Can we eat brown rice with kidney stones?

The following is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical advice. Always consult your doctor before starting any treatment.

Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet podcast, the show about reducing your kidney stone risk and living your best life. I'm your host, the fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse.

We're back at it today. We're recording this on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, so maybe a little bit of a food hangover for me. I don't know about you, but–

I have to say, I don't overeat on Thanksgiving. I'm somebody, and everyone's like, "I'm shutting it off right now, this stupid show. Good for you, girl, you didn't overeat.

Glad you didn't." I don't, because I can't stand feeling ridiculously full. I just hate it. So I just hate that feeling, and it ruins my whole night, so I'm just like– and with all my stomach issues, truly what I ate, I had some turkey.

What was my side? And a salad. I didn't eat stuffing, I didn't– I just don't eat any– that's just real simple.

And there was pies, and this and that, and I did taste a little bit, but I didn't even have a slice or anything. And so I understand I'm not making any new friends by divulging that information. But, you know, when you have a lot of bowel issues, and all my bowel friends out there, they'll understand.

You just don't want to be– you don't want to be sick, so you're just– it really motivates you to stay compliant and eat normal portions of things, and you know what I mean? So that's why, too. But I have to say, I've never been a fan of overeating cause I don't like feeling full, so, yeah, there's that.

Yeah, I have to admit that is me. I definitely engorge a little bit. Like, and it's so funny because it was just my parents and Amara, so just the four of us, and they all had one plate, they were done, and I'm like going back for my third, I'm like, "Oh god."

But, but see, I always tell patients, and I always tell people I work with, it's okay. So, I spent a lot of time on social media and email– emailing the last several days, because people are– they just get very, and in the group calls, they get very anxious right before Thanksgiving. "I'm just going to go, I'm not going to eat anything, you know, because, Jill, I–" and this is what people say, "I'm really anxious about the oxalate in my food, and I also know I'm going over my aunt's house and she– everything has salt and sugar, and I'm petrified, and I'm not being dramatic, I'm telling you what people say." And I tell everybody, it's just one meal.

I hope you have Aunt Irene's pumpkin pie. You get it once a year. Please, enjoy that.

Nobody makes a kidney stone on Thanksgiving evening. Nobody does that, and your stones, if you currently have them, they're not going to get bigger. I so promise you.

Alls I ask people to do is get right back on track, and what people do is they indulge over Thanksgiving and then they just sail through the whole holiday season overeating, cuz they're like, "Screw it now! I already did this for Thanksgiving and Christmas is right around the corner, or Hanukkah's coming up." It's like, the hell with it, I'm just going to eat what I want.

January 1st, I'll go on my diet. I mean, you can set your damn clock to it, people. You can set your clock to it.

Everyone's going to go on their diet January 1st. Research shows the time between– is that Finn? Did you hear him?

I did.

He's already like, "I'm bored. We got hours of recording." Halloween to January 1st is when most people gain their annual weight. The problem is, here's what I hear, "Jill, I– ever since I turned 60, I can't lose weight." Well, that's because you never lost the weight from January, from last year.

And now it's another December, and you gained more weight, more weight, more weight, and you get so overwhelmed with the weight gain that you just give up, right? And you just chalk it up to old age. "I'm just old now, I gain weight." No, you don't.

So, so these 60 days between Halloween and New Year's Day are not throwaway days. There's six days that are holidays, a few more if you're celebrating Hanukkah, but there's no need to throw away all these days. Have a good time those six days, and you don't have to, by the way, if you don't want to, like me.

But if you want to, have a good time. Enjoy the special holiday fare. It's your culture, it's your tradition, it's really important.

Food is supposed to also be enjoyable, because the more we deprive ourselves, the more we want that stuff! Come on! What am I, a genius?

That would be no. So, enjoy yourself. It's Friday after Thanksgiving, like Jeff said, get back to work!

Then you don't feel bad, and the reason I say that is because you're your confidence will go right back up instead of beating yourself up and then making yourself feel better with leftover turkey, stuffing, and all the things and the pie. Get right back to work. Give the leftovers away to all the people that come.

Right, Jeff? I mean, that's all we got to do.

Yeah, cuz we're looking at long term. We're not worried about short term as much. This is long term habits rather than short term decisions.

That's right. That's right. Yes.

So, what do you say we dive into this week's question? It's a listener question and it's around, can we eat brown rice with kidney stones?

Okay.

Hi, this is Julie, and I'm looking at a package of the Arrowhead Mills, puffed rice cereal, and it's the brown rice cereal. And I was just curious as to the oxalate content of that. I can no longer find just the plain white rice that's puffed, cuz I know that would be definitely lower in oxalates.

So whenever you get a chance, I would like to find out that information on how much is in the puffed brown rice cereal. Thank you.

Puffed– So, Harvard– I use the Harvard list. People in the kidney stone world tend to use the Harvard list. It's been around forever.

And because of that, they haven't studied a lot of the newer foods. I don't know. I think the food industry knows that we customers think brown rice is, you know, healthier than white rice, so now they're making their puffed items like rice cakes and stuff with brown rice, and so they will be higher in oxalate.

Julie's asking, how much higher? I don't know, girl. But this is how I would figure it out if I were you.

And if you went in my cupboard right now, you would see rice cakes that are made with brown rice. Now, so what I do is I look as soon as I started hearing the question, I pulled up the oxalate list at kidneystonediet.com. You can find the oxalate list.

You can type in a food and it will come right up. So go to kidneystonediet.com to find your oxalate list. So brown rice flour, if I type in rice on the search the oxalate list at kidneystonediet.com, I put rice in the hoozie, in the search bar, and so it tells me brown rice flour for one cup is 65 mg of oxalate.

So that's high. Most of us get 100 mg of oxalate a day unless a diet– a doctor has told you otherwise. We go with 100.

And so if you're having a cup of brown rice, there's 65 bucks coming out of your bank account. That's brown rice flour, excuse me. If you're just having brown rice, 24 mg for a cup, okay?

So people– you could still have brown rice if you want it. It does have a little bit more fiber than white rice, so, you know, it's overall a little bit healthier. White rice, for one cup has 4 mg of oxalate.

It also, the Harvard list did study puffed rice. It says one cup, 2 mg. Most likely, I'm going to think that's white puffed rice.

That's what I'm going to assume cuz that's back in the 80s, a long time ago. So how much– Julie's like, "Jill, just get to the question. I don't–" Hold on, Julie.

Brown– So how much is your puffed rice made with brown flour? It's going to be higher. How much higher?

If you want that puffed rice cereal, I would have it. I just would. Because brown rice cooked is 24 mg for a cup, so watch your portion size on these things.

I have those rice cakes, and I'll put whatever I want on it, you know. Sometimes I make a turkey sandwich out of it. Whatever.

Whatever I'm doing with those rice cakes. Sometimes I put Greek yogurt on it. I know they're higher, but I'm not eating 10 rice cakes.

I'm having one rice cake and I'm moving the hell on, even if I am making a sandwich out of it, cuz again, I love crunch. That's what I'm after. So, if you want that cereal, Julie, I would certainly have it.

If we're going to estimate, sometimes I just make it up and I always estimate on the higher side. Maybe that's like, I don't know, 10 to 15 mg of oxalate. I would think that's on the higher side.

Okay? Cuz those puffs rice are going to be a little bit bigger than just brown rice cooked, you know. It's going to be puffed, so it's bigger.

It's going to take up more room. So I would estimate around 15 mg. I think that would be on the higher side.

And if you're having it with milk or a plant milk that has calcium in it, I mean, you know, perfect, right? Cuz or maybe you're going to sprinkle it on yogurt, maybe you're a crunchy gal like me. Perfect, okay?

So, there's many different ways to skin a cat to lower the oxalate. I'm not worried about it. Have that as a portion size, know that you're eating a little bit higher oxalate, maybe 15 mg tops, but you're pairing it with calcium.

I'm not worried about it. I hope that makes sense. What do you think, Jeff?

Yeah, I mean I think that's a good estimate, too, cuz just looking at the white rice cooked versus puffed, being four to two, it would make sense that 24 mg down to that like 10 to 15 is a good guesstimate. But yeah, like nothing is– we're not precise here because everything is always going to be a little in flux. Like maybe this rice has a little more, maybe this rice has a little less, but that's why it's a framework rather than a specific, really tight calculation of every meal.

Yeah, I like that you're saying it is a framework. I find that students and patients, they really want to get to the nitty-gritty about oxalate. And honestly, when you're now– since most– any– nobody got their calcium beforehand.

Now that people are getting their calcium needs met, oxalate just really falls to the wayside. Of course I don't want you eating spinach every day and almonds again, but I'm just telling you, the combination of taking a couple of really high foods away that are high in oxalate, watching your portion sizes on everything you eat, as we should be anyway, portion not perfection, right?

And getting your calcium needs met, people don't have oxalate problems anymore unless they suffer from malabsorption issues. So please, enjoy. Julie, have that if you're having that for breakfast.

It's absolutely fine. Also another way to do it, if it does make you nervous, have it three days a week instead of seven days a week for breakfast, right? So, mix up your foods, too, people.

Don't eat the same breakfast every day. We have a whole meal plan that you can get at kidneystonediet.com. I don't know, there's hundreds of recipes in that thing that gives you ideas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Sorry, you hear a buzzer cuz people are coming in the apartment. They're obviously coming back from Thanksgiving vacation.

Yeah. But, yeah, I mean that is the framework that we have for Kidney Stone Diet meal plans is to showcase how much you can eat and how you're able to not– you don't have to give up as many things, but you can find all of that at kidneystonediet.com, along with all the free resources, the blog, the weekly email newsletter, the Kidney Stone Diet Prevention Group, just absolutely everything, and the course.

Deep dive into what we talk about here where you're able to go on a self-guided journey through really learning everything you need to know about reducing your kidney stone risk.

And also, you know, I– probably by the time this airs, we're going to have just the group calls. Now, there's a community of people that want to lose weight, they want the accountability, and you can sign up for the– just the group calls. They're no longer attached to the Kidney Stone Prevention Course, so it's a separate service, and it's– you're going to love it.

It's a family of support that's going to help you get through the goals of the Kidney Stone Diet. You can certainly talk about oxalate there. Bring all your questions in for me.

I lead the group, but we are a family there. We all talk about very personal things, and it's a wonderful support group if you're somebody who really wants to understand the Kidney Stone Diet and keep compliant with it long-term. Because these changes, folks, take a minute.

Don't let the diet industry think this is change– you're changing this overnight. It takes a few months, 6 months– I always tell people 6 months to a year to really create a lifestyle, is what I see in my experience. So, yeah, the group calls with Jill are pretty freaking amazing.

Yeah, so you can again find all of that at kidneystonediet.com, and thank you, Julie, again for your question. The number if you have a question is 773-789-8763 or you can send a voice memo to [email protected]. So, thanks again for everyone who's tuned in, who's liked, subscribed, with a little thumbs up, and for sharing these episodes.

It really means a lot. We want to reach as many people as we can, so we appreciate each and every one of you. And I think with that, we will wrap for this week.

Thanks, Julie. See you all next time.