“Green Smoothie Cleanse” Causing Acute Oxalate Nephropathy

Re:“Green Smoothie Cleanse” Causing Acute Oxalate Nephropathy by retrac on Thursday August 17, 2023 @06:05PM (#37168824)

> Oxalic acid has an oral LDLo (lowest published lethal dose) of 600 mg/kg.[62] It has been reported that the lethal oral dose is 15 to 30 grams.

and

> Frozen commercially available spinach in New Zealand contains 736.6 ± 20.4 mg/100g wet matter (WM) soluble oxalate

while the USDA says about 900 mg per 100 g for American spinach on average.

So roughly 1% of the wet spinach by weight. 1 kilo of high-oxalate spinach probably has 10 - 20 grams of oxalic acid. That's a lot of spinach, but probably chuggable in one day in smoothie format. Far too close to the LD50 estimate for my comfort!

For one large salad, it's unlikely to exceed a couple grams. I'm unsure about the effects of chronic lower dose exposure.

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Re:“Green Smoothie Cleanse” Causing Acute Oxalate Nephropathy by hombre_fatal on Thursday August 17, 2023 @06:14PM (#37168916)

This is what I mean, though. How many people regurgitating "Be sure to watch out for oxalates!" know that we're talking about thousands of grams of spinach?

Looking it up, people generally eat 50-200mg of oxalates per day with 1000mg being the outlier high end.

Eat your spinach. If you're worried, then cook it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Green Smoothie Cleanse” Causing Acute Oxalate Nephropathy by DennisP on Thursday August 17, 2023 @06:20PM (#37168984)

Well there's the dose that kills you, but there's also the dose that over time gives you kidney stones, if you're prone to that.

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