Spinach ok to use?

[Mikew2006]

Ive grown my own spinach in my greenhouse and read its a good source of iron, calcium and a source of vit A.

haven't used any pesticides on it and used organic compost so its as nature intended.

can i feed it to my cham?

actually, dont worry about it. ive just done a search and found its a no no

 

[Will Hayward]

My favourite web resource, www.wikipedia.org says;

Spinach also has a high calcium content. However, the oxalate content in spinach binds with calcium decreasing its absorption. By way of comparison, the body can absorb about half of the calcium present in broccoli, yet only around 5% of the calcium in spinach. Oxalate is one of a number of factors that can contribute to gout and kidney stones.

However, spinach contains high levels of oxalate. Oxalates bind to iron to form ferrous oxalate and remove iron from the body. Therefore, a diet high in oxalate (or phosphate or phytate) leads to a decrease in iron absorption.

Spinach is sold loose, in prepackaged bags, canned, or frozen. Fresh spinach loses much of its nutritional value with storage of more than a few days. While refrigeration slows this effect to about eight days, spinach will lose most of its folate and carotenoid (NOTE: many animals convert Beta Carotene into Vitamin A- Will.) content, so for longer storage it is frozen, cooked and frozen, or canned. Storage in the freezer can be for up to eight months.

So as you can see, Spinach may have high amounts of each of the things you listed, in the case of iron and calcium, the oxalates are hindering nearly all of the bodies absorption of it, and giving a potential to do further harm with gout and etc. And as for Vitamin A, without being raw, and fresh picked daily, the pro-vitamin A content doesn't seem too significant.

 

[Dave Weldon]

Howdy Will,

Funny about spinach and oxalates... It was on the "avoid" list that my human Doc gave me a couple of months ago after my first (and hopefully only)kidney stone (calcium oxalate). I should have had it polished and mounted in a ring since that 1/4" stone had a retail, pre-insurance price of $30K .

 

[kinyonga]

Aren't kidney stones fun??!! (Evil grin.) One's enough for anyone...and I think it should be mandatory for doctors so they know just what its like!

 

[FaunaBgirl]

Howdy Will,

Funny about spinach and oxalates... It was on the "avoid" list that my human Doc gave me a couple of months ago after my first (and hopefully only)kidney stone (calcium oxalate). I should have had it polished and mounted in a ring since that 1/4" stone had a retail, pre-insurance price of $30K .

Sorry to hear of this... gem passing process... erm.... was broccoli on the list?

Er... nice cham :} How big does he measure?

 

[Dave Weldon]

Sorry to hear of this... gem passing process... erm.... was broccoli on the list?...

Howdy,

I couldn't find the list that my doc gave me but I did look online and brocoli was not on the lists that I found.

 

[Marc10edora]

how did the kidney stone come out?....I don't even wanna know. Too scary to even imagine.

 

[Tygerr]

erm.... was broccoli on the list?

According to this site, http://www.drkaslow.com/html/oxalates.html, broccoli is listed as a Medium oxalate food.
Interestingly, foods that are listed as High oxalate foods include ingredients that are often recommended for gutloading: collards, dandelion greens, kale, sweet potatoes, squash, turnip greens, wheat bran and wheat germ.

This site, http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=48, says "spinach, Swiss chard, beet greens, collards, okra, parsley, and leeks are among the most oxlate-dense vegetables".
However it does include a table showing that spinach contains 750mg of oxalates per 100g, whereas collards have 10 times less at 74mg per 100g.

So this re-iterates what Will said: it's not simply that spinach contains oxalates - lots of veggies contain oxalates - but spinach contains such an inordinately high percentage of oxalates, that it renders the rest of the nutritional value almost useless.
So do you think Popeye retired due to gout?

 

[Dave Weldon]

how did the kidney stone come out?....I don't even wanna know. Too scary to even imagine.

Howdy,

Half of that $30K was to use a lithotripsy machine that sonically cracked the 1/4" stone into about 5 pieces. Passing those 5 pieces was only painful going from the top of that kidney to the bladder. The rest of the way out wasn't painful . The painful part feels like someone is slowly pushing a broom-handle into your back until it gets to the point where you finally yell: "Ok - I give-up!" Each piece took about 3-5 hours to work its way to the bladder. This went on for about a week, on and off. In the big scheme of things, I can think of a lot worse than the pain of a kidney stone .

 

[Jewel]

Howdy,

Half of that $30K was to use a lithotripsy machine that sonically cracked the 1/4" stone into about 5 pieces. Passing those 5 pieces was only painful going from the top of that kidney to the bladder. The rest of the way out wasn't painful . The painful part feels like someone is slowly pushing a broom-handle into your back until it gets to the point where you finally yell: "Ok - I give-up!" Each piece took about 3-5 hours to work its way to the bladder. This went on for about a week, on and off. In the big scheme of things, I can think of a lot worse than the pain of a kidney stone .

Wow Dave, it cost that much to blast a kidney stone. I guess as Canadians we take our medical system for granted because mine was free but our lovely Canadian goverment is really starting to screw up our system and we are starting to have to pay for some procedures, sorry for rambling on. Anyway, I was told by the hospital that alot also depends on the water we drink. In our area we are suppose to have the highest rate of kidney stones because our water has a lot of calcium in it. I still have two that have not tried to pass yet so one of these days I will have to go through that ordeal again.

 

[Jordan]

Brocolli is high in goitrogens which have been show to bind to iodine and can lead to hypothyrodism. That along with the oxalates makes brocollis something that should be left out all together or used pretty sparingly. It also is high in sulphur which could cause deficiencies when eaten steadily.

 

[Dave Weldon]

Wow Dave, it cost that much to blast a kidney stone...

Howdy,

After insurance negotiated the rates with the hospital, my cost was about $1K.