Honey is not high in oxalates. Clover honey contains roughly 3 mg of oxalate per 100 grams, which works out to about 1 mg per tablespoon. That puts it firmly in the low-oxalate category, well below the 10 mg per serving threshold that most kidney stone prevention guidelines use as a cutoff.
For anyone managing oxalate intake due to kidney stones or hyperoxaluria, honey is one of the safer sweetener choices on a per-serving basis. But oxalate content isn’t the whole story when it comes to honey and kidney health.
How Honey Compares to High-Oxalate Foods
To put honey’s 1 mg per tablespoon in perspective, a half-cup of cooked spinach contains over 750 mg of oxalate. Almonds clock in around 120 mg per ounce. Even chocolate can deliver 15 to 30 mg per serving depending on the type. At 1 mg per serving, honey barely registers on the oxalate scale.
Most oxalate-restricted diets recommend keeping total daily intake below 40 to 50 mg. You would need to eat nearly 50 tablespoons of honey in a day to reach that limit from honey alone, which is obviously not realistic. Even if you drizzle honey on oatmeal, stir it into tea, and use it in cooking, the oxalate contribution from the honey itself will be negligible compared to other ingredients in your diet.
Limited Data Across Honey Varieties
The oxalate measurement above comes from clover honey, which is the most common variety sold in the United States. Formal oxalate testing data for other types like manuka, buckwheat, or wildflower honey is harder to find in published food databases. The Oxalosis and Hyperoxaluria Foundation’s food list, one of the most widely referenced resources for oxalate content, includes only clover honey.
Honey’s composition does shift depending on the flowers bees forage from. Buckwheat honey, for instance, is darker and more mineral-rich than clover. Whether that translates to meaningfully different oxalate levels is unknown. Given that honey is mostly sugar and water with only trace amounts of other compounds, large variation in oxalate content between varieties would be surprising. Still, if you are on a strict oxalate-restricted diet and consume large quantities of a specific variety, the lack of tested data is worth noting.
Honey’s Fructose May Matter More Than Its Oxalates
If you’re watching your oxalate intake because of calcium oxalate kidney stones, honey’s real concern isn’t oxalate at all. It’s fructose. Honey contains between 40 and 50 grams of fructose per 100 grams, making it higher in fructose than regular table sugar.
Fructose affects kidney stone risk through a different pathway. When you consume sugar, your body excretes more calcium into the urine while simultaneously reducing urine volume. That combination raises the concentration of calcium in your urine, creating conditions where calcium oxalate crystals are more likely to form. The University of Chicago’s Kidney Stone Program describes this as “the perfect reagent” for raising calcium supersaturation, which is the chemical state that leads to crystal formation.
Fructose also promotes insulin resistance over time, which can raise uric acid levels and further increase stone risk. Because honey actually delivers more fructose per gram than table sugar, it offers no metabolic advantage as a sweetener for people prone to kidney stones. In fact, from a fructose standpoint, it’s a slightly worse choice.
This doesn’t mean you need to eliminate honey entirely. A teaspoon in your tea is not going to trigger a kidney stone. But if you’ve been substituting honey for sugar in large amounts thinking it’s a healthier option for stone prevention, the fructose content undermines that logic.
Practical Takeaways for Oxalate-Restricted Diets
Honey is a safe choice if your primary goal is reducing dietary oxalate. At roughly 1 mg per tablespoon, it won’t move the needle on your daily total. You can use it freely as a sweetener without worrying about oxalate accumulation.
Where honey deserves more caution is quantity. A tablespoon of honey contains about 17 grams of sugar, most of it fructose. If you’re prone to calcium oxalate stones, keeping added sugar intake moderate matters more than tracking the tiny amount of oxalate in your honey. Focus your oxalate-reduction efforts on the foods that actually contribute significant amounts: spinach, rhubarb, beets, nuts, and chocolate are far more impactful targets than anything honey adds to your plate.