I think you will find most of us have some quietly murmured conspiracy theories. 
For what it’s worth, I hedge my bets with some fiber every few days.
My personal bugaboo is seed oils. I was very disappointed to discover that a lot of my less expensive nuts had strange seed oils used in their preparation, like cottonseed oil. I enjoy nuts, but I always check the ingredients now.
I literally just discovered this yesterday afternoon! The mixed nuts we buy from Amazon (I think Amazon brand) have seed oils listed on the ingredients. What the hell! — never buying those again, and I now need to read the label for mixed nuts?!?!?!
I’m kinda coming around to that same idea.
I’ve been looking at the foods that I eat now. I was actually surprised to see that I tend to eat a fairly low oxalate diet anyway. I still like peanut butter, and do eat a little of that, but when I look at the numbers, I don’t eat nearly enough of it to put my oxalate intake into anywhere near the territory of a single serving of spinach (which I doubt I eat more than once or twice a year).
I had thought someone said that 100mg of oxalate a day was generally what a normal person should be able to effectively deal with and most days, I think I’m actually below that, probably between 50mg and 100mg on a typical day, without trying, just eating as I want to.
I KNOW I wasn’t below that earlier in life, especially in my early keto years. I ate quite a lot of almond flour without realizing… and thinking back, it was when I had my first and only kidney stone experience. But we got away from using so much of that as keto / low carb became our new normal.
What I’ve been trying to figure out is HOW the oxalate dumping works. I’m figuring I gotta have a bunch stored away and am not wanting it to bite me in the butt with a dumping, which I’m told is NOT fun. So what I’ve been trying to figure out, if I eat low oxalate, below the body’s storage panic mode, will it slowly “take out the trash”? Or is it just happily sequestered until a big dump is triggered? All or nothing? Or is there something in between? Maybe someone knows that could clear some of that up for me. Maybe?
Yes, it’s very common as far as I know. I can’t buy peanuts without sunflower oil here. (I can’t buy raisins without sunflower oil here and while it doesn’t matter to me directly, my high-carber SO eats them every day.)
Quite annoying 
We just want the main stuff, not the sunflower oil 
For most items, it’s so easy. I buy eggs, I buy meat, hell, I buy dairy and NO ADDED problematic things. But nuts…? They come with sunflower oil. Yeah I can buy some without but not roasted, salted peanuts… We surely survive the stuff just like I survived about a tonne (1000000g) sunflower oil in my past… But I don’t want to. I skip the stuff, okay but my SO isn’t on my level and he eats it, I already had reasons not to. And it doesn’t sit well with me.
We buy very few nuts anymore. We had used a fair amount of peanut butter in the past and it’s still one of our more naughty foods. But we’ve changed how we do things. We don’t buy peanuts or peanut butter. We raise our own peanuts and make our own peanut butter. It’s quite laborious and just that probably helps us to minimize on the consumption. It’s a lot of work as we raise, pick, hang (to dry), shell, roast… all by hand. And it takes about 6 cups of peanuts to make one large jar of Smuckers (about a pint, I think, never actually measured). The one thing we do accomplish with that, though, besides limiting the supply, is knowing that we haven’t used any crazy chemicals to either grow or dry down the peanuts in the field nor do we add anything to them when they get turned into peanut butter except a little Real salt.
I know some would tell us just leave the peanuts behind. Not there yet. Maybe someday. (It’s one of the few things we still do eat a little of in the plant world that keeps us from carnivore. That list is getting a good bit smaller. And it’s not every day, either.)
I could buy peanuts in shell somewhere but I wouldn’t bother even with that 
I break walnuts all year round though. Walnut trees are everywhere around here, it’s an unusual thing my own garden only have 2 small ones! I have hazelnuts too, almond never survived in my garden for some reason though. So we have nuts, that’s great but peanuts are special, irreplaceable by others.
Just like no matter how good a year is, my fruit garden can’t make buying a lot of fruit unnecessary (again, it’s for my high-carber SO, I love and regularly eat fruit but the amount is super tiny and I don’t actually need any except lemon. I can’t grow lemons).
I’m just gonna jump in and reply here - because I lived through the oxalate hell. I think I was around 51 or 52 ish. Had been on a clean Keto and doing quite well along with IF/EF, but decided to take it up a notch. So…did a 7 day fast. before transitioning to carnivore. Day 2-3 of the fast, the “oxalate dump” was oh, so very real and painful. Thought my body was being destroyed from inside. But, after about 24 hours of that hell, I woke up a new person. Day 4 of the fast, my body began a journey back to its youth. Had not felt that good since I was 15!!!
With a clean Keto eating plan, you still run the risk of getting bombarded with oxalates - in cashews. almonds, spinach, peppers, eggplants, etc. With Carnivore, there is none of that. Now, that is not to say munching on a handful of nuts isn’t a wonderful treat on rare occasion, but they should be macadamia or walnuts or maybe pecans.
Given that I’m 55 now, and have undergone multiple knee operations, and still dealing with the aftermath of a broken foot bone - I’ve found a heightened sensitivity to oxalates. I’ve tried, and adding oxy foods to my diet just wreaks havoc! Honestly, I just feel all around healthier and younger just eating meats, eggs, butter, and a little HWC in the morning coffee.
Doing an extended fast seemed to be the most logical way for me to wipe the slate clean and start over. So, here’s to hoping everyone finds that “Sweet Spot” in their carnivore adventure!
There’s an interview with Sally K. Norton on Anthony Chaffee’s YouTube channel, in which she discusses oxalate dumping, the damage it can cause if it happens too fast, and ways of slowing it down to a comfortable rate.
One interesting comment she makes towards the end of the interview is about the different experiences of Paul Saladino and Shawn Baker on a carnivore diet. She says that Dr. Baker was never a vegan, so his experience on carnivore did not involve much oxalate dumping, whereas Dr. Saladino was a vegan for quite a while, so it isn’t surprising that he stopped feeling good on carnivore, when his oxalate dumping really ramped up. She says that his strategy of eating fruit is a good one for slowing down the dumping to a more-easily tolerated rate, but that she would never recommend honey to anyone.
She also says that the tannin in a cup of tea can slow down oxalate dumping when it gets uncomfortable.
Thanks, Paul. I’ve listened to a few of Sally’s interviews but I hadn’t connected those particular dots.
From what I’m gathering, “slowing down the dumping” with a little fruit or something similar will slow down the dumping but may not stop it completely, which seems like it may be a good thing as I slowly transition away from a lot of plant foods. If I’m understanding, the oxalate dumping might just happen more gradually over time, especially if I’m doing the changes in diet gradually over time, which is becoming my natural inclination anyway.
I’ll definitely have to listen to some more of her interviews because little tidbits pop up here and there and are easy to miss, things that may be in one interview but not necessarily in another. She’s done quite a few of them.
Appreciate your reply. Thanks!
Great question. If you believe the body is always trying to achieve homeostasis, then I would say yes. But like almost everything regarding food, there is a duality. Too much is not good, and too little is also not good.
I look at life span and health span as two different sides of the same coin. What can I do now, or what actionable steps can I take, to increase my health so that I may potentially live longer? How much do I need to deadlift now to be able to lift up my grandchildren when I’m 90? Exercise has the biggest payoff. (IMHO)
With regard to diets such as keto and carnivore, there are schools of thought that these protocols are to be used as short-term (6–12) protocols to address metabolic issues. Then there are others who believe that we should be eating this way for life. There is so much good and bad information on diets. Take, for example, radioisotopic assays. These assays were not typically used to justify the consumption of meat. Rather, they are used to understand the dietary habits of our ancestors and the nutritional composition of the foods they consumed. They would analyse the isotopic composition of bones and teeth from archaeological sites. Studies that have used stable isotopes to analyse the diets of our ancestors have found that early humans likely had varied diets that included both plant and animal foods. For example, isotopic analyses of the bones and teeth of Australopithecus africanus, a hominin species that lived between 3 and 2 million years ago, suggest that they ate a mix of fruits, leaves, and possibly some animal protein. Similarly, isotopic analyses of the bones and teeth of Neanderthals, who lived between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago, suggest that they ate a diet that included both meat and plants. The radioisotopic assay results are dependent on where the archaeological sites are located.
I have met Dr. Fung, and keep in mind that he sees the worst-case scenarios. He will put patients on a ketogenic or low-carb diet and incorporate different fasting protocols depending on how much weight is to be lost and the patient’s blood sugar normalizes. Generally, this is for a short period of time. He does not actively fast himself or eat Keto. Rather, he skips meals such as breakfast because he forgets to eat. (too busy) He eats a lower-carb type diet. In his book “The Obesity Code,” one of his five pillars is to actually increase your use of fibre.
I love your Occam’s Razor reference. Probably a bit of both. When you get a chance, look at this:
.
This argues for about (at least) a 70% meat diet.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24247
There’s also a table of stable isotope studies (Table 1).
You don’t want to stop the dumping, you just want to moderate it, so that you can tolerate the symptoms. Oxalates do damage to the body, which is why the body dumps them when it can, but too fast a rate of dumping also does damage.
An interesting point Ms. Norton makes is that some people can shed oxalates through their skin, as though they are shedding dust (that’s how she describes it). She says this is a good thing, because it means the kidney tubules aren’t being harmed by the crystals.
I like to compare eating a low- or zero-carb diet to strictly limiting arsenic intake. And of course the benefits of restricting intake go away when we resume consuming more! 
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt compares keto with daily showering–if you stop either, you can expect the benefits (metabolic health, cleanliness) to go away.
That certainly has not been my experience over the last 12 years. Rather it has given me metabolic flexibility. I see foods more than just their macros. Yes, I suppose if I was morbidly obese and the cause was my high intake of sugars/carbs I would hope I would see them as arsenic.
@ffskier But you’re restricting…something, correct? I mean it sounds like you changed your eating 12 years ago. That means to me, you’re not eating what you used to eat. All Eenfeldt is saying is that if you did what you used to do, you’re not going to get the benefit of what you’re doing now.
@PaulL Supposedly, Eenfeldt fell for Ted Naiman’s higher protein and lower “energy” diet, which is why protein suddenly became a “thing” on Diet Doctor. Now, both Eenfeldt and Naiman seem like good candidates for higher protein and even higher carbs (part of the “energy”), because they are both active men. Not everyone is like that, though.
I am not necessarily restricting, rather I have more of an awareness of what I eat. 12 years ago I was eating Ad Libitum. I did not have a lot of weight to lose initially. Under the supervision of an MD and a sports scientist Ph.D. I eliminated everything that was white or could be white for a period of 90 days. Now, I pretty much eat a low-carb diet most of the time, probably in ketosis at times but I no longer measure my blood ketones. I am fat-adapted and have great metabolic flexibility. My wife makes home made sough-dough rye bread once a week and it is to die for. But I am not eating 5 slices in one sitting. I have also increased my protein intake recently as I believe it is required. I aim for about 2 grams per kilo of body weight. Not sure how much protein my body will actually harvest. I spread it out throughout the day.
Yeah, I noticed. But everyone’s protein needs are different, as the meta-analysis used to set the RDA for protein pointed out. The RDA is 0.2 g/day above the average replacement amount, and the spread from minimum to maximum was wide. Ted Naiman and Andreas Eenfeldt are both big guys, so it stands to reason they’d need more protein than the rest of us.
Just outta curiosity, how tall is Ted? I’ve never met him in person but from the pictures I’ve seen of him in the settings they were in, they didn’t make him look like a particularly large person though he has put on a lot of muscle mass from when he was a scrawny kid. (Pictures.)
I kinda get how things can change over time, how what he needs to eat now could be a bit different from what he needed to eat 20 years ago. I don’t hold any of that kind of change against anyone rather I think it’s good that we can adapt to where we are now, not just live by what may have been the best choice years ago.
But if they are big and active, they need lots of energy too…
I never could wrap my hear around a very high protein intake in percentage, it could only work well with a very low-cal diet, wouldn’t it? Some people can pull a huge energy deficit when losing fat, it’s probably for them…
Grams are another matter, of course. But they vary a lot for me while my percentages tend to be similar… I am around 30% all the time. No way to go higher as my body demands energy but doesn’t accept protein after some point (like 5g/kg for LBM. I just stop there. it’s another matter that I actually fight to stay as low as comfortably possible for me).
And protein has a range. We should eat as much as we need and conveniently can (first being more important but if it’s already in the okay range, there are other factors) and that’s it IMO. Of course if someone notices they should push the protein for some reason, that’s their thing but in general, it’s not right to be all for higher-protein or higher-fat. It’s individual and may or may not have anything to do with size, activity and musculature. My body doesn’t care that some women with my stats happily eat 50g protein or that I should be okay with 90-100g (I never liked the idea of eating low protein and have zero experience with that. 1.5-2g/kg for LBM sounds good even in general), it wants 130-230g a day or else. 130g protein in a single meal is pretty nice, I like to have proper sized meals, they help to eat as little protein and fat as I comfortably can and this is my aim as it should be. My overeating tendencies are way too good and my carnivore food is very tempting.
