# Which gluten-free flours are safe for kidney stone formers? Source: https://kidneystonediet.com/ep/which-gluten-free-flours-are-safe-for-kidney-stone-formers/ Published: 2021-02-02 --- [![Kidney Stone Diet Podcast](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Kidney-Stone-Diet-Podcast-1-1024x1024.jpg)](https://kidneystonediet.com/podcast/) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQyQdkAS_cQ)[Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/which-gluten-free-flours-are-safe-for-kidney-stone-formers/id1528474326?i=1000507451389&uo=4)[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4oBiGiOpEiX2ye0wUYfizG)[Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/0868148d-adfd-411d-b3f2-71a0ad1461ec) February 2, 2021 --- ![Jeff Sarris](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Jeff-Sarris-150x150.jpg) Jeff Sarris Host ![Jill Harris](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Kidney-Stone-Diet-Jill-Harris-150x150.jpg) Jill Harris Host In this episode of the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast Jill Harris answers a listener question about gluten-free and baking flours.\ \ • [Kidney Stone Diet](https://kidneystonediet.com/)\ • [Kidney Stone Prevention Program](https://kidneystonediet.com/kidney-stone-prevention)\ • [Oxalate Food List](https://kidneystonediet.com/oxalate-list/)\ • [Free KSD Resources](https://kidneystonediet.com/resources/)\ \ Find the full transcript at [BYLT.co/show/kidney-stone-diet](https://bylt.co/show/kidney-stone-diet) ## Chapters - 00:00:00 Almond Flour and Kidney Stone Risk - 00:05:23 Added Sugar and Salt in Gluten Free Products - 00:08:22 Dietary Variety and Daily Oxalate Limits - 00:10:26 Fruit Variety and Superfood Marketing Myths ## Transcript ### Almond Flour and Kidney Stone Risk 00:00:00 Jeff Sarris Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, the show about reducing your risk for kidney stones and living your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris. 00:00:23 Jill Harris And I'm Jill Harris, and I'm a nurse that helps people figure out how to prevent kidney stones, mainly through diet and lifestyle changes. 00:00:32 Jeff Sarris Perfect! I like this new intro. I think this is good. 00:00:36 Jill Harris Yeah! 00:00:37 Jeff Sarris Yeah, we're always figuring out this show, you know, every episode we're changing it up just a little bit and… 00:00:42 Jill Harris Look, you never know what you're gonna get. I mean, and that's how life is sometimes. So let's just roll with it, people. 00:00:48 Jeff Sarris Yeah, for sure. All right, so this week, we have another question. It is, from the group on Facebook, which if you're interested in joining the group, it's Kidney Stone Prevention Diet on Facebook, you can search for that. And the question is: "Is it true that even very mild…" I am reading last week's question! 00:01:07 Jill Harris You're fired, Jeff! 00:01:09 Jeff Sarris If you missed last week, you can hear what the rest of that question was. But, this week's question… 00:01:15 Jill Harris I think this is why I love our podcast, because we screw up and no, who cares? Life is filled with it. Like I said, so what? You just keep on rolling, keep on trucking. No one's perfect, people. That's why, I mean, that's what all dietary changes, no one can be perfect. There is no such thing as perfect. You pick your pants up and you keep on trucking. Go ahead, what's the real question? 00:01:36 Jeff Sarris So, the question this week is, "I'm gluten-free. What kinds of flours can I have on the Kidney Stone Diet?" Because when it comes to gluten-free, I mean almond flour is, has been king. And as we know, almonds are not friendly for kidney stones. 00:01:53 Jill Harris That's right. So, this is a great question. And also with keto being so popular, I mean, every recipe in keto is almond flour. Almonds, almonds, almonds. And so many people get kidney stones. Again, look, there's a lot of people who do keto that don't get kidney stones. You have to be prone to kidney stones and that's, you know, so it's not necessarily the keto diet that did it to you, meaning it won't do it to everybody, but people who are prone to have kidney stones, It's a problem. So, here's what I'll say about it. Almond flour, you can't have it. You can't. And stop crying about it. Let's move on, people. You cannot have it. The reason you got kidney stones was not just almond flour. Maybe if you had almond flour once a week and you got your daily requirements of calcium met, you would not have made a kidney stone. It's that you had almond flour, almonds, almond milk, spinach, all of these things on the keto diet, along with not getting enough calcium. That's what did you in. And quite frankly, any healthy Weight Watchers will say, "No points for this, no points for that." A lot of those no-point things are high oxalate. And guess what? When you have zero points for something, you're going to eat a lot of it because it's zero points, right? So we think of these things as freebies. So, this is just a part, this is always part of my conversation with patients. First of all, can we not eat the same damn foods over and over and over and over in any amounts that we want? Please, let's stop doing that. That's why so many patients have to come visit me. So, almond flour, gluten-free flours. You can have any gluten-free flour you want except the nut flours, okay? People will say, "Well, wheat's a little high in oxalate." Yeah, but a cup is high in oxalate. You're not having a cup of wheat flour in, in the cookie you just had, okay? So, remember, it's a portion game. You can certainly have some bread. So people say, "I can't have no bread." You can have bread. You're having a slice of bread or a sandwich. So again, a whole cup of wheat flour is not in that sandwich. So, please remember that. And the reason people ask so many questions is because they're not getting any answers. And so, they've just had the worst pain in their life, and now they don't know what the hell to do. And you go to the internet, and you see all kinds of different oxalate levels and different answers, and so it's so, it's tough for kidney stone formers. And that's why I've dedicated my career to helping them because they're not getting the right information. So, gluten-free flours, you can have the oat flours if it's gluten-free. You can have any gluten-free flour there is, except the ones that are high in oxalate. So, I'm always going to say no to almond flour because almonds are so high, okay? So, but if you wanted to use other gluten-free flours, it's totally fine. If you're worried about the oxalate level, remember, what is the portion size you're having? If you're making a whole loaf of oat bread, you know, and oats are low by the way in oxalate, that's not a problem. Coconut flour you can use, that, you know, that's not a problem. So, there's, there's gluten-free flours, say that three times! Gluten-free! What the hell? ### Added Sugar and Salt in Gluten Free Products 00:05:23 Jill Harris Also, I want to just push back on the gluten-free. Many people, unless you have celiac disease, you don't need gluten-free. Now, some of you are, you need gluten-free because it bothers your stomach. You, you need it, I get it. But there's a lot of people, the food manufacturers started noticing, "Hey, Henry! Let's put gluten-free on this product, because even though it doesn't even matter if it is or not, people like to spend a little extra money on gluten-free because they think it's healthier." I will tell you, people, if you need gluten-free, buy your gluten-free products. If you don't, I don't know why you're doing it. It's not healthier. For those gluten-free products that you're buying, turn it around, Buster Brown. Don't be reading just the front of the label. You have to look at your nutrition label. How much sugar is added in that product? How much salt? Because once you take away gluten, which is the glue, which is the chewiness of that product, it taste like notebook paper, unless they put extra sugar and salt in it. You're not going to buy that product because it tastes nasty. So, turn that package around. Turn it around, Buster Brown, and look at the added sugar and salt in gluten-free products. Find the gluten-free products that have the lowest added sugar and added salt, please do that. Make me happy, please, okay? So, gluten-free does not necessarily mean it's healthy, so pay attention to that. 00:06:52 Jeff Sarris And one of the, one of the magical gluten-free flours is cassava flour. You have cassava and arrowroot, which all come from tapioca. Do you know, specifically, cause I know not every plant has, oxalate counts. 00:07:05 Jill Harris Right, so, and that one doesn't. So, we're not sure, and so people, and we have a podcast on, you know, why we use the Harvard list here, and we use it because we trust it. And I've done this for 21 years. Dr. Coe has worked with the Harvard list, you know, since it came out. And so we trust the researchers in that list. But you got to remember, that list was derived in the '80s. Nobody was eating no cassava flour then. They weren't eating all the stuff we are then, now. And so, that list has not been updated. So for those foods, like cassava flour, and thanks for bringing that up, Jeff, cause that's a great example, it's not on the list. So, what do we do then? We have that food once or twice a week. We get our daily amounts of calcium met. We get that met, okay? Because it could be a little higher in oxalate, but again, nobody's going to get a kidney stone from eating a piece of cassava bread a couple times a week. That's not why you got your stone. There's many different reasons people got stones, but typically, if it was mostly an oxalate problem because your oxalate level was so high, it's because you overate the highest oxalate foods. So, I'm always going to teach my students eat food in normal portions, portions, and ### Dietary Variety and Daily Oxalate Limits 00:08:22 Jill Harris Change it up, people! Don't eat the same lunch for 20 years. Don't eat the same breakfast and dinner over and over and over again. That's why we have this meal plan thing we're rolling out. It gives you ideas and inspirations on what you can do, so you're not eating the same foods every day. Your machine, your body wants a wide, varied amounts of nutrients. It's very, very important. Don't eat the same five foods. So many of my patients do that. They come to me and they're like, "But I don't know what to eat." Let's think about it. It's not that hard, okay? And so we come up with a food plan that will make them happy and get them off the same pear and apple for the same 30 years. You know, there's a lot of fruits out there, right? And they're all pretty much low oxalate, except for a couple. That's it. So, there's plenty to eat, people. 00:09:12 Jeff Sarris Yeah, it's just raspberries and, is there anything else that comes to mind offhand that's really high? 00:09:17 Jill Harris Raspberries and rutabaga. I mean, come on! That's it! I mean, I don't care. Look, even if something's a little higher, like I like kiwi, I'll put it in my yogurt where I'm having some calcium, you know? But again, you have 100 milligrams a day of oxalate to eat, unless your, I was going to say dad! Unless your doctor has told you otherwise. 00:09:39 Jeff Sarris Oh! 00:09:43 Jill Harris So, unless your doctor has told you otherwise, cause some patients like gastric bypass patients or people with malabsorption issues, they have to be lower than that. So, unless your doctor has told you otherwise, you can have safely 100 milligrams of oxalate a day. Get your, calcium requirements met and your oxalate, I work with people when they see me, they did their first urine collection, their oxalates in the hundreds. When we do these tweaks, they work with me, their next urine collection, their follow-up one is 22. So, it's very easily managed unless, like I said, you have malabsorption issues, then it's trickier, but, you know. So you can, look, and I'm going to say this, Jeff, because this makes me crazy. Every year there's a new freaking superfood. We got this superfood! Look, ### Fruit Variety and Superfood Marketing Myths 00:10:26 Jill Harris I'm spitting, I get so pissed. Listen to me! It's a marketer's dream, these superfoods. The kiwi people are like, "Let's say it's a superfood." Look, when you go in the produce section, I want you to think of every fruit and vegetable with little capes! They're all superfoods! Get a wide variety! Yes, I know, some are high. Stay away from those handfuls. There's only a handful. And then everything else you can easily work in. You know, when things are in season, get those things! Try a new vegetable! Bring some fruits and vegetable things you haven't, a wide variety because they all offer beautiful phytonutrients, micronutrient- nutrients, all kinds of stuff, okay? So, and good fiber, all right? Please, do that. 00:11:11 Jeff Sarris It's funny you brought that up about all super, every food is a superfood. Every, fruit and vegetable. Like, I really feel like we need some little poster or something, like sit in the background or like just like all these little, like, vegetables and fruits just the little capes on, because it just feels like, I just love the imagery because it's true. I mean, there isn't just that one new one that, "No, this is…" 00:11:33 Jill Harris Oh, it's all marketing bullshit! I mean, it just kills me! It just kills me so much! It's, it's bull-do. It really is. So, all fruits and vegetables, they all have their beautiful thing. Just like every person in the world has their own beautiful thing to offer, so do fruits and vegetables. So look at them in a new light. Say, "Look at that fuzzy little peach, I'm going to try it." And, there's more to life than grapes, people. Grapes, a lot of sugar! So, widen, broaden your horizons as far as fruits and vegetables go. You'll be surprised what you find and you'll like. 00:12:05 Jeff Sarris Yeah, for sure. So, I think that's a good place to wrap. So, for more information– 00:12:10 Jill Harris Did I swear too much? You know, I'll tell you what, I try not to swear, but I get so heated with some of these things, because, you know, the advertising people just want to say all kinds of stuff, and people believe it because they don't know, and everybody does want a miracle cure, so it bothers me. So I get, you know, passionate. 00:12:28 Jeff Sarris Oh, yeah. No, I think that's perfect. It, it comes through, you know, because this is you. You do this. You've done this for 20 years. I mean, you've worked with people. You're trying, you're just trying to help people as best as you can, so, anything you can do to contribute, and yeah. So, I think that's a good spot to wrap up. And for more information, head over to kidneystonediet.com where you can find the free oxalate list, you can find free recipes, you can find the newsletter that Jill sends out every Saturday to a growing number of you. I mean, it's quite a few people reading that newsletter now, it's amazing. And yeah, you can also check out the meal plans that Jill mentioned. You'll find all of that at kidneystonediet.com. So, that'll do it for this week. Thanks again for listening, and we will see you next time. 00:13:13 Jill Harris Thanks, guys. I'm so happy you're here. I love it. Bye!