#79: Dr. Cate Shanahan, Part 1

Host Brad Kearns welcomes back one of the most popular guests from the old days! Dr. Cate has been hard at work preparing the launch of her revised and updated bestseller Deep Nutrition, originally published in 2008 and is relaunching a 512-page masterpiece in 2017. Cate gives you the straight scoop on her favorite topics, particularly the disastrous misinformation about dietary fats that has been entrenched in conventional wisdom for decades. Cate details why “natural fats” are so critical to human health, and how refined high polyunsaturated vegetable oils are directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually. They disrupt normal cellular function immediately upon ingestion, increase oxidative stress throughout the body, and damage brain function in particular; this is the #1 disease catalyst in modern life, an underlying factor in every chronic disease study. 

Cate outs conventional wisdom as conducting a massive experiment to “feed modern humans the cheapest possible food and see what will happen.” She outs researcher Ancel Keys as the dude who drove us toward bad fats and away from healthy fats (“he knew he was wrong too!” laments Cate). Speaking of losing weight, refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils are more likely to be stored and less likely to be burned than natural fats. In summary, here’s how to save your life and optimize your health: Ditch refined high polyunsaturated vegetable oils (watch out when dining out; most restaurant food–fast food to fine dining–is soaked in these gnarly oils); eat more natural fats (eggs, meat, cheese, coconut products, olives/olive oil, avocados/avocado oil, etc.).

Cate also gets talking about carbs and says timing is important: breakfast carbs are muy mal noticias, while post-exercise carbs are okay to replenish glycogen and meet basic glucose needs of at least 30-60g/day. while 100g/day is a good max to observe. Also if you are going keto, note that both excess fat and protein are going to block ketone production.

What is some of the new information she came across when she worked on getting her best-selling book “Deep Nutrition” revised? [00:01:22] 

Since the 1950s Americans have been participating in an experiment to see what would happen by eating the cheapest possible food. [00:03:36] 

Somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of our calories are coming from the “bad” oils. [00:09:54] 

The fellow, Ancel Keys, who conducted these studies, found that the information they put out was wrong. [00:13:04] 

How are these vegetable oils damaging to brain function? [00:15:25] 

Why were the saturated fats suspected, in the first place, of being so damaging? [00:17:23] 

What do we know about lipoproteins? [00:21:14] 

Where do carbs come into the picture? What about lard? [00:22:50] 

Why are the liquid vegetable oils bad? [00:24:56] 

Forty percent of total calories from restaurants are from vegetable oils because of the methods of cooking even in the finest restaurants. [00:28:19] 

Dr. Cate Shanahan

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