The best foods to prevent kidney stones in 2026

What are the best foods to prevent kidney stones? Well, let's talk about that. 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 and fellow student, Jeff Sarris.

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

So, we've talked about the worst foods for kidney stones, but what are the best? Like what can people really be doing? How can people change and develop their diet and maybe their palette even to prevent kidney stones?

Well, okay. So, the best foods, I want to really hone in on this phrase, "the best foods" for, fill in the blank, the Kidney Stone Diet, Paleo, Carnivore, Ooh Kitty, Lou Ba, whatever diet, Atkins, South Beach, that's how old I am, Keto, whatever. The best foods for fill in the blank, whatever lifestyle you're trying to attain.

That's how we get in trouble in the kidney stone world. It really is because the Mediterranean diet, what are the best foods for the Mediterranean diet? It's going to say nuts.

It's going to say spinach. It's going to say meat. It's going to say all these things, right?

Or what's the best food for the keto diet? It's going to talk about meat, meat, meat, cheese, cheese, cheese, whatever, higher fat foods. Pork rinds, you name it, okay?

Whenever we see the title, "What are the best foods?", this is how people get kidney stones because the best foods in a lot of diets are spinach and nuts, whether it's keto, whether it's Atkins, whether it's low carb, whether it's diabetic, whether it's Mediterranean. And so what people extrapolate from that is, "Ooh, those are the best foods, so more of those foods much be must be better." So human, right?

So we as human beings, if someone says, "Well, you should lower it to about this much," human beings will say, "Well, she said this, so I'm going to go even lower and that'll be better." Or, "She said this is a great food, so I'm going to eat a ton of it, cause that must be that must be better and more of that healthy thing will be more health." That's how people got kidney stones, overeating spinach and almonds.

So, so, Jill, why'd you name this video, "What are the best foods for the Kidney Stone Diet?" Because I'm going to tell you, all food is great for the Kidney Stone Diet. You know what's especially the best foods for the Kidney Stone Diet? Foods that have calcium, food and drinks that have calcium so you can lower your oxalate, fruits and vegetables, best for kidney stones!

Just take away the high oxalate ones, okay? But the best thing to know about the Kidney Stone Diet, if you want to lower your oxalate, you have to get your calcium needs met because that lowers oxalate, okay? Let me explain why, very simple version of this.

When we eat oxalate, if we just eat it by itself, we eat it, yum, it goes to our belly, the belly churns it around, what it doesn't then it goes to the small intestine. And then what happens there is, our nutrients from the small intestine get sucked up into the blood, and the oxalate, if it's not taken in with calcium, can get sucked up back into the blood, and then we can get higher oxalate levels.

Now, if you ate that same meal that had a little bit extra oxalate, but you had a glass of plant-based milk or milk, then you had it with some calcium, what happens in the small intestine now is calcium and oxalate are bound together and it's too big of a molecule to get sucked up into the blood. So then it gets brought down to the colon, and after the colon, it leaves through the stool!

So that oxalate does not get reabsorbed and that's why we want you to eat it at the same time, not four hours later, not two hours before, at the same time. What are we talking about, Jeff?

Yeah, like all– okay, yeah. Oh yeah, just yeah, just looking at what's the– what do we want to do? How do we want to actually look at it, because we all do want best.

We're always looking for the solution, ideally the magic pill, the everything that we're always promised. So, what direction could we take? How can we look at foods maybe a little differently for kidney stone prevention?

I want people to eat balance, balanced meals. While I'll have why I have people's attention, now they're scared, they had a kidney stone, they had a stent, they had pain, they had a surgery, and they have a huge bill, so they are very motivated not to go through that again. So what I get is I get you.

People call me, or they take the course, or whatever they're doing, or they're just going on my website, or listening to YouTube– lots of free stuff, folks, you don't have to pay for a damn thing– but I get to start teaching people how to eat better. So the best foods for kidney stone is– it's it's more likely the best way to eat to prevent kidney stones.

Fruits and vegetables should be half your plate, 1/4 of your plate should be a protein source, and if you want the other 1/4 of your plate a complex carb. Okay, complex carb means you may have a little protein, it will definitely have fiber, it's a healthier carb than just say white rice. Doesn't mean you can't have white rice, especially if you have half a plate of vegetables that are filled with fiber, not a problem.

Course if you're diabetic, you have to pay attention to all your carbs, but you get what I'm saying. I would say nine out of ten people that I talk to are not getting enough vegetables, so many are not getting enough fruit. The minimum for vegetables is 3 cups of vegetables a day, 1 cup of fruit a vegetable a fruit a day, 1 cup of fruit, 3 cups of vegetables a day.

Nobody's getting that, that I talk to. That's the minimum. So, the best foods for kidney stones is everything in moderation, fruits and vegetables, you take away a couple high oxalate foods, you have protein because you need it for your muscles, you need it for your skeleton, you need it for energy, you need it to feel full.

If you're diabetic, you really want to make sure you're getting your protein needs met to stop that sugar rush. You want fiber at every meal, that's why the vegetables are so important. We should be aiming for 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day, slowly over time until your stomach gets used to it.

But everyone is overeating and oversnacking because they don't have fiber and protein with every meal. And when you have those two things, you're not starving all the time, and your blood sugar's not going up and down. So it's really important, all food matters here.

We take away just a few things. The best foods to eat on the Kidney Stone Diet are foods that are lower in added sugar and salt. Because if you're eating tons of that, that means the food you're eating is less nutritious.

That makes perfect sense, right? So, broccoli is not going to have added sugar, cake sure is. So, it's eating within moderation, it's not excluding all the foods you think you can't have anymore, and I do suggest going to kidneystonediet.com and go to the blog so you can start reading, and it's about eating within portion size.

So, all the foods on the Kidney Stone Diet, they should it the food on the Kidney Stone Diet should be get enough protein every day, best. Get fruits and vegetables every day, best. Get your calcium needs met every day, that's the best.

And make sure you get enough calcium every day, because you need that to lower oxalate and you need that for your bone health. So that's super important, too. So the best foods for kidney stone prevention are healthy, portion size as in moderation, and you're paying attention to the goals because those specific goals are going to lower your kidney stone risk, and the goals are found at kidneystonediet.com.

So, the best foods are really fruits and vegetables, get enough protein, it could be vegan, vegetarian protein, or it could be meat protein, it doesn't matter, but everything in moderation. There's really no best foods for the Kidney Stone Diet, but there are food groups that you're eliminating and everybody who's saying that, you know, people are so worried about the oxalate portion of this, that they start going to carnivore diet, because there's people on the internet that say carnivore diet carnivore diet is the best for kidney stone prevention.

And I have just as much of carnivore diet people coming to me with new kidney stones than I do with plant eating people. So please heed my warning with that. I'm seeing it more and more because of what's going on the internet.

Carnivore diet will, and it's well documented, increase kidney stones in people that are prone to kidney stones. I have to get that in there, because it's really becoming very prevalent. And again, all these extreme diets, they don't work long-term for most people and they certainly can cause an increase risk of kidney stones, so know who you're getting your information from, people.

Everything in moderation, the least sexiest thing in the world. If you have something that went out of your goals for a day, just get right back on track, no problem, okay? So, I would say fruits and vegetables, getting all your protein needs met, getting your calcium needs met, that's the best thing to prevent kidney stones.

Getting enough water, too, Jeff!

And if you want to know exactly what you can eat, all the opportunity of what you can eat: breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, we have Kidney Stone Diet meal plans at kidneystonediet.com where seven days a week, you get four recipes of inspiration of exactly what you can eat. Not exactly what you should eat, but to show the diversity of everything that is still available while preventing kidney stones.

So I think with that, we will wrap and we will see you next week.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.