Paul Saladino· MD
sometimes very processed things are much lower in oxalate like you know potato starch has like no oxalate but potatoes are quite high and oxalate kind of equivalent to beets yes beets are another food so i had this thought as i was refreshing my memory on oxalates for this podcast when i go into a whole foods in the united states there's like this sense of calm right it's this nice store and and i think that as humans who are very far removed from our wilderness ancestors from the hadza for instance or any hunger gatherer tribe you know it's been for most of us it's been tens of thousands of years since we were since our ancestors were in a forest uh picking up plants and choosing whether to eat this leaf or that fruit or go hunt this animal or that mushroom or this mushroom and so i think that if we think back to that level of human existence or that time in human existence it's not crazy to imagine that there are many plants that are toxic that are frankly toxic and will kill you if you eat them things like sorrel if you eat too much sorrel you will die because of oxalate toxicity so hunter-gatherer tribes people that live in the wilderness know this and they don't overeat these foods but when we walk into whole foods we sort of imagine that like everything in there is good for us right it's all packaged and it says it's an antioxidant and they have the orac rating for for kale and i mean kale is hailed as a panacea and chard is just like it's it's really it's wonderful cousin and you know the more greens you eat the better so you're walking into whole foods and what what strikes me