few people anywhere are willing to admit to the destructive nature of landscape maintenance via chemicals.

Far-reaching Implications of Herbicide Use

Herbicide use creates many serious problems beyond making my garden ugly. Including:

Threat to Bio Food Web and Biodiversity: It’s easy to forget that our actions impact the world around us in ways we might not immediately see. Did you know that herbicides and other garden chemicals harm a whole spectrum of life forms, including the bacteria and fungi in our soil? These foundational organisms are critical to the health of plants needed by insects, herbivores animals, and the web of life. All are threatened when we damage the living food web in healthy soil.

Killing Soil Fertility and Food Production Capacity

Every time we spray, we kill soil organisms and disrupt the delicate web of life necessary to grow nutritious food. Soil, a precious live-giving mixture of weathered minerals, decayed organic matter, and uncountable living organisms, is the foundation of life on land. Yet, only 10% of the earth is covered with soil. And a great fraction of that is covered or displaced by pavement and buildings. The rest of the earth surface is oceans, dessert, mountains, and ice. Chemical fertilizers, tilling, and pesticides are deadly for the life in the soil.

Carbon and Herbicides: Being so rich in bacteria, living soil is the biggest carbon container on earth. When we destroy soil and plant life with chemicals, we reduce nature’s innate ability to capture and store carbon dioxide. By using herbicides, we’re directly sabotaging our efforts to combat climate change. Producing and applying herbicides contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, when we restore soil life with compost and organic practice, we can store massive amounts of carbon.

The Creation of Superweeds: Life has a remarkable ability to adapt to survive. Weeds are no exception. Just as bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, weeds develop resistance to herbicides. This adaptation results in an escalating cycle of increased herbicide use and stronger, more chemical-resistant weeds. These “superweeds” are becoming a formidable issue in agriculture, undermining our food security.

Influence on Culture and Livelihoods: Chemical and machine-based industrial models of farming have destroyed rural communities whereby family farms are no longer viable. Massive, resource intensive, ecosystem-destroying monocrop operations produce a handful of commodity crops that are the source of the plant-based “staples” used in commercial foods (seed oils, grains, starches, additives, etc.). Herbicides are a fundamental element in the dystopian design of these operations. Our current industrial system not only disrupts people’s way of life and their health, but also contributes to the loss of cultural heritage, both in the first world, and everywhere around the globe.

The choice to use herbicides can have a profound impact on the world around us. By understanding and acknowledging these broader implications, we can make more informed choices and work towards a healthier, more livable future.

How to spot Herbicide Damage on plants growing in your community.

Herbicides “drift;” they volatilize and move through the air in droplets or vapor for days following application, causing injury to nearby sensitive plants that they land on. Damage from 2,4-D, dicamba, and other growth regulator herbicides is common.

To spot the effects of drift, look for leaves with deformed or strange shapes: curling cupping, or puckered, and that are smaller than normal. The plants keep growing but may be stunted. Affected plants are more susceptible to insect damage, or they may have spotted or necrotic leaves.

Leaf damage on spice viburnum, paw paw and a pair of ferns

Minimizing Toxic Overload

As we rebuild our health with oxalate-awareness, it’s vital to understand the interconnectedness of our diet, lifestyle, and environment. Just as we work to reduce the oxalate content in our diet, we should also stay mindful of our exposure to other environmental toxins.

Yes, keep your home as free of chemicals as you can. Eliminate toxic air fresheners, scented laundry and other cleaning products. Simplify your personal care products. And whenever possible, buy foods grown without pesticides (organic).

A healthy lifestyle includes taking notice of these dangerous chemicals and their presence in our lives and communities. Start by learning to see the damage in the plants around us (look for and take photos of herbicide damage). Share information and concern with neighbors. Make lawmakers and others in community leadership positions aware. Be willing to speak out about the perils of herbicides and the importance of limiting their use.

If you maintain a yard, here are some practical steps to make your garden more organic and toxin-free:

Stop using synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. Here’s a link for alternatives to glyphosate (Roundup): https://www.consumernotice.org/environmental/pesticides/roundup/alternatives/

Use vinegar as a natural herbicide: White vinegar (straight or diluted with water) directly applied to weeds, can effectively control weeds without harming desirable plants or the environment. directly applied to weeds, can effectively kill them without harming your desirable plants or the environment. I suggest using a plastic squeeze bottle, such as a former ketchup bottle.

Grow pollinator-friendly plants to encourage beneficial insects: Native flowers and herbs attract insects like ladybugs and lacewings that eat problematic pests.

Create a compost pile and use organic mulch: Turn your autumn leaves, grass clippings, and other yard waste into a critical fertilizer for your garden. Find a spot to set up a leaf bin or two. You can choose a method of home composting that works best for you.
- We have 5-6 bins to hold the massive harvest of leaves from our two giant willow oak trees—see photo. In the photo the piles have shrunk to less than 2/3 their original size in 5 months. We built each bit atop a pallet to keep the tree roots out the heaps. The sides are hardware cloth with a simple frame anchored to the ground with metal fence posts. You can use reclaimed materials for much of the construction. A cylindrical one is easy to build using two old bike wheel rims and hardware cloth.
- Compost is the critical tool to revive “dead dirt.” Living soil can be restored with the technologies of compost, organic mulch (leaves, grass clippings, wood chips), and compost tea. Adding compost to the surface of the soil around shrubs and garden beds will inoculate the soil with organisms that spread life. Such “top dressing” is important to support a living ecosystem that keeps soil teeming with life (bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms, and arthropods such as millipedes). For more great information on compost, I like Mike McGrath’s Book of Compost, check it out from your local library or buy it second-hand.

^{My 6 compost bins at the back of the yard, hiding behind a privet hedge.}

Two tips for an Organic Lawn:

Treat your lawn with compost at least every other year, or more often if needed. (Look for compost companies that deliver, or even apply compost to lawns.)
Leave grass somewhat high, (3 – 4-inches; 8-10 centimeters) to shade out the weeds. Mowing to shorter heights just encourages weeds, stresses the grass, and makes it grow faster and become weaker. Ironically this practice makes for mowing less frequently, not more.

Tip for Vegetable and Flower Gardeners

Practice crop rotation and use winter cover crops: Rotating crops (planting different types each season) can help prevent diseases and pests while maintaining soil health. Even if you’re only planting annual flowers, you can reduce soil diseases if you plant different varieties one year to the next.

Spreading Awareness and Protecting Our Communities

Managing our own gardens with non-toxic means is a great start. But as my own garden story illustrates, most of the environmental chemicals we encounter are not under our personal control as individuals. Still, we can advocate for change in our communities.

Share information about the dangers of herbicides and the importance of organic gardening with your neighbors. If you rent, talk to your landlord.

Ask your neighbors to use only granular type weed killers (if they must use chemicals), not liquid herbicides, and ask them to inform you before they apply any liquid chemicals so you can monitor the circumstances, protect yourself and your pets, potentially intervene if wind is strong, and monitor your own plants for drift damage.

Use social media and local online forums to disseminate research and articles that highlight the risks associated with herbicide use. The more information we share, the more empowered our communities become to make informed decisions about lawn and garden care, and to influence use of toxins and industrial modes of food production.

Start dialogues at community meetings and with local representatives about the dangers of herbicide use and the need for stricter regulations. Learn how things get done in your community and bring attention to the need to restrict or eliminate public-funded use of herbicides and pesticides. Ask your state reps and agencies to make the required training of landscapers more rigorous, to limit the sales and use of these chemicals, and to enforce the regulations.

Bring young people and friends to participate in or organize local events such as non-chemical maintenance of parks and streets, or even yard assistance for elderly homeowners.

Raise awareness about the importance of reducing environmental toxins whenever you can. If we are going to create a safer and healthier environment for all, we start with awareness of the hazards and safer practices.

Embracing a Toxic-Free Environment

Living to maximize your vitality is multifaceted. Basic awareness of toxins floating in on the wind currents starts with inspecting the roses. I hope you’ve learned how to see plants as communicating with us about the pervasive problem of escaped herbicides in our environment.

Maybe you agree that access to, and participation in, a healthy ecosystem is essentially a basic human right that is critical for health. Today, we are all deprived of this. Let’s work together to raise awareness of the harms of toxic chemicals, promote less toxic living, and create a dialog toward building a healthier, more livable world.

December 26, 2022 by Sally K Norton

Fake Meat: Dangers and Hidden Reality

Food companies use truly scary ingredients and techniques to make today’s plant-based meat substitutes. To mimic the aromas, flavors and textures of meat, high-tech manufacturing plants need to create copycat proteins, fats, and flavoring compounds. They use genetic engineering to create the key “employees” that do this work: genetically edited e-coli, yeasts, algae, and even stem cells from animals. The job of these genetically engineered micro-employees is to digest and transform big-ag GMO crops into fake meat products for human consumption.

This manufacturing is a franken-fermentation process that generates dangerous waste end-products that need careful handling and complete incineration. They must not escape into our natural environment because the consequences are completely unknown and could be catastrophic.

Large bio-tech companies are investing huge amounts of money to make imitation foods taste like real meats. This is because humans naturally love the taste of meat, eggs, cheese, and fish. Our reliance on meats is bred into our biology. Big tech wants to save us from this “problem.”

In the face of our uncertain future, new food technology is a comfort to some—but where are we putting our faith and trust?

plant-based meat subsitutes on grocery store racks — Fake Meats in the Marketplace

Bio-Tech Brewing

The “synthetic biology” at work here is briefly explained by Alan Lewis, a VP at Natural Grocers, in a 2022 Environmental Health Symposium video, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgXbr24JP7k (I attended this conference.)

The manufacturing process is called “gene-edited fermentation” or “precision fermentation” occurring in large bio-hazard lab facilities. The Silicon Valley food-tech entrepreneurs describe their technique as a “proprietary probiotic production process” (terminology from a Berkeley, CA-based company called “Air Protein”, cited in Guthman and Biltekoff, 2020).

Creating micro-organisms that have never been seen on Earth before is a recipe for accidental epidemics of (yet more) untreatable infectious illnesses.

Plant-Based Meats: The Basic Ingredients Come from Industrialized Ag

The base ingredients “feeding” these synthetic manufacturing systems are GMO soy, corn, mung beans, sugar beets, plus hundreds of other additives that create the target microbe metabolite (some sort of novel protein, fat, or flavor compound). The sales hype gushes over these products as a miraculous futuristic achievement and strongly implies that they require no inputs—as if bacteria can produce food out of thin air. This could not be farther from the truth.

The source materials come from GMO farming systems which:

concentrate the control of food production into corporate hands,
put small farms out of business,
destroy soil,
heavily consume fossil fuels, and
add many harmful contaminants to our foods, including glyphosate, 2-4-D, and other pesticides.

And to make these “veggie” farm practices even more dangerous, the newest high-tech strategies already in use on farms now include spraying novel genetic materials on plants to trigger expression of selected genes as they grow in our rural countryside. In open-air farming, there is no way to contain the drift and to keep un-intended problems from spreading into natural habits, such as newly invasive superweeds that crowd out native plants!

Herbicides such as glyphosate are heavily used in GMO ag – the backbone of the new fake meat industry. Image: Exposure risk and environmental impacts of glyphosate: Highlights on the toxicity of herbicide co-formulants
Published by Elsevier; open access article (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

The Process: Changing GMO Source Material into Flavors, Fillers, and Proteins

Manufacturers fill bioreactors with a GMO-derived mash of sugars, proteins and gene edited bacteria. Those engineered bacteria are designed not only to produce a target molecule but also for antibiotic-resistance. The bacterial slurry is treated with antibiotics to eliminate the naturally occurring bacteria and select the “edited” micro-organisms to consume the “feed stock” and produce the desired target compound.

Natural vs “Franken”-Fermenting

Traditional use of natural lactic-fermentation (a safe process long in use by humans to create sauerkraut, sourdough bread, beer, and yogurt) is incorrectly referenced to make the “brewing” of GMO grains with manipulated e-coli (a novel pathogen unknown in nature) seem similar and even safe. This is a far cry from reality.

The extracts that go into consumer products likely contain genes and other remnants of the gene-edited pathogens that created them.

“Cellular Meat”

Another human-invented fermentation type is lab-grown altered stem cells from beef, chicken, and pork. Bioengineers edit the genes of animal cells to enable them to survive in the fermentation tanks and grow exponentially fast to keep costs down. They remove the normal growth-regulating genes to bypass the cells’ normal growth limits (a self-regulation process) and to make them thrive on starch and sugar. This creates unregulated anerobic growth—the definition of tumor cells. Basically, this technique creates cancer tissue to be sold as a human food. Fake meat is marketed as superior to real meat, and even claims to be “animal free.”

More Synthetic Foods on the Way, Even for Babies

There’s even a lab-engineered breast milk alternative on the way called Biomilq, which is made from cultured human breast tissue. Bioengineers use a “proprietary cell culture media and growth factors” to stimulate the genetic code that directs the cells to create human casein and lactose as additives for an existing synthetic formula.

Dirtiness of “Clean Tech”

The major products of gene-edited fermentation, however, are massive amounts of “bio-waste” that must be deactivated. The spent synthetic GMO bio-hazard materials, gene edited microbes, antibiotics, and antibiotic resistant novel organisms all need to be incinerated. Misuse or release of these waste products into the environment could cause new disease outbreaks with no way to identify or track them. Regulation is almost non-existent, despite the risks.

Risks At Every Step

Key dangers are:

the presumption of safety;
limited surveillance of release controls and cleanup processes;
the absence of transparency;
lack of independent examination of the process and products;
no meaningful regulation;
no thorough safety review requirement.

The Solution: Better-Informed Consumers

The franken-synthetic realities hide under superior-sounding code names like “plant-based” and behind unproven promises like “planet friendly.” Unless consumers refuse to buy these franken-foods, the creation of cultured meat for the masses on a massive scale can only mean massive and novel environmental problems are in store.

No Real Benefits

Marketers promote these novel technologies as good for the planet. That could not be a bolder lie. As a 2020 academic article (Guthman and Biltekoff) put it, the food-tech entrepreneurs are engaging in “intentional veiling of pernicious processes” as they make grand claims and promises to attract investment capital.

Cultured meats have no environmental benefits. Bioengineers are creating GMO organisms that have never existed on earth before and these organisms and their waste are not even compostable and are certainly not edible. They pose great risks for environmental health for all life on earth, especially human beings.

Perhaps we are all Destined to Live in the Slaughterhouse . . .

The real world-changing ambitions of the bio-tech investors are to: 1) build up a culture that trusts big-tech over mother nature and, 2) to capture wealth and gain the on-going political control that comes with it. This gives them power to de-fang any future consumer protection efforts that might impede their vision of humankind needing near-complete dependence on corporate manufacturing for survival.

Who’s Cooking Dinner? Fake meat food-tech entrepreneurs.

Real Food from Real Farms

There are environmentally beneficial ways to farm. Instead of transitioning into factory laboratories where everything that comes out of them is a biohazard, we need to switch to regenerative farming and support local farms producing real foods using sustainable practices.

We can nourish ourselves by cooperating with nature. Regenerative farming communities—when set up as self-sustaining enterprise zones run and owned cooperatively by the farmers and not technocrats—can sustainably feed all humanity. It’s mostly politics (and big money) that stands in the way.

Please support small family farms not Big-Biotech companies in your food purchasing.

And to get involved in building a brighter future, you can participate in sustainable agriculture education. There are many ways to do this. Start by attending or sponsoring farmers to attend sustainable agriculture conferences. For the business minded, make connections with local leaders working to develop producer-run rural enterprise regenerative farming zones.

In Summary, here are Some Key Points:

E-coli based ferments use bacteria manipulated to be antibiotic resistant.

Lab meats are essentially cancer cells created from animal stem cells.

Neither the gene-edited living organisms, nor the substances that they create have any track record of safety.

Consumers are eating synthetic ingredients and gene-edited animal tumor cells thinking they are “plant-based” and “animal free.”

They are also likely eating virulent pathogens.

The waste products of these lab-factories pose health risks for all people, beyond those who elect to eat these foods (a choice typically made from ignorance).

DNA – Who Do You Trust to Design Your Franken-Foods?
Image by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash

About Alan Lewis (from the video link)

Alan Lewis is based in Colorado. He has served various trade organizations: Non-GMO Project board, Organic and Natural Health Association board, Real Organic Project standards board, Retail Advisory Committee of the American Grassfed Association (certification program for grassfed producers), Farm Policy Committee of the Organic Farmers Association, and various committees of the Council for Responsible Nutrition (a leading trade association for the dietary supplement and functional food industry).

In addition to Alan Lewis’ talk, this article also references:.

Wuench, J. Got Milk! BIOMILQ Is The First Company To Create Human Breast Milk In A Lab. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliawuench/2021/06/01/got-milk-biomilq-is-the-first-company-to-create-human-breast-milk-in-a-lab/.

Guthman, J., and Biltekoff, C. (2021). Magical disruption? Alternative protein and the promise of de-materialization. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4, 1583–1600. 10.1177/2514848620963125.

October 10, 2022 by Sally K Norton

Fact or Fiction: Dates Are A Low Oxalate Food?

Dates in My Low-Ox Diet Plan: What Does the Data Say?

Following a low-oxalate diet is much easier when you have the right oxalate data. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation, limited science, and conflicting results on the internet, which leads to confusion when deciding which low oxalate foods to put on your plate.

The debate around the oxalate content of dates perfectly illustrates this conundrum. Rumors suggest they’re high in oxalate, while other sources claim the opposite.

As you’re wading through this conflicting information, what should you believe? Let’s look at the data together to find out how much oxalate dates contain, and whether they have a place in a low-oxalate diet.

Are dates a high or low oxalate food? Photo by VD Photography on Unsplash

Before We Begin: Learning to Read Oxalate Data

Let me provide some orientation on interpreting oxalate data.

The universal way to report the oxalate content of foods is oxalate per 100 grams. However, serving sizes vary from one food to the next.

Most people want to know how much oxalate is in one date. However, a single piece of fruit naturally comes in different sizes, which means oxalate content could vary from one date to another.

Depending on the variety, a date might weigh 7 mg or 24 grams. So, keep in mind that there is not one right number for oxalate in dates—especially by the piece. Understanding oxalate in natural foods takes some thought about several variables involved, especially the weight (amount) of the item you eat.

Now, with that reminder, here I’ll refer to the oxalate content in typical (modest) servings. Let’s get back to the oxalate content of dates.

Dates in My Low-Oxalate Diet Plan: What Does the Data Say?

The peer-reviewed medical literature doesn’t include dates in the oxalate data testing reports. However, the VP Foundation sponsored tests of dates performed in Laramie, WY at the University of Wyoming by Dr. Michael Liebman and his team. They tested Medjool dates three times, California-grown Deglet Noor dates once, and another unspecified variety grown in Pakistan.²

According to their reported results, 24 grams of pitted Medjool dates (around one date) contains approximately 1–2 mgs of total oxalate. 24 grams of Deglet Noor dates (about three and a half dates) contain around 2 mg.¹ No published testing found over 2.5 mg of oxalate per 24-gram serving.

If Dr. Liebman’s testing is right, dates are low oxalate foods. Yet mainstream sources like WebMD and Harvard incorrectly claim dates are high in oxalate, without offering any citations showing where they got this idea. They also failed to indicate the varieties, rendering the data useless.

These “reputable” and familiar institutions are seemingly reporting oxalate data, but not really. Verifiable testing shows them to be flat out wrong. This misinformation, coupled with a lack of transparency, is adding to the confusion around oxalates. This undermines the efforts of their readers to make educated decisions and limit oxalate-rich foods.

Dates vs. Figs: Oxalate Content of Food

Why would Harvard and WebMD post faulty information about dates? Perhaps the mistake comes from someone confusing dates with their Mediterranean counterpart, figs. Dates and figs are often and easily mixed up, both being small, soft, dark, and intensely sweet.

Despite these superficial similarities, dates and figs are very different fruits, especially in the oxalate department.

I know of only five tests of figs, four of them being fresh (not dried) and of the “unspecified” variety and one of them of the dried Mission fig. Some of the unspecified fresh figs have also tested low in oxalate, even lower per 100g than dates!

However, other tests find figs—especially the dried California mission figs we usually encounter in the stores—have about 12 times the oxalate content of dates with up to 95 milligrams of oxalate per 100 grams.

A typical serving of dried figs is 42 grams (four figs), which has ~34 mg oxalate. That’s 11 times higher than the approximately three mg oxalate in two Medjool dates (weighing 47 grams). Eating four to six figs could deliver a substantial oxalate level and have serious health consequences.

If you’re a fan of Fig Newtons, a test also conducted at University of Wyoming found ~8 mg oxalate per cookie—which definitely won’t kill you. But the standard serving size is three cookies (25 mg oxalate). Most people I know eat at least four at a time (32 mg of oxalate).

A photo of three fig varieties from a recent trip to the grocery store.

Moreover, researchers haven’t taken into account that there are more than 700 named varieties of fig trees. With so much breadth for one fruit, even the most exacting of researchers can’t test the oxalate content of each type of fig that exists.

Finding Oxalate Data You Can Trust

The dates versus figs discussion touches on several data-related problems in the oxalate space. And to make things even more contentious and confusing, the oxalate data listings in textbooks (for nurses and other health professions) and nutrient content tables used by dieticians are short and filled with errors.

As a community, we must look at the information out there through a critical lens, and learn to recognize bad data. New interest in this topic is only likely to increase the confusion and arguments in the short run. All of us becoming more data savvy will pave the way forward for having more clarity about healthful food choices. You definitely don’t need to eliminate oxalate foods from your low-oxalate diet plan that you love, like dates.

While it is impossible to correct every problem that exists with the science around oxalates, you can make good food choices with the information that is available. You just need a good filter to cull out the junk. I’ve been working to curate the most accurate oxalate data available, and help you make the most informed food decisions possible. As you’re trekking along your low-oxalate journey, take my (expanding) resources as a trust map and companion.

Sign up for my email list to get accurate, reliable information about the oxalate content of more foods and tips for sticking to a low-ox diet plan.

Data Sources

DATES (are Low Oxalate Foods)

“The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2011 Fall- Numerical Values Table.” The VP Foundation Newsletter, no. 36 (November 2011): 17–20.

“The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2012 Summer- Numerical Values Table.” The VP Foundation Newsletter, no. 37 (June 2012): 6–9, 19–25.

FIGS

The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2008 Fall- Numerical Values Table. The VP Foundation Newsletter 7–11.

The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2011 Fall- Numerical Values Table. The VP Foundation Newsletter 17–20.

The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2011 Spring- Numerical Values Table. The VP Foundation Newsletter 14–17.

Hönow, R., and Hesse, A. (2002). Comparison of extraction methods for the determination of soluble and total oxalate in foods by HPLC-enzyme-reactor. Food Chemistry 78, 511–521. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0308-8146(02)00212-1.

FIG NEWTONS

The Low Oxalate Diet Addendum 2022 Winter- Numerical Values Table. The VP Foundation Newsletter 12.

September 11, 2022 by Sally K Norton

Easy Creamed Canned Oysters

Canned oysters are inexpensive and easy to prepare; they round out a dinner menu with flare. Oysters are packed with protein, B-12, minerals, and other valuable nutrients, including omega-3 fatty acids and Vitamin D. If you want to used shucked raw oysters (sold in jars), see the variation.

Easy Creamed Canned Oysters

Servings: 2
Oxalates: <1 mg per serving
Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Print

Ingredients

8 oz. can premium oysters packed in water, drained into a liquid measuring cup

1½ T Butter

2½ tsp. potato starch

¼ tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. ground mustard seed

pinch white pepper,

(opt.) pinch paprika, or cayenne pepper to taste

1 tsp. vinegar or lemon juice (or wine)

1—3 tsp. sake or white or rose wine (opt.) or coconut aminos (opt.)

Instructions

Note: The reserved oyster liquid should be about ½ cup, and you will use about half of it. Place 2 ramekin dishes in a warm oven.

Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a small saucepan.
Stir in the potato starch and dry seasonings.
Use a flat whisk to slowly stir in ~¼ C of oyster liquor and thicken the sauce.
Add vinegar and sake/wine or Coconut Aminos.
Lower heat to lowest setting. Carefully add the oysters and submerge them under the liquid. Cover the pot and let them rest to heat through for 4—5 minutes. Turn off heat after 2 minutes; do not open lid. Do not stir, as this will break them apart.
To serve: Use a slotted spoon to gently lift them into two warm ramekin dishes and decant the sauce over the top. (If the sauce is too thick, stir in additional liquid, once the oysters have been lifted out into the serving dishes.)
Garnish with capers or minced chive, if desired. Serve immediately.

Variation: Using fresh (raw) shucked oysters (sold in 1-pint jars on ice).
While cooking in the butter sauce, raw oysters release a lot of valuable liquid. Adjust the method as follows:

Double the recipe,
increasing the potato starch to 2 tablespoons (not 5 tsp.).
Skip step 4.

In step 6, gently keep the oysters moving to get them evenly cooked and to get the starch and the water released to combine into a smooth “sauce”. The starch may seem clumpy at first but will smooth out once the water is released.

Tip: If you have access to live oysters purchased in their shells, there is no need to “cream” them. Just bake scrubbed oysters for 5 – 6 minutes at 400ºF. After that, they open easily and are ready to eat—immediately. Serve with melted butter.

Two Meals with Creamed Oysters

September 4, 2022 by Sally K Norton

Oxalates in Foods: How To Make Sense of the Data

Starting a low oxalate diet? Going low oxalate can be a huge step into a brand-new world. It’s not only unfamiliar but somewhat disorienting. What to eat? How much to eat? What should your new staples be? How will you learn and remember which foods are high in oxalate? You need practical guidance—and a bit of data on how much oxalate is in your foods.

Oxalates in Foods:
Hard to Measure and a Bit Confusing.
Photo by Jennifer Burk on Unsplash

When you’re researching the oxalate content of foods, where do you turn first? Probably Google. But most internet sites offer scant information laced with factual errors. As you comb through the search results for that list of oxalate-rich foods, you could easily find different websites that don’t agree with one another. A given food may be listed as high on one site and low on another. The lists are also often short, with just a few foods listed. The “top ten” is far from the whole story!

Obviously, the easy-to-find data isn’t especially good. And this mess can be a big, discouraging curve-ball. Don’t let all this conflicting information and lack of consensus among various data resources get you down! It is still possible to succeed in adopting a healthier, oxalate-aware way of eating.

Still, making sense of the data can overwhelming and confusing. It was for me, despite my nutrition education and professional experience. To get you oriented and make you more fool-proof, let me walk you through the mine-field of oxalate content confusion.

**Online Lists Will Keep You Feeling Confused About Oxalate**s in Foods

How can you tell which information is credible? You won’t know just by looking at the list. Fame and fortune (institutional reputation such as USDA, Harvard, or WebMD, for example) do not assure you that a list is correct.

Misinformation about oxalates is widespread, especially among mainstream sources! For example, there’s one false claim that dates are high in oxalate posted on WebMD and thus elsewhere. (Please see my short post on the error with dates here, coming next week). There is also confusion about oxalate content in coffee because some researchers claim coffee is a high oxalate food. Neither is true. Multiple credible sources prove that in both cases, the sites listing dates and coffee as high oxalate are wrong. But mistaken notions persist. And mistaken data goes uncorrected.

Most list makers fail to mention where they got their information, let alone who did the testing and by which methods. Nor do the list makers bother to explain their rationale for designating foods as “high” or “low” in oxalate. And they rarely (if ever) revisit old information and update it.

Since the online lists aren’t good enough, surely medical journals, health agencies, and academia must have trustworthy numbers, right? But if you put on your thinking cap and take a deep dive into the literature, you might have a hard time finding much. In the end, what you manage to dig up from professional papers is also conflicted and confusing. It’s frustrating and frankly shocking how difficult it is to find credible, consistent resources on oxalates in our foods.

The full value of low-oxalate eating is not yet well-known, and sufficient resources have not been assigned to the necessary work.

Oxalate Data Online is a Mess!
Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

Despite the jumble of imperfect science, incomplete data, and untrustworthy conclusions about what amount is safe to consume, we can still find our way to low oxalate eating and heal from oxalate toxicity.

How to Get Better Information

Despite the data muddle, you can transition to this eating strategy successfully. Start with my Beginners’ Guide. This vetted, trustworthy list will get you 90% of the way there.

Read on if you want to understand more about the state of oxalate data and why it can be challenging. Remember that enduring some confusion is part of learning.

In the remainder of this post, I’ll attempt to explain the reasons for the discrepancies in oxalate data.

Better Sources Exist for Oxalates in Foods

I want to reassure you that there is enough credible information to support low-oxalate eating. Today we have more knowledge than ever before on oxalate in foods and how they impact health. The work of The VP Foundation and Susan Owens’ Trying Low Oxalates Facebook group has helped to launch our emerging era of growing awareness of oxalate overload. As more of us discover the healing benefits, our growing oxalate-aware community can continue to improve the data, making it more accessible, understandable, and usable over time. Most importantly, we all need to advocate for more food testing.

For a better understanding of the oxalate content of foods and using oxalate data, keep the following five tips in mind.

Need to Know Tip #1: Oxalate Levels Vary for the Same Kind of Food.

Plants naturally produce oxalates for survival to ward off microorganisms, fungi, and plant eaters. It also helps them to discard excess calcium they pick up from soils.

Oxalate levels can also vary between different types of the same food. Let’s look at apples as an example, which have over 7,500 varieties grown worldwide. I know of only 24 tests of apples. An Egyptian study found an apple of average size (~ 6 oz) had 15 mg of oxalate, but it doesn’t indicate which type of apple. Meanwhile, other tests conducted in the US found that a Pink Lady apple contains 2 mg of oxalate, a Gala has 2 to 5 mg, and a medium Granny Smith contains 5 mg. Based on a set of tests done for the VP Foundation, variations in oxalate content between varieties of tomatoes is far wider.

Situational factors such as soil content, pH, and weather can impact how much oxalate each plant contains. Unless you test every individual fruit, vegetable, or slice of bread you eat, it’s impossible to know exactly how much oxalate it has. Research reports typically don’t indicate variety, maturity, and other factors with their test results.

How much oxalate is in an avocado?
Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya on Unsplash

Current research typically does not seriously investigate variability in foods. And we don’t know how much each type varies and what factors influence this variability. Different growing conditions may explain the difference between US-grown apples and those grown in Egypt. Thankfully, the amounts in apples are relatively low.

Many foods, herbs, and supplements have only been tested (and reported) once. This means we are unsure of the estimated content for these rarely tested items. Because of natural variation and limited testing, I suggest that you think about the numbers around oxalate levels as somewhat “fuzzy.”

Need to Know Tip #2: Oxalate in Foods Information is Incomplete

What really brings us garbage data are the human factors. It might be the testing method used, sloppy execution of the testing, or inaccurate reporting that explain the 5-times higher oxalate content of the Egyptian apple, and not the apples’ natural variability after all. Without more resources and interest by researchers, we don’t know.

We need to retest many foods to understand the extent of this variability, reveal mistakes, and reduce confusion around the oxalate content of what we eat.

Additionally, plants produce two types of oxalates. The first, oxalic acid, is soluble and is easily absorbed into your bloodstream. The second, oxalate crystals, are insoluble, irritate your digestive tract, but probably don’t enter the bloodstream. Both types of oxalate can impact your body, but in different ways. Many reports don’t make this critical distinction. Only recently has it become common for researchers to distinguish between the two categories of oxalate in their reporting. This can add to the confusion.

What can I eat on a low oxalate diet?
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Need to Know Tip #3: Sloppiness is Widespread

Some researchers use unreliable methods in their analysis. (See my coffee post on this problem.) In another case, testing done for the VP Foundation mistakenly used too small a sample in testing oils and got numbers overstating their oxalate content, which is in reality essentially zero. Later, they repeated the testing and reported corrected data. But in both cases the old, wrong data continues to circulate.

Many reports also fail to mention food preparation—such as whether something was tested raw, steamed, boiled, or fried—which can significantly impact oxalate levels and the data’s usefulness for estimating how much oxalate you are eating. All of these factors can create bad data.

There may also be simple data entry mistakes (aka, “typos”) causing confusion. Even our most reliable source of oxalate data, the VP Foundation, has reported several items incorrectly. For example, when they calculated the oxalate in one ounce (28 grams) of sweet potato chips, they mistakenly used “17 grams” instead of 28 grams because one ounce is about 17 chips. Thus, they mis-reported the amount of oxalate per one ounce serving as (37 mg oxalate), which is much lower than it really is (60 mg).

Two tree fruits compared. Cluster of 3 tamariallo fruits on left, one tamarind pod on right.

Tamarillo and Tamarind are not the same thing

Here’s another example of a reporting error: the experienced German researchers, Hönow and Hesse, said they tested “tamarillo” (a Central and South American tree fruit in the nightshade family) but they described it as “tamarindus indica” (the Indian fruit taramind). Those are entirely different foods, and we don’t know which one they tested. Thus, it’s garbage data, and probably worse than useless.

I’m not bashing anyone with these examples. What you need to realize is this: These mistakes are very easy to make. Even the best data sources contain them. You need to use your head when looking over the data.

Data discrepancies and misunderstandings about oxalates in foods could have critical implications for our health. The scientific community needs to step up to ensure they are not the reason for the confusion. Unfortunately, taking the time to get the facts right is an unusual approach!

Need to Know Tip #4: Older Oxalate Testing Methods Were Less Accurate

Prior to 1980 or so, the usual testing was prone to error. One important source of error affected tests of foods that have very little oxalate but contain abundant vitamin C. For example, the USDA data (published in dietitians’ handbooks) states that radishes are high in oxalate. But they are, in fact, very low. If the vitamin C in the radishes degraded to oxalate during testing it might be a partial explanation for the error. Or, perhaps it’s just bad data management, yet again.

Accurate testing continues to be challenging, but more recent testing tends to offer more reliable information.

Need to Know Tip #5: Oxalate Data Researchers do not Calculate Portion Sizes

To make things more complex for consumers, researchers often don’t translate their numbers into amounts per typical portion size in their reporting. They might, for example, present the results based on the dry weight without calculating the oxalate content of the food as it is normally consumed (including the moisture that was removed before analysis).

How do I know how much oxalate is in the foods I eat?
Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

Let’s go back to the coffee example. One test of instant coffee found 57 mg oxalate per 100 grams of coffee powder. That sounds like a lot! As I explained in my blog post about coffee, you only use one-half to one gram of instant coffee to brew a cup.

Unless you’re choking down an entire cup of undiluted instant coffee powder—or adding high oxalate ingredients like cocoa to make a mocha—coffee is a low-oxalate food. Even if you drink a Venti dark roast from Starbucks every morning (which I don’t recommend because of the caffeine and other chemicals in coffee), you’re not drinking very much oxalate. In addition to how it’s prepared, portion sizes will impact how much oxalate you consume. Researchers need to do a better job at taking portion sizes into account when publishing reports so that consumers can use the data correctly.

We Need More (and Better) Research on Oxalates in Foods

There are significant knowledge gaps in the current literature regarding oxalates in foods and oxalate toxicity. More research is required to understand how much oxalate various foods contain, how much it varies from one variety to another (or for other reasons such as ripeness), and to weed out the technical errors and mistaken conclusions that linger in obsolete publications and in the minds of researchers, doctors, and the unsuspecting public. Unfortunately, “weeding” of medical literature is not something journals have any incentive to bother with, and it is difficult to execute.

It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin, but I have good news: going low oxalate isn’t about bean-counting. It isn’t about strictly accounting for everything you eat or measuring the exact amount of oxalate down to the milligram.

This isn’t Weight Watchers. I dislike tracking everything I eat. It can be distracting, demanding, and impractical. You can successfully lower your oxalate intake without sweating the data details. However, if you love to track things, please do. It will help if you know what you actually ate instead of just what you remember eating.

Practice Tip #1: You Don’t Have to be Perfect

Going low oxalate is about awareness and consistency, not perfection. We have enough information about oxalates in foods that we can make educated decisions about how to structure our diets without getting too hung up on what we’re eating.

Despite the limitations of oxalate data, we know that certain foods are reliably low in oxalate, including meat, poultry, dairy products, fats, true lettuces, white rice, several herbs (dill and thyme, for example) and spices (white pepper, mustard, cayenne pepper), as well as most vegetables in the cabbage family. If you build your diet around these staple foods, you will have no trouble keeping your oxalate levels in a safe range.

Practice Tip #2: Portion Size Matters

Portion size is critically important. Eating one bite of a high-oxalate food, like chocolate cake, is very different from eating an entire slice. Another example would be choosing ONE (normal-sized) chocolate chip cookie instead of a fudge brownie or mug of hot cocoa. While I don’t recommend throwing caution to the wind, you don’t need to sweat occasionally eating a tiny amount of high-oxalate foods (like a few chocolate chips).

We can learn as a community and advocate for better oxalate information.
Photo by Valiant Made on Unsplash

For example, spinach is a high-oxalate food I recommend avoiding. However, if you order a salad at a restaurant, realize some spinach leaves are mixed in, and you accidentally ate one or two of them, don’t worry: you won’t cause more oxalate to collect in your body. Just pick out the rest of the leaves and make sure the remainder of your meal is built around lower-oxalate foods. In fact, by eating small amounts of oxalate, you might avoid or delay heavy oxalate clearing symptoms. That is a good thing.

On the other hand, giving yourself permission to ignore what you’re eating can be a mistake. For example, taking several solid bites of an intense fudge brownie has the potential to bring on symptoms within one to five hours after the indiscretion. It’s not tragic if it happens, but it’s also easy to avoid if you pay attention.

Practice Tip #3: Keep Learning

Going low oxalate is a nuanced process, and there’s always more to learn. As you transition into low-oxalate eating, I’m here to help you make sense of the information that’s out there.

Get the “big rocks” right by using my Beginner’s Guide to trim out the worst offenders and adopt the “safe bets.” The middle ground foods? I’ll help you with that too, but don’t sweat them in the first phase of getting off the dangerously high foods. Tables available via my group meetings and in my book, Toxic Superfoods, will give you further guidance. For lots of specific data, my forthcoming Oxalate Data Resource Manual will provide you with all the particulars currently available for refining your oxalate-aware diet.

April 2, 2022 by Sally K Norton

Lessons Learned from An Instagram Hack

I was locked out of my @sknorton IG account for 18 days, scammers tormented me and damaged my credibility. IG / Meta was little help.

My Instagram, @sknorton, was hacked in March. After 18 days of struggling, doing everything I could to recover my account, I finally got it back.

I’m grateful I could regain control of my account, but it left its scars. And, this episode highlights a much broader and darker trend of Instascams and manipulation running amok online and in social media. The importance and popularity of the health and wellness sphere makes it especially attractive to fraud.

Scams on Instagram Impacting the Wellness World

Now more than ever, hackers are going after thought leaders and their followers with bogus updates, “blue badge” opportunities, phishing emails, giveaways, and collaboration opportunities. These methods are designed to trick people out of money or personal information. And because big tech companies’ customer support is lean, recovering my account became a huge ordeal.

I tried taking this recent experience in stride, thinking “It’s just Instagram.” But the lockout and lack of support stressed my techno-geek husband to the point of sleeplessness and panic. Together we spent weeks going back and forth with Meta trying to verify my identity and reclaim the account.

Twice I had my account back, but within 30 minutes the creepy hackers had it again, taunting me with DMs via WhatsApp and adding posts to my @sknorton account. The hackers changed the language of my account, which should be a red-flag for the Meta bots. All I can say is thank goodness for Google Translate, because I could not convince Meta that I don’t speak Turkish.

The stress and disruption this episode caused was sobering. As scams become more and more common, it will take a grassroots effort to overcome this problem since Instagram can’t seem to get ahead of these fraudsters.

Overcoming Hackers is a Community Effort

However, this whole ordeal has underscored the power of our community and the incredible healing work we’re doing together. I feel immense gratitude for the support I’ve received from many followers and supporters over the last few weeks, including encouraging messages and a rapid influx of followers to my new account, @toxicsuperfoods_oxalate_book.

One thing I’ve taken away from this episode is not to rely too heavily on Instagram to raise oxalate awareness. My email list is the most secure channel for staying in touch and updated on new materials, offerings, and surprise disruptions like the IG account-theft incident. Please sign up now to make sure you never miss an update from me. That’s the only way I can alert you should a scammer ever steal one of my accounts again.

I also encourage you to download some of the resources in my shop, listen to my previous podcasts or interviews, and follow my YouTube channel.

Thank You for Your Support

Even though this situation is disheartening and creates extra work and need for vigilance, the strength of our community is what defeats these scammers. I’m grateful to all of you who have been reaching out to offer your well wishes. And I want to salute my sweetie for his technical prowess and deep commitment to supporting this work.

Grief Turns to Worry

“Please Spare Them”

“Don’t Tell Us How to Feed Our Kids”

Do Facts Matter?

Preserve Your Relationship

How to Create Understanding

Let’s Help Each Other

My Daughter Feeds Her Child High Oxalate Foods!

Pain is too Popular

What is Gout?

Gout and Diet

Crystals, Inflammation and Gout

Oxalate is Hard to See

Other Reasons High Oxalates Create Pain

Inflammation

Famous Gout Sufferers

Queen Anne (b. 1665, d. 1714)

Ben Franklin

Science Explains the Connection Between Tea, Chocolate and Pain

Healing story of Joint Pain Relief with Diet

Reversing Oxalate Crystal Deposits in Joints: It’s not over until it’s over

Footnotes

Skin Release as part of Oxalate Clearing

Years of Almonds Left Rebecca with a Lot of Oxalate to Clear

Oxalate Crystals are Hard for Pathologists to See

Oxalates Make us More Susceptible to Other Toxins

All Toxins Matter

Frustrations of an Organic Gardener

Hidden Dangers of Herbicides

Impact of Herbicides on Human Health

My Painful Lesson in 2011

Far-reaching Implications of Herbicide Use

How to spot Herbicide Damage on plants growing in your community.

Minimizing Toxic Overload

Spreading Awareness and Protecting Our Communities

Embracing a Toxic-Free Environment

Bio-Tech Brewing

Plant-Based Meats: The Basic Ingredients Come from Industrialized Ag

The Process: Changing GMO Source Material into Flavors, Fillers, and Proteins

Natural vs “Franken”-Fermenting

“Cellular Meat”

More Synthetic Foods on the Way, Even for Babies

Dirtiness of “Clean Tech”

Risks At Every Step

The Solution: Better-Informed Consumers

No Real Benefits

Perhaps we are all Destined to Live in the Slaughterhouse . . .

Real Food from Real Farms

In Summary, here are Some Key Points:

About Alan Lewis (from the video link)

Dates in My Low-Ox Diet Plan: What Does the Data Say?

Before We Begin: Learning to Read Oxalate Data

Dates in My Low-Oxalate Diet Plan: What Does the Data Say?

Dates vs. Figs: Oxalate Content of Food

Finding Oxalate Data You Can Trust

Data Sources

DATES (are Low Oxalate Foods)

FIGS

FIG NEWTONS

Easy Creamed Canned Oysters

Online Lists Will Keep You Feeling Confused About Oxalates in Foods

How to Get Better Information

Better Sources Exist for Oxalates in Foods

Need to Know Tip #1: Oxalate Levels Vary for the Same Kind of Food.

Need to Know Tip #2: Oxalate in Foods Information is Incomplete

Need to Know Tip #3: Sloppiness is Widespread

Need to Know Tip #4: Older Oxalate Testing Methods Were Less Accurate

Need to Know Tip #5: Oxalate Data Researchers do not Calculate Portion Sizes

We Need More (and Better) Research on Oxalates in Foods

Practice Tip #1: You Don’t Have to be Perfect

Practice Tip #2: Portion Size Matters

Practice Tip #3: Keep Learning

Scams on Instagram Impacting the Wellness World

Overcoming Hackers is a Community Effort

Thank You for Your Support

Upcoming Events

Connect

Visit Sally’s Other Sites

**Online Lists Will Keep You Feeling Confused About Oxalate**s in Foods