Today’s show is a bit of a departure from our typical conversation here on the podcast, but it's one we've been wanting to have for quite some time.
Our guest is Sally Norton, and she’s become really well known for talks she’s given on Oxalic Acid and Oxalates — compounds and even crystalline structures frequently found in plant foods, and often present in some of our most cherished wild plants and commercially available superfoods.
We've been aware of oxalates and oxalic acid for a long time, since it's present in plants like sheep and wood sorrel — sour plants that are often one of the first that new foragers learn. But we've also experienced the damage that oxalate crystal macrostructures can do when they are present in plants like jack-in-the-pulpit, which burn the delicate mucous membranes of our mouth and throat if you are daring enough to try ingesting them.
We were surprised when we started hearing from some folks, usually those associated with the ancestral health community, and in particular, the carnivore diet proponents, that oxalates might be a hidden culprit undermining human health in many profound ways.
Now, to be fair, we’ve seen this kind of thing before. Compounds in foods — and by that we mean compounds that have always been in our foods, like cholesterol for example, or saturated fat — being touted as incredibly dangerous for your health in one decade, only to see a reversal, where they are considered healthy in the next.
So, when we first heard about the supposed dangers of oxalates, we were pretty dismissive, since these compounds and associated structures are common and were most certainly part of our diet for a very long time, being present in traditional and wild foods. Add to that the way carnivore diet proponents sometimes cherry-pick data to confirm their preexisting bias against plants — the very same way vegans do about animal foods — let’s just say, we were skeptical.
But, in the spirit of keeping an open mind, and because we knew that oxalates can be damaging and dangerous in strong concentration, we thought we'd give this idea its day, and hear the argument.
We present it here today, not as an endorsement of the idea, but rather to let you hear it too, if you haven’t already. As plant eaters and foragers, we remain skeptical, but we're going to sit with it for a while. If it is in fact true, it would mean, for us at least, a bit of a dietary redesign would be necessary.
Who knows, maybe in a decade it’ll be common household knowledge, with oxalate content being — as Sally hopes — labeled on packaged foods. Or, maybe, like saturated fats — something we’ve always eaten, but by the 80s were being blamed for heart disease and heart attacks, only to reverse course a few decades later — we’ll decide that no, oxalates are not the culprit we thought they were.
Whatever the case, oxalates are real and they probably deserve our attention. Whether we should be cutting them out of our diet to the extent that we can is up to you.
It’s a fun interview, and we learned a lot. It’s certainly got Daniel reassessing the chia seed, cacao nib, and nut butter in his smoothie each day… That said, he drank one this morning. The verdict, we're afraid, is still out on this one!
View full show notes, including links to resources from this episode here: https://www.wild-fed.com/podcast/142