# The TRUTH about protein powder and your kidney stones Source: https://kidneystonediet.com/preview/ep/the-truth-about-protein-powder-and-your-kidney-stones/ Published: 2026-03-03 --- [Embedded content](https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/7H95jCWtwlScbsIlMJ7qea) [![Kidney Stone Diet Podcast](https://kidneystonediet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Kidney-Stone-Diet-Podcast-1-1024x1024.jpg)](https://kidneystonediet.com/preview/podcast/) [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-truth-about-protein-powder-and-your-kidney-stones/id1528474326?i=1000752893575&uo=4)[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/7H95jCWtwlScbsIlMJ7qea)[Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/0868148d-adfd-411d-b3f2-71a0ad1461ec) March 3, 2026 --- ![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 conversation, Jeff Sarris and Jill Harris discuss the implications of protein powders for kidney stone formers, exploring both the benefits and potential risks associated with their use. They delve into the importance of understanding oxalate levels in protein powders, the role of artificial sweeteners, and the necessity of maintaining a balanced diet. Jill emphasizes the need for dietary flexibility and the importance of whole foods while also providing insights into healthy protein options and meal replacements. [https://kidneystonediet.com/pros-and-cons-of-protein-powders/](https://kidneystonediet.com/pros-and-cons-of-protein-powders/) **Takeaways** - Protein powders can be beneficial but have risks. - High oxalate levels in some protein powders can cause issues. - Artificial sweeteners can be used in moderation. - Dietary flexibility is key for long-term success. - Collagen protein can convert to oxalate, avoid it if prone to stones. - Protein shakes should not replace real meals. - Focus on whole foods for better nutrition. - Monitor sodium levels in protein powders. - Healthy protein options exist for kidney stone formers. - Diverse recipes can help maintain a balanced diet. \ 00:00 The Truth About Protein Powders\ 00:18 Pros and Cons of Protein Powders\ 05:10 Artificial Sweeteners and Kidney Stones\ 09:23 Dietary Flexibility and Lifestyle Changes\ 12:19 Collagen and Meal Replacements\ 14:12 Healthy Protein Options and Conclusion **When you’re ready, here’s how I can help**\ Since 1998, I’ve helped thousands of patients prevent kidney stones. With my Kidney Stone Diet [**All-Access Pass**](https://kidneystonediet.com/all-access/), you get access to every prevention tool I’ve ever created: - Weekly **Kidney Stone Diet Meal Plans** - ​4 meals per day, 7 days per week - Weekly **Kidney Stone Prevention Group Consultations** - 3 video calls per week with me and the Kidney Stone Diet community - All of my **Kidney Stone Diet Ebooks** - *Low Oxalate Protein Bars, Kidney Stone Safe Smoothies, Kidney Stone Safe Snacks & Desserts, and the Low Oxalate Cookbook* - Plus, **20% Off Private Consultations** And, as a BONUS, you’ll get my flagship **Kidney Stone Prevention Course** (normally $249) absolutely free! [**LEARN MORE!**](https://kidneystonediet.com/all-access/) \ **WHO IS JILL HARRIS? _**\ Since 1998, Jill Harris has been the #1 kidney stone prevention nurse helping patients prevent kidney stones. Drawing from her work with world-renowned University of Chicago nephrologist, Dr. Fred Coe, and the thousands of patients she’s worked with directly, she created the [Kidney Stone Diet®](https://kidneystonediet.com/). With a simple, self-guided online video course, meal plans, cookbooks, group consultations, and private consultations, Kidney Stone Diet® is Jill’s effort to help as many patients as possible prevent kidney stones for good. ## Chapters - 00:00:00 Protein Powder and Kidney Stone Risk - 00:01:23 Oxalate and Sodium in Protein Powders - 00:06:20 Artificial Sweeteners in Protein Drinks - 00:10:06 Sustainable Diet Changes and Sugar Reduction - 00:18:22 Meal Plans and Resources for Stone Prevention ## Transcript ### Protein Powder and Kidney Stone Risk 00:00:00 Jeff Sarris What's the truth about protein powders and kidney stones? 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. 00:00:20 Jill Harris And I'm Jill Harris, your kidney stone prevention nurse and Mama Fin, the mini Bernedoodle. Just thought I would ask, Jill. I just wanted to, he's right here with me, so. He's like, "What about me?" 00:00:34 Jeff Sarris Yeah, just the top of his head just in frame. So, if you if you don't already watch on YouTube, you should. But, anyway, today, we're talking about protein powder. And this is this is a touchy subject because protein powder is very beneficial in many ways to try to get your protein needs met. It's a almost a shortcut, say. But, what are the implications for kidney stone formers? 00:00:59 Jill Harris There's pros and cons. Now, I have a whole protein bar recipe book, so I do use protein powder. I do. Not every day, because I do try to get my protein from, you know, meat, natural sources, beans, lentils, whatever. 00:01:20 Jeff Sarris And you can find that You can find that recipe book at kidneystonediet.com in the book section. ### Oxalate and Sodium in Protein Powders 00:01:23 Jill Harris Oh, it's popular. Yeah, because protein, I know this isn't about protein bars, but and I've said often that book almost killed me, those recipes, because it is hard to get good protein bars without almonds, without salt, without added sugar. So, that took me months to make, but I'm very proud of it, and there's a lot of delicious things. And also, by the way, protein bars are like three bucks a bar. It's like they're expensive. Anyway, now, protein. So, there are pros and cons. You can, before anybody's like, "I don't want I got to click off. What are you going to say, old lady?" You can use protein. There's just some things you must watch out for that cause some kidney stones in some of you. So, number one, some of these protein powders are higher in oxalate. A lot of you like chocolate, and so cocoa and cocoa was used, cocoa powder was used to make your chocolate protein powders. Get rid of the chocolate, folks, use vanilla. I'm lucky, I'm a vanilla kind of girl. So, wasn't a problem for me. And a lot of plant-based protein powders would use spinach, beetroot, and other high-oxalate ingredients. Now, you may say, "Well, what about what about pea protein, Jill? Can I have that?" Yes, you can have that. So, anything as far as vegan or vegetarian plant ones, just make sure there's not high-oxalate ingredients on there. And I have a blog post with which Jeff is going to put in the show notes so you can just click and see what I'm talking about, too. And also, it has some links to the protein powders that I use. So, first of all, some of them are high in oxalate. Ditch the ones that are. Chocolate flavored protein drinks are definitely going to be higher in oxalate, so use other flavors. There's a lot of sodium in protein powders, a lot, especially since and some of them have higher added sugar, but a lot of them, because marketers know, food manufacturers know a lot of people pay attention to added sugar, they ditch that, put artificial sugars in, but loaded it with sodium. So, sodium is very high in these products. You could say, "But I love my protein powder, and I ain't giving it up, Jill." That's okay, you don't have to give it up. You have to work it in. So, I'm not about taking away your favorite foods unless they're really a problem for increasing your stone risk. And so, when I say though, "I'm not taking away," I'm just saying also be cautious and fit it in. If your protein If your scoop of protein powder has 300 milligrams of sodium, you're going to have to pay attention to everything else you're eating that day to fit that in because the goal for sodium is 1,500, okay? So, work it in. So, some of those powders have more salt than a bag of chips. So, look at them. That's not something you're used to looking at, so start looking at it. It's very easy to overdo products that have a lot of protein. Here's a great example and for those of you who aren't on YouTube, you're not going to be able to see this, but I'm going to go get this product cuz I actually use it. It is, and you're going to see that this is half used. Well, you can't see that, but you'll see that it's open. This product is something I get auto shipped every month to me. I get two cases of it. It's Core Power Fairlife Milk Shake. Now, the people will say, and for those of you who don't do dairy, just don't listen for a second. This is dairy, it's lactose free, it's 26 grams of protein. And you could say, "Well, that's great, Jill, and it's only 170 calories. That's gorgeous, wonderful, okay." But you got to turn this around, Buster Brown. It has almost 700 milligrams of calcium in this bottle. Most of you will drink this bottle as one serving, especially since the serving size says one bottle. But that's too much calcium at one time, and we don't want excess spilling into your urine. The body, you know, doesn't absorb everything we give it, and so excess winds up in the in the urine in the kidney, and that can lead to too much calcium. So, I split this. I had some with my lunch, and I'm going to have the rest for dinner. And that's going to get me almost 700 milligrams of my calcium needs met, but split up, okay? And then for me, I have a cup of kefir later on in the evening at some point, too, and there's 400 milligrams of calcium and I'm done. So, ### Artificial Sweeteners in Protein Drinks 00:06:20 Jeff Sarris I want to actually jump in real quick. So, with that, I know Fairlife actually has some artificial sweeteners. I know that's a topic for another video, but just real quick, is that something that kidney stone formers should be worried about? 00:06:36 Jill Harris No. Now, if you Thank you. If you have GI problems, look at like I can handle I don't have I don't really have a problem with sweeteners, I really don't. This one has stevia leaf, that's why I can use it. There's some of the sweeteners, this also has monk fruit. There's there's some sweeteners I do not do well with, and everybody, if you talk to anybody, some people will say, "I can have any sweetener." Other people will say, "I can't do this one, this one. I can't do stevia." So, everyone has different guts, and you've got to deal with that. "Well, Jill, the research says we should we're going to die from a sweetener." Portion, portion, portion. Read those studies. Make sure you know how to read a study and read what it says. They gave patients like so much more than somebody's eating per day. So, my feeling on artificial sweeteners, use the ones that your gut can tolerate. If your gut cannot tolerate any, then use a little bit of sugar. Don't use these products, then. Don't use them. But I don't have a problem with artificial sweeteners if you use them if you don't over use them, right? That's what always this comes down to and that's what we're known for here on this channel is portion, not perfection. So, and people will say, "Well, it's artificial, Jill. I'm very surprised that you would say it's okay to have that within portion size." You got to realize what I'm dealing with every day. 400, 300, 375 pound people, if they're going to lower weight and they're going to start doing that by using artificial sweeteners instead of overdoing all the sugar they're eating, let's start there. Some people are really sick, really sick with all kinds of things dealing with obesity that's calling causing all these issues. And so, we've got to sometimes deal with the lesser of all evils. Artificial sweeteners is not going to kill anybody, and I don't mind people using them to lessen calories when they're dealing with morbidly obese a morbid obese state. Does that make sense, too? One of the reasons people are or diabetics and kidney stones and CKD, chronic kidney disease, all these metabolic issues is because they're obese. And so, we've got to take care of the weight and then we can start fine tuning. So, I use I'd say I probably use, I don't know, not even a half a packet of artificial sweetener a day in all my thing cuz most of my foods I'm making and so I'll use things like this and it has a little bit. I don't I'm not concerned about it. Be concerned about your overall diet, folks, not these little artificial sweeteners if you're doing them within portion size. Use them here and there. Okay. 00:09:31 Jeff Sarris Yeah, that's the thing. It's holistically, holistically we're trying to shift over to specifically here prevent kidney stones. And holistically what that means is there's what? Seven goals, seven goals to meet. 00:09:45 Jill Harris Six. 00:09:45 Jeff Sarris Simple, not easy. Or six goals. 00:09:46 Jill Harris Six goals, yeah.. 00:09:47 Jeff Sarris Yeah, simple, not easy to meet the six goals, but simple nonetheless. And as soon as we can sort of showcase and convey how simple the guidelines are, it shows how diverse our diets can still be and successfully prevent stones. ### Sustainable Diet Changes and Sugar Reduction 00:10:06 Jill Harris 100% and successfully stay in your weight range and everything else. And again, with the artificial sweeteners, which, yes, can be a whole video by itself, is, you know, what's interesting about it is sometimes we do here's what I hear every day. "Jill, I'm just a I'm a I'm a sugar addict all day long." Oh, my god, I hear that all day long. And so, I know that the patient I'm talking to is not going to succeed with the diet, lifestyle I'm asking them to switch to if I don't give them some options. So, here's the problem with the diet world. I know we digress for a second, but it's really important. If I could talk about this all day, I would, and I do on other social media outlets, but we've got to recognize that there's no clean and dirty, all this crappy way we think about food. We want people to eat whole foods most of the time, and a little bit of the time we're going to have this and that. But we're looking at an overall picture of health. If I ask somebody who's telling me that they're a sugar addict, not to not only lower their sugar, added sugar to 25 grams if it's a woman, but also tell them they can't use artificial sweeteners, they're never going to succeed. They won't. And so, I'd rather say, "Sure, you can have an artificial sweetener, and then we'll get you off those or to a reasonable amount, eventually." But right now, we're trying to change a lifestyle that is already it requires change, and we human beings don't like change. So, again, there will always be people in the comments that say, "Jill, I'm unfollowing you. You said it's okay to have stevia." Enjoy your life. That's okay if you don't want to follow me. There's the reason our country is so overweight, which leads to all these metabolic conditions, is because the diet industry is telling them, "Never have this, never have this, never have this." It's unattainable goals, which you can get to for a few months, and then month four you're like, "The hell with this, I'm out." It's not something that most people can do for the rest of their life. So, when you work with me, we talk about changes that work for you. And if that includes a diet soda or stevia or whatever you use as a sweetener to get you where you need to be, that's happening. That's happening because I have to be able to look at a person and see everyone I talk to is different. So, where are we going? How are we going to get there? It's going to be different for Jeff than it is for me, and I've got to be flexible. So, I'll tell patients, "You give me that, I'll give you this. You give me that, and I'll give you one soda a week if that's what's going to make it or break it for you, keep it in." Okay? So, it's not just black and white where a lot of folks say that it is, it's not. And this is why diets are very hard to do and are unattainable and people gain and lose weight a million times over their adult life. Okay, protein powder, another thing. Collagen-based protein powders, I know, ladies, they just They just really got upset when I said that, cuz everyone's using collagen for skin and hair and nails. Too much collagen in general converts to oxalate in the body. You should not be using collagen if you have kidney stones, sorry. But that's true. It's it's an amino acid in collagen called hydroxyproline, and that amino acid can convert over to oxalate, and it's a it's a real thing for kidney stone formers. So, there's that. Here's the other thing I have about protein shakes, is people use it as a meal replacement. Now, I have a smoothie book and there are definitely protein shakes in there, and that's also a popular seller. But I will say my meal replacement smoothie will be 3-400 calories, cuz that's how much a meal should be, not 140. Why? Because at some point you're going to say, "Oh, my god, I'm starving," and you're going to raid the kitchen. You can't Remember Oprah and the wagon with the, you know, 25 lb of fats, SlimFast, mini SlimFast shakes? She gained it all back. You can't live on a SlimFast shake for the rest of your life and not want to eat your furniture. There's no way. We got to be realistic. We got to eat foods that fill us up for a few hours, not for 20 minutes. So, stop using protein drinks as a daily meal replacement. Sometimes, you're running, you got to, I get it. Daily as a weight loss tool, absolutely not. You will rebound off that, okay? So, please, heed my warning with that. Again, if you've talked to the thousands, tens of thousands of people I've talked to, I'm not telling you this is my opinion. I'm telling you what I've watched happen to human beings over three decades, so that's where my thoughts come from. Okay, so here's the pros. Finally, old lady, give me something good. Tell me something good. Okay, the pros, if you do it right. They can help you meet your daily protein goals. Some of you may have different medical conditions, sometimes maybe you have There's things that you could be having where you're not meeting your caloric intake, protein intake. That is where maybe you should put a little bit of protein every day extra. Use it here and there. Use it a few times a week. I don't have a problem with that. As long as the ingredients are okay, you're not overdoing your salt every day, I really don't have a problem with it. But before you go down that route, you know, first of all, make sure the protein shakes you're eating are healthy. They have fruit in them, they have a calcium source in it, whether it's a plant milk, not almond or cashew milk, but a plant milk that has some good calcium in it and it has, you know, you could put some sunflower seeds, peanut butter in there, whatever you want, as long as you're noticing the oxalate, getting calcium in there, and it's healthy stuff. Put some kale in there, put some berries in there. Make it a healthy smoothie, not just protein and milk, okay? So, you're getting other nutrients in there. So, there's that. The pros about them, they're convenient. So, there are going to be days where you don't get all your needs met. Have something. You can grab a bar, make your own from my e-book, but also, go ahead, grab a bar, grab a smoothie when you're out at the gym, if you're running now back to the office. It's it's going to happen sometimes, that's not a problem. On this blog, I give you kidney stone safe options, things that I use. I have a very one of my favorite things that I made a lot of my protein bar bars out of is a pumpkin a pumpkin protein powder. No salt, no sugar, just ground pumpkin seeds, and it has a really great amount of iron because pumpkin seeds do. If you're somebody who's low in iron, that's wonderful for you, and I use that all the time in my baking. I'll sub out some of the flour, like maybe I need a cup of flour, I'll put 1/4 pumpkin seed protein powder and 3/4 flour, my flour is always oat flour. But, so I'll do that to bump up some of the protein in my baking. And that's it. That's it. So, there are kidney stone safe options. The article will take you to where to go to find them, and protein powders, protein bars, you they can absolutely be part of your diet. But don't eat them all the time simply because when you're eating them all the time, you're taking real food for the most part out of your diet and you'll be fuller and you'll have more nutrient-dense stuff in your body if you're eating the food itself instead of protein shakes and stuff. But you can absolutely use them, just pay attention to the higher oxalate things and the salt level in them and any added sugar, of course, and collagen. So, read that article, you'll see. ### Meal Plans and Resources for Stone Prevention 00:18:22 Jeff Sarris Yeah, and if you're looking for more things to eat, there's always the Kidney Stone Diet meal plans, where every day of the week Jill gives you four new recipes for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner to showcase just how diverse your diet can be and just to make things a little bit simpler for you. But you can find that, all the free resources, the free weekly email, everything at kidneystonediet.com. And I think with that, we'll wrap. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next week. 00:18:49 Jill Harris Bye, everybody.