If you eat lower on the food chain, might you be able to handle oxalate-rich foods more safely?

The answer here is both no and yes. No, plant-based eating is not likely to lower your oxalate consumption, since there are many more high-oxalate foods in the world of plants than in the world of animals. As a general rule, if a person swapped an animal food for a plant food, the odds of getting more oxalates would be increased. On the other hand, yes, plant-based eating might help decrease the risk involved with oxalate consumption-even though it raised the absolute amount of oxalates being consumed-because plant-based eating typically increases the variety of nutrients being consumed. Plant-based eating is also protective against many basic chronic diseases. So with respect to your question, we do not believe it would automatically be helpful to become a vegetarian if you were trying to protect yourself against potential risks from oxalates. A better approach would be to get very specific about each food that you were evaluating, rather than pick foods on a plant-versus-animal basis. The list of high-oxalate foods found at the following website-http://www.litholink.com/gateway.aspx?page=OxalateDiet-is one we like for determining the oxalate content of various foods.

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