If you’ve been following the GAPS Protocol, you’ll know that meat stock is the very foundation of healing. It’s soothing, mineral rich, and full of the amino acids that help seal and heal the gut.

But many people who also learn about oxalates wonder: “If meat stock is so nourishing, why do I sometimes feel oxalate type symptoms after drinking it? Could my body be turning the glycine in stock into oxalates? Why would nature design such a pathway?”

Let’s explore:

What’s in Meat Stock?

Meat stock is made from meaty joints, skin, bones, and connective tissue simmered for just a few hours. Unlike long bone broth, which can be high in histamine, stock is shorter cooked and easier to tolerate.

It provides:

• Glycine — an amino acid abundant in collagen and gelatin
• Proline, glutamine, and other amino acids for gut repair
• Minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium
• Gelatin and cartilage compounds that soothe and coat the gut lining

There are no plant compounds in plain meat stock (unless you add high oxalate plants). That means no dietary oxalates.

Then Where Do the Oxalate Symptoms Come From?

Our bodies don’t only get oxalates from food. We also make oxalates internally (endogenously).

One of the main precursors to oxalate is glycine. This amino acid, while deeply healing, can — under certain conditions — be converted into oxalate.

The pathway looks like this:
Glycine → Glyoxylate → Oxalate

Normally, the body keeps glyoxylate safely moving down other paths, using vitamins and enzymes to prevent excess oxalate. But when those systems are stressed or undernourished, some of the glyoxylate gets diverted into oxalate.

Why Would Nature Allow This?

The body produces oxalate for reasons that made sense in survival conditions.

• Oxalates bind to toxins. Crystals of oxalate can grab hold of heavy metals and other harmful compounds, escorting them away from delicate tissues.
• Oxalates act like a safety valve. When the liver or nutrient systems are overwhelmed, shunting excess glyoxylate into oxalate may be the “lesser evil” compared to allowing more dangerous metabolites to circulate.
• Short-term, this can be protective. The problem comes when this mechanism gets switched on too often, or when the oxalates can’t be eliminated effectively.

Nature isn’t “making a mistake.” This pathway exists because in certain survival conditions, a little oxalate production was useful. It only becomes harmful in our modern context of depleted nutrition, chronic toxin exposure, and damaged guts.

What This Means for GAPS People

If you react to meat stock with symptoms that feel like oxalate flares — diarrhea, burning, joint pain, skin irritation — it doesn’t mean the stock itself contains oxalates (unless you add high oxalate plants). Instead, it may mean:

• Your body is mobilizing stored oxalates because it finally has new building blocks to do so – dumping oxalates
• Or your glyoxylate pathway is struggling, and more of your glycine is being misrouted into oxalate.- accumulating oxalates

The fact that glycine can turn into oxalate doesn’t mean glycine is harmful. It means your body needs time, nourishment, and the right cofactors and minerals to handle it properly. You can test minerals stores by doing HTMA test and strategicly use minerals to help with the oxalate issue. Book your test here.

Meat stock remains the cornerstone of GAPS healing. If your body stirs up oxalates in response, that is part of the larger process of clearing and repair. Step by step, with patience and support, your system can restore balance.