Spinach, I think is, I mean, it's right up there, the one number one or number two. I think it's number one, public works are pretty high, too, but spinach is the number one highest oxalate food, hundreds. So, one cup of spinach can be nearly 700 mg of oxalate.
And oxalate is a compound that we find in kidney stone formers. Our a lot of us can eat a lot of plants. A vegan may eat a lot of plants.
Spinach is usually a staple in their diet, and some plants have so much oxalate, like spinach. The body also makes oxalate, so it's a byproduct of general metabolism. So, even if you just never ate a plant food again, your body You'll still have some oxalate in your system.
But, there is nothing more frustrating than somebody who has changed their diet, because maybe a great example is they got diabetes, and now they're scared, and they've got to eat more plant foods, less carbs, and they started eating spinach, spinach smoothies, and spinach salads, lots of spinach. And 6 months later, they get a pain in their back in the middle of the night.
They're like, "Honey, we got to go to the." And the CT shows it's a kidney stone. Next thing you know, you're going to the urologist. And that spinach was definitely a factor in your new calcium oxalate stone.
This is so common. This is what I hear every day. "Jill, my god, I changed my whole diet.
I lost 50 pounds. I incorporated spinach. I never ate spinach, but, you know, I was told to eat some spinach and some healthy things like almonds and I really with I had a spinach smoothie every day." Folks, here's the thing about spinach.
If you have one cup of spinach, that is as big as my eyeball. So, I mean, it just sautés down to nothing. You'll put a whole bunch of spinach in a pan, and when you open the cover, you steaming spinach, there's like, "Where how am I going to eat?
There's no food." So, nobody ever makes one cup of spinach. It's several cups of spinach. So, you're talking 3,000 mg of oxalate every time you have something with spinach.
It's a lot! And you do that every day because these same patients, every single day, Jill, every single day, because when we're told to eat something healthy, we tend to bring it in every day. Most of us, and we should be, but most of us are not eating tons of different things every day.
We get in our routine. We have the same oatmeal every day for breakfast with two blueberries. We have our spinach with our ranch dressing, whatever you're doing.
And then we have dinner, we have meat, potato. That's what we do. It's the same thing, a little variation every day, but basically the same thing.
And almonds in between for snacks! This is what I'm listening to all day. I'm not making it up.
So, I can't tell you how frustrated you are when you call and you tell me, "I thought I was doing something good for myself, and here I gave myself a stone." The first thing I say to those patients, which is I probably say seven out of 10 of my patients tell me this story, the first thing I say to those patients is, " no, no.
You did not do this to yourself. You did not know. You changed your You changed your whole life.
You lost 52 lb. Don't you dare get mad at yourself for this. Nobody told you." I wish when people, other healthcare people, will would tell people to when they're changing their diet, "You know, everything in moderation, use a variety of foods," but that spinach and almonds in the dietitian's office, that's just such a go-to all the time.
And I have given I have been asked to guest speak at conferences and for dietitians and I'll say, "Hey! Listen! When you're giving the advice for spinach and almonds, in moderation, right?
A wide variety of these foods." Nothing against dietitians. God bless them. We need them, obviously, right?
But I mean, any healthcare professional, nurse, doctor, dietitian, rheumatologist, we've got to be careful in what we say because patients take that to heart and they take our words and all the things they do with it that I hear every day. It's like that's I know the doctor didn't intend that, but Billy took it upon himself to eat 17 cups of spinach.
This is what people do. So, it's very frustrating when you change your diet to something that's healthier. You get the benefit whether it's lowering your blood sugar, lowering weight, lowering your blood pressure, whatever it is, but you got this damn kidney stone now.
It's like, "Damned if I do, damned if I don't." That's a phrase I hear daily, you know? And so I understand it. When you're doing something healthy for yourself and get sick anyway, it's the worst feeling in the world.
So, I understand it. So, I guess spinach is something really you can't You just can't eat it anymore. It's just not worth it either, because there's thousands of milligrams in whatever you're going to have.
Now, that being said, here's what I hear. "Jill, I went out to eat. I saw a spinach lettuce I saw a piece of spinach in my salad.
Jill, I called the waiter. I called the manager. I called the maitre d'.
Get this plate off my table," they said. Now, if you accidentally eat a piece of spinach, you're not making a stone, folks, okay? But I do ask all of you stone formers and those of you who may be watching, you may be saying, "I ain't made no stone, yet." Okay?
So, especially if you have a stone history in your family. But I'll tell you this: I've had a lot of patients that got kidney stones because of the oxalate in spinach and they don't have a family history of stones. So, what I'm telling you is if you stumbled upon this video and you're like, " I ain't a stone former.
Shut up." I don't want you to be either, so slow your roll on the amount of spinach you're having. Once a week? Go ahead.
Get your calcium needs met because not one of these patients, and a lot of these patients, they were eating spinach, especially my beautiful vegans, they were eating spinach to get calcium, but there's so much oxalate in that spinach that it overrides the amount of calcium you're getting in it, so.
Yes. Yes, sir. So, you're not going to get the calcium you need through all that spinach because the oxalate's taking that calcium, not letting your body use it.
So, spinach for kidney stone formers, it is removed. Spinach for everyday people that may be looking at this video, slow your roll on how much you're eating, please. Get your calcium needs met.
KidneyStoneDiet.com. Everybody should be getting calcium needs met because you have a skeleton you need to feed. The older we get, especially women because we lose our estrogen, we're at bone risk.
And I don't know about you guys, but I really want to be able to get out of my chair in 10 more years. So, the strength that we need for our bones, so important. So, spinach off the table for kidney stone formers.
That's the Jeff And I hate to do it because it's a really healthy thing. "But kale! Jill, kale is not as good!" I promise you, folks, get the get the baby kale.
It's a lot softer because there is kale that's really crunchy and ribs. It's there's a lot of ribs in it, so it's not as flexible as spinach. Look for baby kale in your grocer and sauté that down.
That's very low in oxalate. And we need to do another video on kale, too, Jeff, because a lot of people think that's high and it's not. They can have kale, but again, all foods within moderation.
