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Posted by Iguanamomma on August 16, 1999 at 21:32:45:
BE WARNED this is gonna be a long one! Grab your coffee or soda first :o)
I've been reading an interesting thread on the Iguana Mailing List. I wanted to share it with the folks at this forum since there are those who are not on that list. I've taken the liberty of "xxxx" or snipping out names except for M Kaplan and A. Marsden. There is a second part to this but I didn't want to confuse the issue too much so I'll post it separately. Here goes:
From xxxxx: I was just wondering if anyone out there ever heard a such thing as feeding to much greens? Especially mustard. Six months ago, my then 1.5yr old female was having increasingly orange-tinged urates with some small hard-like pepples in it. I immediately increased her fluid intake and soaked and misted her extra times each day without any improvement. After a few days I took her to my vet. He said it was due to her eating a diet with too many mustard greens in it(I've always fed my igs 50%greens/50% MK salad, I use a variety of greens like mustard, collard , turnip, ecarole and occasionally some kale in small amounts). He told me to start mixing iceberg lettuce in with what I already had been feeding her and to lower the amount or remove completely the mustard greens.
And sure enough, once I started adding the lettuce, her urates got more and more back to normal each day. Within a week's time, she was fine. I took her back for a follow-up and he said she could resume her regular diet. I don't go with everything my vet says, but for the most part, I think he is capable and knows his stuff. He owns somthing like 20+ snakes and I believe either he has owned or stil does own two iguanas. He also is a member of the XX Herp. Assoc. and respected in the reptile community here in xxx. However, I must admit, when he told me to feed her lettuce, I was shocked. It went against everything I believed about proper nutrition for igs. He said that by feeding her lettuce as well as her regular food and cutting down on the mustard greens in would add water to her diet and clear up her kidneys and it did! I think he said that the mustard greens had too much oxalates? or something and it was irritating her kidneys. For you experts out there, does this sound right? *snip*
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Reply from Anne Marsden:
I've read that mustard greens are fairly high oxalate leaves, but I haven't seen any figures on that. I really would like to know the value for these leaves. Anyone know? It seems your vet is 'prescribing' iceberg lettuce for its high water content and the addition of the extra water and the removal of some oxalates has improved your iguana's kidney function. Usually, I use grated orange-fleshed squash and occasional fruit for this purpose myself. I've not heard of an iguana who has suffered kidney stones from a high mustard green diet before (ever) but I would like to know more -perhaps your vet can give us a source for his statement (e.g. a paper, atext book) and we can look it up. Since it seems to be working for your iguana, I would go with the vet's advice. However, I would ditch the iceberg lettuce and go with romaine lettuce. Romaine is quite nutritious while lacking in most of the plant compounds (such as oxalate and tannin) that tend to do harm. Watch out for signs that the iguana is becoming 'addicted' to lettuce (not eating other leaves) and keep a weather eye out for nutritional deficiencies and she should do fine.As a side note, mustard greens are not a great vegetable to give in large quantities. The sharp taste is caused by a chemical very similar to mustard gas, the poison gas used in warfare (hence the name). All brassicas (cruciferous vegetables) contain sulfur compounds which are thyrotoxic and many are mutagenic (cause breaks in DNA). I often write to IML asking people to keep an eye on how many cabbagy things they are feeding their iguanas and reduce if necessary. (Cabbagy things range from cabbage through brussel sprouts through collards to turnips,radishes, broccoflower, daikon, bok choy - write me for a list if youl ike.) Anyone who would like an excuse not to eat cabbage can look upthe following paper's abstract at http://www.medscape.com/>>>Genotoxic effects of crude juices from Brassica vegetables and juices and extracts from phytopharmaceutical preparations and spices ofcruciferous plants origin in bacterial and mammalian cells.By Kassie F; Parzefall W; Musk S; Johnson I; Lamprecht G; Sontag G; Knasm¨uller SChem Biol Interact, 102(1):1-16 1996 Sep 27
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Reply from Melissa Kaplan
Subject: RE: overfeeding mustard greens? > "From: "Anne Marsden" Per the Phytochem-Ethnobot db (http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/plants.html),mustard greens have between 512 - 5,565 ppm of calcium, 1,287 ppm of oxalicacid. From: "Anne Marsden" The End *grin*
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From Anne Marsden:
I finally found an online oxalate listing for most vegetables (all the other ones wanted me to buy a book). Unfortunately, it doesn't give the source of its info. http://www.litholink.com/high.htm Mustard greens are given as 7.7mg per 100g food. This compares with kale 13 escarole 31 parsley 100 parsnips 10 dandelion greens (real ones, I assume not iguana ones) 25l ettuce 3 okra 146 green pepper 16 leek 89 collards 74 These aren't identical to the USDA ones I've seen before, but oxalate content is so variable (and measurement is so difficult) that I'm not surprised. I personally would put mustard greens in the 'low oxalate, ignore it in your iguana calculations' category.
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Thanks, Melissa! Although this gives a vastly different figure for oxalate than the one I quoted, it still thinks that oxalate in mustards is far less than in some other common greens (for instance, collards a t4,500 to 73, 755 ppm - 3.5 to 60 times as much, whereas the other website put collards at 10 times as much, so they are in the same ballpark). By comparison, it puts lettuce at about 100 ppm. So I still wouldn't say that mustard greens are high in oxalates.Anne M
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