Apr 18, 2019
Sally Norton has a degree in
nutrition from Cornell University and a Masters of Public Health
from the UNiversity of North Carolina. She managed a five-year, National Institute of
Health-funded program at the UNC Medical School. She’s a nutrition
consultant, speaker, and an all around oxalate expert.
This is a sad story with a happy
ending. Sally’s life goal from age 5 was to study nutrition and
help people be healthy. She followed all the traditional advice and
ate a very plant-heavy vegetarian and even vegan diet only to have
30 years of health problems because of that diet.
At first all this oxalate stuff
is hard to believe. It’s talked about so little and there’s not a
lot of mainstream knowledge on it in the medical community. We talk
some real science a little ways into the episode, so know it’s
coming. Also for people who may be skeptical of how bad oxalates
are you can go to the vegan site veganhealth.org/oxalate and see
the comprehensive mile-long list of problems and warnings about
oxalates. Yes, a vegan site warning about plant food dangers. This
is not some wacky carnivore idea people.
I just started a Patreon for
this podcast. I really want to keep this ad-free and I’m getting
multiple offers for sponsorships. This is a huge amount of work I
do completely on my own and I don’t think I have the bandwidth to
keep it up much longer. I’ll spare you the details of how many
hours it takes me weekly to put it out, but just know it’s way more
than you think. I’ll continue keeping this a high quality and from
what I’ve heard valuable resource for people if I can get the
support of the community. We are a tribe and everyone does their
part to keep things moving. I appreciate all the messages I get
that help keep me motivated when the hours get long. Even people’s
suggestions on guests really help. This episode was possible from 1
or 2 listeners who kept mentioning Sally and her work. Thanks so
much for supporting me in all my efforts. This will allow me to
keep putting out content on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and
YouTube as well. Please go to Patreon.com/peakhuman and
become a member of the tribe there. Just a couple dollars a month
really helps. You can also get more perks like extended show notes
and bonus content we’re just beginning to put out or an invite to
the private Slack group. That’s http://Patreon.com/peakhuman Thanks
in advance, and here’s Sally Norton.
Preorder the
film: http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
SHOW NOTES
- Sally
had a lifelong quest to be in the nutrition and wellness
space
- Despite eating plant-based diets all her life
and focusing on what she thought was good nutrition, she had major
health problems
- Some
books convinced her to vegan and soon she could barely walk up and
down stairs and got pneumonia multiple times per year
- She
finally figured out it was the build up of oxalated from all the
plants foods she was eating
- She
published a great paper “Lost Seasonality and Overconsumption of
Plants: Risking Oxalate Toxicity” https://jevohealth.com/journal/vol2/iss3/4/
- How
come she has all this training and she didn't know a thing about
oxalates?
- We
actually knew about oxalates in the 1700s and 1800s
- Populations like the Irish drank a lot of tea,
ate a lot of potatoes, had greens in season, and rhubarb in the
spring - all of these have high oxalate
- Spinach and whole grains have a lot of
oxalate
- They
did tests on rats to see calcium absorption of and we saw that
spinach wasn't delivering calcium - same for iron and
folate
- The
nutrients also degrade quickly unless the spinach is kept very cold
the entire time after harvest (which is basically
impossible)
- All
USDA data on nutrition in plant foods are wrong and don’t account
for bioavailability
- Nutrients drop significantly in spinach after
harvest, especially when not refrigerated to a very cold 4 degrees
celsius
- More
and more people are heading towards mostly animal foods as they
learn about bioavailability and antinutrients and listen to their
body
- The
carnivore movement has been great to just let people know it’s ok
to eat only animal foods
- World
War 1 is when we started relying on fallback plant foods she
thinks. We invented the idea of the victory garden
- I was
out with a girl from Peru who was laughing at Americans for eating
green vegetables - the mainly eat meat, fish, and
starches.
- She
talks about why we even think vegetables are so great in the first
place
- Our
natural state is now a diseased state
- Biggest current problems are toxicity and
deficiency
- High
oxalate foods: nuts, seeds, brassica veg, potatoes, some
berries
- If
doctors don’t have a remedy for it, you don’t have a
disease
- Calcium is being blamed for what oxalates are
doing
- Science behind oxalates
- Range
of oxalate poisoning that could kill you is 3.5 grams - 30
grams
- A guy
died of oxalate poisoning from sorrel soup
- Cases
of people with permanent kidney damage from juice/smoothie
cleanses
- Kidney disease is on the rise faster than
anything in the last few decades
- There’s so many other toxins your kidney needs
to deal with these days besides the oxalate
- She’s
read about 3,000 studies and articles on oxalate over the last 4.5
years of research
- Oxalates travel all over the body before going
through your kidney to be detoxified
- Even
vegan sites warn about the enormous problem of oxalates
https://veganhealth.org/oxalate/
- Whole
system is skewed supporting plants foods
- Researchers aren't doctors don’t have time or
aren't curious enough or can't get funding to do all this
research
- She’s
had major foot problems most of her life due to oxalates and it
kind of ruined her career
- Susan
Owens has great data on oxalate accumulation http://lowoxalate.info
- Clive
Solomons and the Pain Project
http://www.thevpfoundation.org/effective_treatment.htm
- Comprehensive oxalate charts http://lowoxalate.info/recipes.html
- USDA
food charts don’t account for bioavailability and 10-15% of the
data is just wrong
- A lot
of oxalate problems are determined by how much is getting through
the intestinal tract and how compromised it is / what problems you
have like IBS, etc.
- If
you're constantly getting low doses of oxalate your immune system
is constantly cleaning it up so you won’t really see any major
problems… but that’s not good at all
- We
need to eat seasonally for a real reason - to give our body a break
from different foods that may be giving us problems if eaten in
excess
- Herbivores evolved differently to be able to
handle oxalates
- Even
these can die if they are stuck somewhere where they only have
access to high oxalate food
- She’s
working on some proposals and a book
- Her
site is http://sallyknorton.com
- Her Instagram is http://instagram.com/sknorton
Preorder the film here: http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
Film site: http://FoodLies.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoodLies
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