May 31, 2017

Dr. Cate Shanahan: Deep Nutrition and ‘The Human Diet’ – The Role of Epigenetics, What Your Ancestors Ate and Your Activity Levels to Determine Your Dietary Needs

1 hour 8 minutes

Dr. Cate Shanahan is a board certified family physician and author of Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. She’s an expert on epigenetics and has studied culinary traditions and dietary habits of her healthiest patients. She’s applied her learning and experiences in all these scientific fields in the book Deep Nutrition, which we’ll be discussing today and applying to the needs of athletes too.

Intro

* Dr. Cate’s background as an athlete and after, plagued with injury and joint problems, and what she discovered about the role of nutrition in healing?

* Is Dr. Cate a functional doctor, or does she define herself another way? Plus her thoughts on functional medicine and Western medicine practices.

* How Dr. Cate got interested in epigenetics and gene expression—and what these things mean.

* We essentially have the power to change our health and wellbeing via diet; in other words, diet affects gene expression.

Diving into concepts presented in Deep Nutrition

* We’re not “stuck” with the DNA we’re born with; we can “turn on” or “turn off” certain genes based on what we do.

* Tied into this is genetic wealth and genetic momentum—i.e. what our ancestors have brought to the table for our wellbeing.

* So this day in age, the diseases and health issues we’re seeing are largely due to diet not just random chance.

* Many of us are nutrient starved from the empty calories we eat and that’s what’s making us sick.

* People will argue that we’re living longer, etc., but just because we’re living longer doesn’t mean we’re healthier—or does it? And furthermore, as you present in the book, are we really living longer?

* What are the two worst food villains?

* Vegetable oils—just how bad are these and what kind of health effects do they have? In particular brain health and oxidation.

* Sugar—avoid refined processed added sugar, and from there generally keep sugar (all kinds even natural) to less than 100g day.

* Read Dr. Cate’s Good Fats bad Fats article here.

* Sugar’s role in glycation—what this is and how we can change our diet to fight glycation?

* Meanwhile, it’s not just the vegetable oils and sugars, there’s a connection between modern over-consumption of vegetable oils/sugars and under-consumption of traditional foods and health issues.

* Are there flaws with the concepts of the Paleo diet?

* Dr. Cate introduces The Human Diet, which is based on eating the foods our ancestors did—this isn’t exactly paleo, and it’s not exactly about low carb, so what does it mean?

* The Human Diet looks to traditional cuisine & foods…

* “The native diets had ten or more times the fat-soluble vitamins and one-and-a-half to fifty times more minerals than the diets of people in the United States.”

* The Four Pillars of World Cuisine that we all need in our diets:

* Meat cooked on the bone

* Organs and ofal (what Bourdain calls “the nasty bits”)

* Fresh (raw) plant and animal products

* Fermented and sprouted foods—better than fresh!

* Dr. Cate is not anti-carb and allows and recommends (in moderation) sprouted breads, sprouted beans and legumes, yogurts, rice, even corn masa in the Human Diet—we’ve evolved to be able to eat and digest these things!

* But at the end of the day all carbs even healthy ones essentially turn to sugar,

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