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Episode #153: The Oxalate Trap: Why "Healthy" SuperFoods Might Be Making You Sick · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we think if we just stuff people up with and with vegetables, somehow that solves the poor nutrition that we're eating today.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a just a sol the wrong solution to the problem of not recognizing the value of animal foods and foods that are coming off of farms where it's raised properly, the value of seasonality where you don't have spinach every day of the year, you don't have blackberries every day of the year, and you don't pretend that somehow plants are there for our benefit.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: The plants are part of the fight of nature.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: They have to protect themselves.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: If their seeds and progeny is so edible, they would be extinct.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your your co-host, Dr.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with Joel Salatin, of course, our favorite farmer.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And today we actually have another special guest to bring to you.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: We have Sally Norton.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna find this episode really fascinating and you're gonna be questioning these supposed superfoods that we all praise as these nutrient-dense foods that can heal us.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump right in.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you're eating a healthy diet right now and you are still dealing with fatigue, inflammation, anxiety, or recurring injuries or chronic pain, this is the episode for you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sally Norton, MPH, joins us on today's program.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: She's an Ivy League nutritionist who suffered for three decades from chronic health problems.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And now she seemed to be doing everything right diet-wise, right?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Her meals were organic, filled with these superfoods, but she battled a litany of health issues from chronic pain to digestive issues, thyroid dysfunction, and debilitating fatigue.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Despite trying countless treatments, from surgery to physical therapy, nothing seemed to help.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sally's condition deteriorated to the point where she struggled to even read and she had to quit her job.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Then she made one crucial dietary change.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: She eliminated high oxalate foods, and her health dramatically turned around.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Almost immediately, her sleep improved, her pain decreased, and her cognitive function returned, allowing her to resume work and to enjoy her life again.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I loved her story because it actually shows us that everybody is an individual and it reveals how sometimes these seemingly healthy foods can be the root of unexpected health challenges.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: She joins us today to discuss her book, which is titled Toxic Superfoods: How Oxalate Overload is making you sick and how to get better.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sally, welcome to the program.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so happy to be with you guys.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, this is going to be an exciting episode.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to start out by sharing just briefly your health story and particularly how did you determine that oxalates were the culprit?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you did such a lovely job of overviewing that whole, you know, trial and tribulation of being a healthy eater and being in the health field with the nutrition degree and all this stuff, and working in holistic health and healing and not being able to figure this out.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: I have all these friends who are MDs and who are naturopaths and chiropractors and homeopaths and you name it.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And nobody knows what's wrong with me or how to deal with it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a long, you know, mystery.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Why do I have a lemon of a body situation?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I've tried everything and knew a ton.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it was kind of interesting because I ended up having to have this hysterectomy, which is really at the end of my career.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he got in there and it turned out I had endometriosis and the ovaries had it was a mess.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've been healthy, doing all the right things my whole life.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And after that, I found I could not function.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it turned out my endocrinologist said, You look great, your numbers look great, let's go to the sleep lab.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it showed that I was waking up 29 times an hour.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: The brain could not settle down and stay asleep.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I was so exhausted, I had no idea that I wasn't sleeping.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm in this kind of daze thinking I'm sleeping and I'm not.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that became the holy grail.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: That explained why I couldn't think anymore, couldn't work out or do anything.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I was basically a literal couch potato.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And in the process of trying to figure out that science, I discovered that my kiwi that I was gonna that I was using to help with the constipation that was gonna help with the dysbiosis and the con and all this that was gonna help the brain so we wouldn't have endotoxemia and all this stuff.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Turned out that the arthritis that I started getting at age 12 and was really extreme in my 20s when I was a vegetarian and vegan, was related to the oxalates in the food.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I had now at this stage recognized which foods were high in oxalate because I learned through the vulgar pain foundation, they've been teaching the low oxalate diet for pelvic issues, particularly women's uh genital pain, but also for men and uh connective tissue problems.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And they've been teaching this low oxalate diet for that, and that was strange to me because uh those of us in the health field know that you use the low oxalate diet for kidney problems, particularly kidney stones, because most every kidney stone is made of this oxalate that's naturally in foods that we're eating, in plant foods.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's part of nature, and it's not something we spray on it, it's not because it's not organic.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: These plants naturally have chemicals that can be bad for us, and kidney stones is a known problem with spinach and tea and these high oxalate foods.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, why was she using this diet for pelvic pain and connect it?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: What is she talking about?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I didn't quite get that, but I now could see when I was eating higher oxalate foods was bringing back my arthritis and stiffness and other kinds of pain.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, man, you mean I got all these other problems and I have to go back and fix this arthritis on this dumb oxalate thing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And lo and behold, that's when just everything started getting better.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was sleeping again within 10 days of changing my diet.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: I could tell I was sleeping because I could read again, I had more energy, and my foot problems, which had been going on for 30 years of not being able to be barefoot, not being able to run, jump, and play much at all, were fine.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was able to go to a wedding and stand in high heels for seven hours.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: That had never happened in my whole life.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: And at that point, I'm 49 or just had turned 50, and finally at 50, I can wear heels and run barefoot on the pavement.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: And now at 60, things are great.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're a kid again, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Kids do those things that don't even think about it, right?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So so why don't let's start with what are oxalates?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like who's heard of it?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oxalate is not something you you hear down at the uh, you know, at the Kirker cash register every day.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: But you might more often than you ever did because people who are benefiting from it are literally looking at other people's shopping carts and going, Do you have arthritis?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have back pain?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Are you do you have headaches?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, because your cart looks like a pain mobile, and they'll tell you why.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because pain mobile.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this this stuff is in the produce department, in the nuts, in the keto world, in the gluten-free world.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Those foods have this oxalic acid, which is a tiny two-carbon molecule with four oxygens on it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like two carbon dioxide, it's very little compound, and it's an ion.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: That means there's a charge on it and it's dissolved in water, but it hooks up.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: That that charge hooks up with minerals.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it tends to be in these mineral formats.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: And there's one where it breaks apart easily, like table salt does, and then there's some that don't break apart easily.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the calcium is the beloved partner of oxalate.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: So you get calcium oxalate forming these molecules that start binding together and forming little nanocrystals that grow into bigger crystals, we call them microcrystals, that then congeal and become stones.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And you have stones that can occur in the urinary tract because the body eliminates oxalate, oxalic acid through the urine and the kidneys.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't detox it in any way.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: The liver makes oxalate.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you eat it in your spinach smoothie and your keto bread and your nut butters and your beets and your sweet potatoes.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: It goes straight into your liver.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: The liver makes more oxalate as part of its thing, just a little bit, and then it starts circulating in your body, and your kidneys have to pick it up and pee it out.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: And in the process, you're causing potential problems with your digestion, your immune cells that are in your bloodstream, the red blood cells in your bloodstream, the linings of your vascular tissue, the kidneys, or excuse me, the liver, and then that blood travels into the heart, lungs, and the rest of the body.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: This stuff gets stuck in tissues that are regenerating or inflamed, or cells that are broken up.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: It gets stuck in areas where the cells aren't super uh in the right condition and starts accumulating in the body.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: So what are the what are the twelve what are the what are the twelve high oxalate foods?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: Spinach.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: Spinach.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Twist chard, bee greens, almonds, peanuts, cashews, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, french fries, potato chips, quinoa, buckwheat.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: What else?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: There's a couple fruits, kiwi, star fruit, blackberries, figs, chocolate, sorry.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Even our beloved turmeric has turmeric oxalates, black tea, green tea, rhubarb, rhubarb, which is something I grew up on, which is probably where this all started.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So let's back up a second though, because so we make some of it, but isn't it is it true that the vast majority of the oxalates that most of us consume are through the through the diet, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Through plants.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: Over half of the oxalate that a normal person peas out is coming straight from the plants you're eating.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Your potatoes, your peanuts, your chocolate.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And most people have those foods by the time they're one year old.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: They've been giving peanut butter, chocolate cake for their first birthday, beets as a first period food, sweet potatoes as a period food.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: And nowadays in a fancy baby food, they're putting quinoa in these more even crazier high oxalate foods.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we're eating them uh really and often.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh oxalates, though, they have a benefit for the plant, correct?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like against mineral accumulation or like pesticides.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, underfunded botanists have found at least seven uses for oxalate in the plants, and so very much about defense.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Plants put them in the seeds to store calcium.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's a brilliant way to manage calcium because calcium and oxalic acid love each other so well.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And calcium is so critical to the function of all living cells, whether they're plant cells or human cells.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And just like human beings, plants have to manage their calcium so there's enough and not too much.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And so by being able to bind up the calcium, you keep it from being uh active physiologically for the plant, and you can also save it for later.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: And in a seed, saving calcium is very smart because it's a cofactor for enzymes that allow the seed to germinate.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: So when a seed starts germinating, it's lit, it's sort of liquidating this calcium oxalate and liberating off that calcium to use it for germination.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that's many more purposes.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, plants are attacked by funguses and beetles and so on.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so a leaf of a plant can produce hydrogen peroxide from oxalate to fight funguses.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: The plants build crystals of deliberate shapes deliberately to be unedible by beetles and other other munching animals, including us.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and in your diet, I mean, sorry, in your book, you talk about how that when when humans are consuming these uh diets high in oxalate, the oxalates are actually acting as um like an anti-nutrient.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like can you speak to that a little more?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, so the oxalate will bind the minerals in the food themselves.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we've known since the 1930s that, especially with infants, feeding them spinach delivers them a negative amount of calcium because the calcium that's in a spinach is being bound by the oxalic acid.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: And there's enough additional oxalic acid that it's limiting the amount of absorption you get from calcium from the other foods in the diet.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, what you're absorbing into the bloodstream, what moves from the digestive tract into the bloodstream is the oxalic acid ion principally.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so that thing is ripe for picking up calcium out of your blood and other minerals like magnesium, iron, and so on.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that's an anti-nutrient because it's stealing minerals both from your food and from your tissues, including your blood.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it causes stress in the liver where you tend to need more B vitamins in the liver.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: The liver has to protect itself by using up its glutathione.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's using up resources and potentially um affecting your status with your B vitamins and possibly other nutrients.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it's causes cell damage and the cells tend to die earlier, and you end up wasting potassium and other nutrients because the cell turnover is too fast.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a real problem, especially in our modern society, because we're seeing increasing rates of micronutrient deficiency diseases in our culture, right?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're saying that when we're eating these high oxalates, we're actually can potentially contributing to our own problem of not consider not having enough micronutrients for our bodies to function properly, correct?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: That is right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: And especially in the mineral department.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the minerals are so important, really under, I think underappreciated in the nutrition field, particularly how important these cofactors, the minerals that help to drive the reactions of life.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: If your enzymes aren't working well and everything's slowing down, that's not health.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I was one thing I was surprised to learn in your book is just the laundry list of different symptoms that can be associated with too many oxalates in the diet.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talked about the kidney stones, mineral deficiencies, digestive issues, joint pain, inflammation, but it could also lead to like neurological symptoms, uh, right, because it's a neurotoxin.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, before I go on with the list, share the story, please, of um, like you said, in central and southern Africa, what the hunters would do with the arrowheads, share the story because I think this will really drive it home to people about how oxalates are actually a neurotoxin.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a very old, old practice.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: You take your freshly made arrowheads and you stick them in the banana tree trunk.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's I don't know if it's really a trunk, and it sits there overnight.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the next day you take those to hunt with, and what you put on the tip is the oxalic acid.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: And oxalic acid grabs calcium and other minerals.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so when it gets into the body, that's messing up how nerves work.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nerves work with calcium every nanosecond, it's moving calcium around, and the nerves are suddenly, you know, sort of paralyzed.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: It paralyzes the animal.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that you don't have to be a good shot.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: It can be a dull wooden arrowhead, but if you've got that neurotoxin in there and you paralyze the animal, he doesn't have to die for you to get him.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: You can walk up to him now and finish him off.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was a guaranteed way, even if your arrowheads weren't strong enough to penetrate far enough to kill the animal, you could still get your get your hunt.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's amazing.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even these cultures knew that.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we're we're seeing this in our modern culture where some people are developing neurological symptoms because of oxalates.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then the list goes on urinary problems, brain fog, mood changes, like you had fatigue and poor sleep, skin rashes, um, fibrosis, autoimmunity.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then I found a study showing that normal breast cancer cells were actually transformed into tumor cells following chronic exposure to oxalates.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so even they're now even linking cancer to chronic exposure to oxalates.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the list goes on and on.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: You also mentioned like stiffness in the low back.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, connective tissue disorders.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's where Joanne at the Vulvar Pain Foundation, it was real clear to her as she was on this diet longer and longer that her fibromyalgia went away, her ability to walk up and downstairs went away.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's a huge piece with arthritis, with connective tissue disorders, tendinitis and bursitis, and loss of uh joint height, loss of cartilage in the joints, very much can be connected to oxalate.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I do think you're right, Sina, to point out the neurotoxicity is a really key feature.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think that is a central problem and it leads to so many other problems that you wouldn't think of as neurological.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: You don't think of a hiccup as a sign of neurotoxicity.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: I never thought of it as one until I was reading the research about star fruit poisoning from the oxalates in the star fruit, and how the last symptom before the animals or the humans who are dying of oxalate poisoning from star fruit was hiccups.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because what's happening is you get nerve spasms, and when nerve spasm, nerves are telling the muscles what to do, the muscles start spasming when the nerves are firing, right?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then the muscles are also the same kind of tissue that needs to control their calcium, and they can start spasming and not being able to respond properly.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So all kinds of dysmotility problems.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: If you're bloated and belching, that's probably because peristalsis is all mixed up because you've got random spasms going on.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: You can get, you can get um, you know, like little tremors and eye things, you can get hypertension, that's spasms of the vascular system where it's really tight.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: You can get Ray Node syndrome.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that neurotoxicity shows up in ways you you don't think of it as nerve poisoning.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you could get anxiety too, right?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't anxiety associated with high oxalate diet?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing all these people now.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: You lose motivation when your brain is inflamed, you lose motivation, you lose focus, you lose a just a zest for life, you can start really feeling blah about everything and stop caring about things.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of like a teenager, right?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Of the brain.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you can get anxiety, panic attacks, depression.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's really clear.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: People came to me with depression and said, I think this is an oxalate problem.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I just couldn't believe it until I started working with them and then understood the science and it made sense.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: And people come to me with conditions all the time and say, now that I'm on this diet, my lipoema's gone, my blood sugar is fine, I don't need metformin now.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's amazing.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: When you're messing with the basic function of any cell in the body, pretty much anything can go wrong.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So oh, go ahead, Joel.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead, Joel.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, just um I'm I'm I haven't read the book, so I'm I'm the uh I'm I'm the voice of the the uh the kind of what regular person here.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: The uninitiated, yes.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and I mean I I feel pretty good, and I'm almost 70, but uh I mean I know I look just 50, but uh 40 50.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say 40.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: You look 40.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm the best co-host ever, Sally.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like he's on the auction block.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: So so so I eat this stuff, but very little.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Almost like a dietary condiment.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, we we have we have beets, but we have beets, whatever, uh, you know, uh twice a month.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, uh blackberries.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we eat around here we eat blackberries when they're in season, you know, and they're blooming along the edge of the fields, and we eat blackberries.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, we don't eat blackberries.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I never did get a get a love for tea, so tea, and I've never had a cup of coffee, so here we are.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um but but but I mean when I'm I'm thinking about like these pro like balance of nature, um super beats.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm looking thinking about the advertisements that I see.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um is is this is are we talking about the same thing?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of I'm I'm not sure I fully understand the question, except that you have a very meat-centric diet and like your fruits, and don't make vegetables the king of the plate.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: But the king of the plate is what we're being taught.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: You're being taught to do five to 15 servings of vegetables a day, and that you have to have these things for health.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you're not being taught the other side, you're getting this benefits-only kind of Disneyland story about how great it is to live on plants.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: When you and I know that there are essential nutrients that you can only get from animal foods, and that you literally can survive on hunting, like mankind has had to do, especially in the winter time.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it used to be that you didn't have blackberries and beets and swiss chard and beet greens in the winter.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: So at least you had winter time for the body to unload whatever accumulation was occurring.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: Everywhere is there is there no benefit to those things?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Potentially not.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you you may be healthier without them, it's it's one thing to say.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: We're eating uh we're eating too much salad, you know, too much rabbit food.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we call it around here rabbit food.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um it it's one thing you're s you're that's to say you're eating too much.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's quite another to say you really shouldn't eat any of it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's this the jury's out because we haven't been willing to question it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: We have assumed that we can push plant foods as an alternative to getting diabetes on ice cream and soda pop and french fries.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So we think if we just stuff people up with vegetables, somehow that solves the poor nutrition that we're eating today.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a just a solution, the wrong solution to the problem of not recognizing the value of animal foods and foods that are coming off of farms where it's raised properly, the value of seasonality where you don't have spinach every day of the year, you don't have blackberries every day of the year, and you don't pretend that somehow plants are there for our benefit.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: The plants are part of the fight of nature, they have to protect themselves.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: If their seeds and progeny is so edible, they would be extinct.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: So my my friend uh Michael Pollan, who says, you know, eat mostly plants, uh, you would have a problem with that.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Most definitely.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um as an ex-vegetarian, I spent eight years being vegetarian and eight years being vegan.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I've done my time.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: My professors at Cornell were had the ideology that vegetables were key and the dairy and animal foods were terrible, and they were making up that stuff without actually defending it scientifically.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, in your book, I'm just looking under um, I think this would be a good time to bring in your qualms about fiber.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I want to go, and then I want to dive deeper into um why theories about why oxalates might be a modern problem.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say even like a modern man-made problem.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I love this in your book when you're talking about fiber.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about a Kaiser permanente study that was done with 99 volunteers.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you you so usually a nephrologist will tell us eat a high fiber diet to prevent kidney stones.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very familiar with kidney stones.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had one in my 20s.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have a family history of kidney disease.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Both, both of my parents um need a kidney transplant.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then I presented with kidney stones in my 20s, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what they told me at the time was um, you're you need to eat more fiber, you need to not drink caffeine, and you need to eat less meat.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was eating a predominant plant-based diet at that time.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I never, like Joel, I never, I don't drink coffee, I wasn't drinking soda like with caffeine.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that really didn't jive with me.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was irrelevant information.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then what you said in this- You didn't even ask what you were eating to be able to give you dietary advice or just slapping random ideas at you without even looking at your particular situation.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then I come to your book and read this study where they had these 99 volunteers and they found that when they consumed a high fiber, low animal protein diet, it increased their odds of getting another kidney stone, and it increased it by six times.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's exactly what they told me to do.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: But it increased my so let's um So I'm so glad to hear that you're reading my book, knowing you have this family history of kidney problems, because this is critical information for anybody with kidney issues.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and so you said I find this fascinating because as somebody who so you know, I have a PhD in nutrition, and we were taught the lot the line that you need to have high fiber.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fiber is everything.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fiber is great for the colon, fiber reduces cancer risk, like fiber increases motility, fiber is what grows your microbiome in your gastrointestinal tract and prevents dysbiosis, right?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So then I come to your chapter in the book, and it's called, it says in this section, fiber, an example of going astray.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll just let me just say quote a couple things in here, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Joe, you would love this book.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let me quote a couple things, and I want to hear you um elaborate on this.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you talk about how uh we're told that we simply must have fiber, but it's another myth, and that the studies that are associated, the studies are poor that associate fiber with gut health, weight control, cancer risk, and reduction of heart disease.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um you talk about how fiber can interfere with the absorption of essential minerals like calcium, iron, zinc, magnesium, copper, and vitamin B6.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you also talk about how we hear that message that you need to have a high fiber diet in order to feed your microbiome.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you said that may be the reverse of the truth.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: The body's own efforts to manage gut flora are obstructed by dietary fiber.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Fiber indiscriminately feeds both beneficial bacteria and pathogenic microorganisms, potentially causing an imbalance, overgrowth, or dysbiosis.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Chronic inflammation is more likely when bacterial populations, even beneficial ones, stay high owing to excess fiber.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was fascinating because that's the opposite of what we're taught.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's the opposite of what most of us believe.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I did know when you talked about even the overgrowth of beneficial bacteria, you can get SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth from an overgrowth of beneficial bacteria, right?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we know that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this really resonated with me.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain, like elaborate on this, particularly in relation to the gut health?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is gonna be, I think, new and shocking information to a lot of people.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Very new and shocking and controversial because the microbiome has looming large is the answer to everything.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And the more you feed it, the kind in the Western culture, more is always better.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, like more and more.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: We need more bacteria and more fiber, and you got to have lots of it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like, turn us all into fermentation chambers.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I am not a cow, thank you very much.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: That is not necessarily the answer, but it is in our culture.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's if a little is good, then more is better.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not so.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: So the fiber is an irritant to the gut, and it's going to cause additional stress to gut cells.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: You only have one layer of gut cells, and it is their job to have enough energy to control the environment in both the small intestine and large intestine to favor the kind of bacteria they need to grow there.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: The back, the in the intestines, the body wants certain types of bacteria in the small intestine and anaerobic bacteria in the colon, and it has to be healthy enough to do that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the gardener function of the intestinal tract, which you're abusing the gardener with all this fiber, and you're increasing this growth of bacteria.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: And now that poor gardening layer of cells has to also put out antibacterial chemicals to lower the population so that you're not overly fermenting and that and that you can control prevent SIBO and so on and keep everything working well.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's additional work of inflammation.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: So you turn on the immune system to go after and attack the excess amount of bacteria.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: So you stress the cells with the excess fiber, and then you stress the cells with the need to do this pro-inflammatory, you know, weeding out of the excess bacteria.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I can hear people asking the question then, well, then how do you achieve regular bowel movements?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right if you don't have the fiber?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for one thing, you quit poisoning the nerves that run the muscles that help peristalsis work.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you try to restore the right uh the health, the energy production in those cells by lowering inflammation in the body.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Generally, you have to help the vascular system be healthy so it can help those cells be well, have what they need to be well.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have to like fix the damage we've done with antibiotics.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: If people are oversanitizing things all the time with their hand sanitizers and so on, you literally can give yourself MRSA doing that.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: But then we, of course, by the time you're three, you've probably had antibiotics for your ear infection and your this and the that and your pool swimmer's ear, whatever.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, now what do we do with the fact that we every person has a different microbiome mix?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's not easy to do fecal transplants or other therapies to try to restore that.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's new ideas coming down the pike of essentially you have to fix the the vibrancy of the tissues.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you if you don't have healthy cells, you're never going to fix their function.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so that means getting the nutrients right and getting the toxicity down primarily.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have to layer in other ideas about how to correct the you know the colonic microbiome and so on that I think are are coming.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think we haven't quite arrived at a full understanding so that we can come up with more clever therapeutic options for people.
• 31:20
  unknown: Okay.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And in in terms of this ties right into the question I wanted to go to next, which is why do we feel like, or why does it seem like oxalates are becoming a problem?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like more, as you mentioned, we've known about this what in it since at least the 1800s, where there's been documentation that there's been um like oxalate toxicity, but it seems like it's becoming more of a modern issue now than it was in the past.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, please, that's my interpretation, correct me if I'm wrong.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you give some examples in the book, and then I've been thinking about it on my own too and coming up with some conclusions.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it would be helpful to the listeners if we go over some of these reasons because a lot of people might walk away and be like, well, our ancestors didn't have these problems.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, she must be kind of an extremist.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: She must be just, you know, picking one little compound and picking these things onto it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: And how does she know that it's really oxalates?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: But so let's start there.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with the gut health.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there are oxalate-degrading bacteria, right, that are in the gastrointestinal tract that can actually break down um the oxalate.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was looking online in the scientific literature, it appears as though as we are losing diversity of our microbiome and number of microbes in our microbiome, we are potentially losing some of these oxalate-degrading bacteria, which could be part of the reason why some of us seem to be more sensitive to oxalate than others.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that true?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do you agree with that?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm getting to the sensitivity piece, I think that's important to understand the thinking behind the sort of context that we're talking about.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oxalate is a poison, and it's really about your tolerance for how much of the poison you can consume without serious harm.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: The problem with that is we don't have any way to assess how well you're managing it without harm, because often you go with very little symptoms.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So you can have a problem without symptoms.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's true with any deadly disease.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can suddenly know you have stage four cancer and be dead two months later.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: And chances are that was going coming up for the last five or 10 years or maybe longer.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: It could be sudden and fetal development, sitting there, that little proto cancer, and what made it suddenly go?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you can have, you can seem fine.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: I just talked to a new person, a new client of mine, and she ate a raw food vegan diet for years, and she was doing okay until she got in her late 30s and she needed a hysterectomy and she had endometriosis.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: That wasn't so great.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then by the time she was 45, she had fibromyalgia.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't recognize either one of those as a sign that her diet was toxic and she had oxalate poisoning.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: But when she went full carnivore 10 months ago, she had five days of finally bliss where all this extreme pain that was going on left on a zero oxalate diet because there's no oxalates in animal foods.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: And she got rid of all plant foods as a raw food vegan and went full carnivore.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Five days of no pain for the first time in a long time.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that was, you know, what at age 59.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: So she is now dealing with this overload of oxalate accumulation in her brain, her eyes.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: She's right now, she's suffering a lot with floaters and has like having trouble seeing.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: She's having all kinds of symptoms, lots of pain, because that little break from the oxalates gave the body a chance to now look at and deal with the accumulated oxalate.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you can silently accumulate oxalate in your brain.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you may not get your Parkinson's disease until you're 65 or 75, but that doesn't mean it isn't from a lifetime of peanut butter.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: So you can't really say who is quote sensitive, which is not a term I agree with.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think whatever your tolerance for putting up with it and pretending everything's fine and being able to do your running and your exercise and run your business seemed fine until suddenly you're broken the day after you retire, you know, or they start blaming menopause because menopause happens to happen after you've been alive for several decades.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: And like, okay, that's a convenient thing, but we don't have any evidence because we're not paying attention to this.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: So if you refuse to acknowledge this accumulation of oxalate in your thyroid gland, you've got little kidney stones in your thyroid gland.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: By the time you're 50, 85% of us at least have little oxalate crystals in our thyroid gland.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: That can't be helpful, right?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not that's not tolerance, that's just invisibility.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't know the difference.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: So sensitivity, everyone's sensitive to poisons, but to different degrees.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: With oxalate poisoning, if I wanted to kill you tomorrow, I might be able to do it with three grams, it might take 15 grams.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how much you need to kill you.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's the difference of the tolerance, and you could call it sensitivity, but sensitivity sounds more like an allergy, and this is not an allergy.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that you don't have to avoid it completely.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: So Joel can have his bee greens here and there and his blackberries, and we're not worried about, especially blackberries, because the berries and the fruits are mostly crystals.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: So all the crystals are going to do is irritate your gut and wear down your teeth.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: They're harder than your teeth.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: So chewing on crystals, you literally get microware in your teeth.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: But you're not going to absorb a lot of oxalic acid unless there's some way for you to break down those crystals, and they're not.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: So some foods seem oxalated and they are in the context of juicing and smoothies and these things where you liberate and you make them more able to cross into the bloodstream.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, so there's sensitivity, but back to the bacterial piece like, are the bacteria saving you?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: In a solution of liquid like black tea or spinach juice, you start absorbing oxalate in the stomach within five or ten minutes.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: Your stomach is not a place of high bacterial activity.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: The pH in there is like 2.0.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: Same with the upper small intestine.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really the first three or four hours where you're doing a lot of this absorption of the oxalate.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: Long before that food reaches the colon, the primary place where ox where oxalate-degrading bacteria ought to be there, that often isn't, um, it at a level that's going to help you deal with the oxalate.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the point of an oxalate-degrading bacteria in the colon is it allows the colon to be an excretion tissue.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the body can put oxalate out from the bloodstream back into the colon and you can remove it in the fecal matter, or the bacteria in the gut will consume it for you.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it allows your body to excrete more of the oxalate more quickly.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: So what gets into your blood can turn around and be excreted more quickly by the colon.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: And hopefully, but that's a whole theory.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: They still haven't figured out how that all works and how it works differently in individual people.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we need these obligate anaerobes, and a lot of them are the ones that degrade oxalate, and that's important to our health.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: But we can see in the real world now people who are reading my book and discovering this information, they're sick on oxalate.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you can have a theoretical argument about bacteria, but the truth is we're sick.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what matters, is that we're trying to functionally be there for someone who's needing an answer.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the the argument about the bacteria, we we've got more to learn.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, so Sena, we're we're uh we're crunching our time here.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I I I propose this I propose this question to our listeners.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: I propose this.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um what would it do to your um your your your menu prep and your psychology if suddenly you didn't feel like you needed a salad with dinner?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, the the the um I used to make great salads and I depended on them for my my golden regularity.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: I thought I needed them.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Cena, you're right.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm I'm sure glad you found this.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: This is as probably as revolutionary um a whatever a thing as we've had on Beyond Labels.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: And um I gotta, but but I like blackberries.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_03: But when they're when they're along the road up here in the mountain, wow, there's nothing that I enjoy more than a fresh picked handful of blackberries.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's a handful though.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not three trucks in every smoothie every morning of your life.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: That that's correct.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's correct.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: And all you have to do is like quit thinking those bee greens are really good.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Just they're not as good as we say we think they are.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then you're pretty good.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's just fascinating.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um wait, let me let me ask, let me ask one more question because uh I can just see the emails coming in.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd rather ask you now while I've got you on here.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um in terms of this being, I'm piggybacking on what Joel Joel just brought up.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, I think, part of why we may see this more as a modern problem, is that um in your book you talked about how not only are these super foods that are high oxalate foods available year-round now.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're eating them more often than if, you know, we didn't have those grocery stores.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're not eating these things seasonally.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: But as you mentioned, you can when they're blended in the smoothie, you talk about in the book how that opens up the cells and it exposes us to more of the oxalate that we we would not have necessarily been exposed to had we not broken up in those cells.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you also talk about how we tend to now soak nuts in grains.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and that's a good thing.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: We promote that, you know, Weston Price promotes promotes that, but you talked about how soaking the nuts in the grains could actually increase the bioavailability of these oxalates.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another thing we think we're doing, you know, to make these foods even healthier and easier for us to digest, but we may actually be making them more toxic.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then you also talked about um, this is a question I have for you.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about how unripe fruits, like an avocado, is higher in oxalates than the ripe counterpart.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so an unripened avocado is going to be higher in oxalate typically than a ripened um avocado.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: In our modern food supply, as you know, they pick a lot of produce unripened, ship it, and then, you know, for instance, gas ripen it.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think or do you know, does that change the oxalate content by the time we get to that supposed white ripe produce in the grocery store and pick that up and eat it?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: Has the oxalate content lowered?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, the testing that we have, which is very limited, is based on things people have picked up at the grocery store.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: So in their pretty current testing, so we're we're pretty much testing the reality of things that way.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you're testing it that it is so it did test lower.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's you can look at the data.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: There is a book now that I've put out just this year in May that has a lot of detailed data in it, complete with color coding.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: So if you really want to get into seeing what data is there, what's been tested, and in the front, I explain a lot about what's wrong with the data.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to understand the data and how to understand people find this are liking this book more than I expected they would.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: I thought this would be for the geeks and the and the doctors, but people are finding that the short summary in the front and the data together are just as handy as toxic superfoods.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: This book is more for like, what?
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: I thought vegetables were good for me.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: And what about this?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: And what about that?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that's for the curious mind and wants like a complete answer.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that book for me.
• 43:18
  unknown: Yeah.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is thick, it's thick.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a lot of references, and Joel's a good reader.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's people have told me they've read it in two days.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I try to make it readable.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: But one more thing about the modernity in the modern food.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: The French fries and the potato chips are incredibly modern.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so is like Reese's peanut butter cups every day of your life and dark chocolate all the time.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: These are very, very modern behaviors that are full of oxalate and they're very poor of nutrition.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: They offer you no nutrients and just toxins, and that is getting us into trouble.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that era of eating toxic, no nutrient foods began four or five hundred years ago in Queen Anne's day when tea came in, sugar came in for.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Rich people, chocolate came in, and potatoes were introduced.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: So in Europe, around that time, we introduced those toxic foods that offered almost no vitamins without a vitamin pill.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't know what vitamins were until about 100 years ago or so.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so we went through an era in the past that wasn't so great.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: But at least we had comfort with meat foods.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: And now we're so focused on eating plants and we're so okay with peanut butter, chocolate ice cream and peanut butter, chocolate everything, and chocolate-covered nuts as supposedly healthy when and potato chips and french fries.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm gonna have chocolate to make up for that.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then and one last this is my I promised Joel, this is my last one, but you know, we talk about food on this on this podcast.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I can't go let you go without asking you this one.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned in the book about how um like oxalic acid can be sprayed on certain produce because it slows um the yellowing post-harvest, like of um of leafy greens.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: So is that something that's current?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: Are are sometimes is our are the pro is produce sometimes sprayed with oxalic acid to slow down yellowing?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: I do not have a legitimate source to say one way or the other.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: What we have is the research saying we can use this in in the field of producing food and who's doing it productivity-wise, you know, where it's happening, where it is in the legality of having to label it.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think it's completely invisible to the consumer.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: We need to talk to people who are industry insiders to find that out.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that would be fascinating because there's definitely I looked in the scientific literature and there's lots of studies on it talking about, you know, how it's great for the crops and it kind of acts like a um like an antimicrobial, they call it an antioxidant.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wait a minute.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: So even if we're now trying to go low, yeah.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like and you said it's even a registered pesticide as well in bee management.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: Beekeeping, right?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking, great.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: So even if I'm trying to just choose the low oxalate produce, did they just spray it on my produce anyhow?
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: You've been inventing toothpaste and putting it in toothpaste.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oxalates, yeah.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: For what purpose?
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you see, we use it to preserve monuments because it bonds so well to the calcium and the granite of the monuments that it the rain acids shut off.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: But interestingly, a lot of the acid and acid rain is actually oxalic acid.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, it just never ends, Joel.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like our fascinating topic.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: They used to use it to do invisible ink.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: Was that World War I or something?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: But they use oxalic acid in the invisible ink.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's it's everywhere and it's completely hidden, and it's really a fun topic.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not fun when it's in your shoulder joint and your neck and giving you agony.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's not fun when it's ruining your thyroid gland or your sleep or your kidneys.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: A kidney stone is not fun.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: If you want more fun, don't poison yourself.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's simple.
• 47:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: And okay, and Sally, you have um a lot of great resources on your website and a lot of free resources where people can start, as well as your book, which I highly recommend.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is a very well-researched, well laid out, easy to read book.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Highly recommend it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Sally, where can they go to find you your website if they want more info?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: SallyKnorton.com.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: SallyKnorton.com.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a Sally Norton, Sally K Norton uh YouTube channel where you can meet other people.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's several little one-minute videos and and a handful of people sharing their stories of recovering from their knee problems and their interstitial cystitis and bladder problems and all kinds of things.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it's fun to meet people who are like, finally, an answer.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's remarkable.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming on the show and for sharing your knowledge.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's obvious that you're well researched, and I really appreciate that and respect that about you.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what I think is great about this?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually free to try it, right?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: You have these lists even on your website of low oxalate foods.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have easy swaps that you provide.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, instead of eating this, eat this.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just try it and just see.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're one of those people who still has health issues and you you've been eating the healthy foods that we promote in this culture, just try it and see if it if it if it makes a difference, right?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy peasy.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you guys so much, and we will see you next week.