Baking Soda For Oxalate

[Jesilyn]

Does anyone know if adding baking soda after cooking will work to neutralize oxalate in leaf broth or does it need to be during cooking?

 

[Apple]

To neutralize oxalate you would need citrate. So lemon juice some time before meal is a better option. Citrate inhibits the formation and growth of calcium crystals.

 

[Flo93]

In addition, any source of calcium that is consumed with it would be good, as calcium inhibits oxalate absorption.

 

[Amazoniac]

If the cooking water isn't discarded, I don't expect baking soda to be helpful other than in neutralizing the acidity, which prevents it from reacting with teeth. Not sure what is the purpose of adding baking soda to boiling water, it must not change the solubility of oxalic acid in a favorable way, perhaps it's to rupture plant cells so that more is released?

To be effective, the reactant/neutralizer has to make the molecule poorly soluble/absorbable. The goal is to form such complex prior to uptake so that this doesn't happen in organs. As far as I know, baking soda can't do this, it might even make it worse because once sodium oxalate is absorbed, there's dissociation, the body will have to deal with both; oxalate will be moved towards excretion through kidneys while extra sodium in the blood may lead to alkalinization for lacking chloride and having to maintain ion balance through the increase of 'hydrogen carbonate' (bicarbonate). This tends to the formation of insoluble salts in kidneys, something that acidification opposes in most cases. But the process is mitigated since alkalinization keeps minerals in bones.

 

[Tristan Loscha]

Does anyone know if adding baking soda after cooking will work to neutralize oxalate in leaf broth or does it need to be during cooking?

It seems to not be worth it. Only if used with very low oxalate ones like cucumber?

 

[Jesilyn]

Wow, ok, I definitely heard Dr. Peat suggest adding baking soda as a way to neutralize oxalate in one of the interviews on YouTube. I don’t remember which one, and I’m not positive if he was talking about the water or the leaves, but I think he was talking about making kale broth. But good to know this may not be an effective strategy or possibly making it worse.

 

[Amazoniac]

Wow, ok, I definitely heard Dr. Peat suggest adding baking soda as a way to neutralize oxalate in one of the interviews on YouTube. I don’t remember which one, and I’m not positive if he was talking about the water or the leaves, but I think he was talking about making kale broth. But good to know this may not be an effective strategy or possibly making it worse.

It'll neutralize, but shifting between acid (oxalic acid/hydrogen oxalate) or base (oxalate) form wouldn't make much difference because both end up as oxalate after absorption, it's preventing this from happening that matters.

Just like lactate, it must (because conditions may differ) not occur in the acid forms in the body:

- Interactions between hydrated cement paste and organic acids: Thermodynamic data and speciation modeling

Spoiler

Contrary to killcium, I isn't aware of sodium being capable of preventing it, is there such thing as sodium oxalate crystals (which is when it becomes insoluble)?

It might be related to solubility that the oxalate in spinach only interferes with the uptake of killcium, not magnesium, in spite of the usual absorption fraction of both being low.

- Oxalates-containing plants

Spoiler

 

[GelatinGoblin]

Bump