The Pantry Ingredient Damaging Your Brain, Gut, & Slowly Destroying Your Health (Dark Calories & Seed Oils)

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:00:00]:
If you eat a serving of fries from a restaurant, a large serving, you’re getting equivalent toxicity of smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.

Nick Urban [00:00:11]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity. The show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Could your so called heart healthy cooking oils really be quietly damaging your cells? Is it true that oils can take up to six years to fully remove from the body where you can burn off sugar with an intense exercise session or even just by everyday life? If that’s true, you cannot do the same with the fats you consume. Joining us this week, our guest has exposed the seed oil industry’s biggest myths and misconceptions.

Nick Urban [00:01:32]:
And she shares how everyday staples, hopefully not for you, like canola oil and soybean oil, inflame your gut, age your skin, throw off your hunger signals and even sabotage your brain. That amongst many others. If you’ve ever felt off despite eating clean, this conversation might explain why your body isn’t responding the way it should be. Our guest this week is Dr. Kate Shanahan. She’s a widely respected physician and author whose work has sparked major movements around ancestral nutrition, seed oil elimination and traditional eating. Her book Deep Nutrition and Nutrition Strategies have influenced top health leaders, professional athletes like Kobe Bryant and Aaron Judge and millions worldwide. If you’ve ever heard that seed oils might not be healthy for you, you can thank Dr.

Nick Urban [00:02:30]:
Kate and all of her work for that. Dr. Kate’s mission is to empower people of all backgrounds to reclaim their health through food. To check out the resources and the article I wrote on seed oils inspired by Dr. K among others, you can find the show notes for this [email protected] the number 217 there. I will also link her multiple books including Deep Nutrition which I read and it is a bible. It is jam packed full of great food wisdom and then her more recent book Dark Calories and that is the full expose on the seed oil industry and I think after reading that you’ll have second thoughts about these seed oils Vegetable oils, highly processed and refined oils in pretty much everything. If you’re not making an effort to avoid them, you’re surely getting them in large quantities.

Nick Urban [00:03:27]:
And we also talk about some of the myths and misconceptions, such as expeller, pressed and non gmo, and why these things might help slightly. But really, they’re not what matters when you’re evaluating the role of these oils on overall human health. All right, put on your learning hat and let’s join Dr. Kate Shanahan now. Dr. Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:03:52]:
Thank you so much, Nick. I am so glad to be here, finally.

Nick Urban [00:03:55]:
I’m looking forward to this. You are one of the OGs in the space talking about seed oils before anyone else. And your work is expansive. I’m in the middle of your book, one of your books that is Deep Nutrition. You also have another one called Dark Calories. And you talk a lot about the science behind seed oils. And today we’re going to explore that. And not only why it’s an important topic to cover, but then also what are the practical things that we can do to improve our health? The simple, practical things.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:04:31]:
Yes. Great. This is all important stuff.

Nick Urban [00:04:33]:
So I want to start off by diving into your chapter in deep nutrition called Brain Killer. You mentioned that vegetable oils attack the brain in seven distinct ways. Let’s begin there. Why? How do vegetable oils attack the brain?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:04:52]:
It’s. There’s eight of them. I call them the Hateful eight. And it’s very important to memorize these eight. It’s corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower, rice bran, and grapeseed. Yeah. And those are unique in the food supply. And if you like, we can talk about that now.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:05:10]:
Why? Like, why them and why not? Why did I not say sesame oil or peanut oil like other people are saying? And I don’t agree.

Nick Urban [00:05:21]:
Yeah, well, let’s go into that because I think people hear vegetable oil and it sounds like, okay, everything’s plant based these days. How can something that’s oil from vegetables really be unhealthy? And I think it’s also, as I know from researching this myself, a lot more complicated than that.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:05:36]:
Nick, remind me, are you in California?

Nick Urban [00:05:38]:
No, I’m in Austin.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:05:39]:
Austin. Oh, okay. I’m surprised to hear you say that everything is plant based and you’re not in California, but I guess a million people have moved there from California because normally when I, you know, I talk to people around the entire world, and of all the places that are, like, surrounded by people who believe plant based Is the answer. California is that place. And so I can see why, you know, it would be happening now in Austin.

Nick Urban [00:06:04]:
Austin’s actually one of the, the beacons, one of the hotspots of like the animal based.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:06:09]:
Right.

Nick Urban [00:06:10]:
Whole Foods based. And it’s very different here, but from like the Internet and visiting, traveling, other places. I see it and you hear it all the time. People are confused about.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:06:18]:
Yes.

Nick Urban [00:06:19]:
How plant based can be unhealthy also.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:06:21]:
Right. Because the plant based community has taken over the medical community and taken over the dietitian community. Literally. So it’s very important to, you know that because that’s, that’s why it’s being promoted. But yes. So, so why did I pick out those eight? How did the hateful eight make the list? So this is actually. There’s a lot of science behind that list. You wouldn’t think so you would think it’s just like a, a neat list of some oils that somebody came up with.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:06:50]:
And if you heard the term hateful eight, you probably never heard that there was a scientist behind it, but there is, and that scientist is me. And these are the eight oils that I’ve been warning about since I first started. And this was like many, many more than 20 years ago now. And I picked them out because of the fact that for most of them they were not cultivated for human use. For human, for, for oil content by humans. That’s one reason. So soy oil, that’s the most prevalent one. Soy oil was not used for, for humans like in, in Asia or ever really in history.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:07:29]:
It might have been used for lamps a little bit off and on because, you know, people needed to light their houses, they needed oil for that until electricity, but it was not used for human consumption. A lot of people don’t realize that because they think soy, you know, especially in the plant based community, they assume that, you know, soy and soybeans and tofu and all that kind of thing, people would have used soy oil. Right. It’s gotta be traditional. No, it wasn’t. Look it up. And, and so why we are eating it is because of machines, because we wanted to grow our own homegrown oil. Back in the early part of the 20th century, and this was before we had a network of petroleum developed nations that we were buying from.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:08:18]:
And so we just grew soy oil. And then once we got all set up with OPEC or, you know, after World War II, we, we had sources for petroleum. We didn’t need soy oil anymore. And it was basically a worthless product that they were, they were like okay, well, the farmers are still growing this. They still got it in their fields and the refineries, you know, are still built and what are we going to do with it? So they fed it to people. And there was no research before that happened to make sure it was safe too, because, you know, there’s a different refining process between what they would use for machines and what they would use for people. And there was no requirement to make sure that the refining process was going to make it safe. So, like that’s.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:09:10]:
And it’s not safe. It turns out that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot remove the toxins from soy oil. Even now. Even now. And. And that’s the same for the other members of the Hateful Eight team of bad seed oils. They contain toxins because of the inherent chemistry of the seed was just not bred for human consumption. So it does not release its oil properly and it’s just not oily enough.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:09:44]:
And there’s enzymes in there that will oxidize it when you crush it the way that they do in factories which are not present in peanut, peanuts and not present in sesame. And those peanut and sesame have this many thousands of years of, of breeding to be used as an, as a tasty, delicious culinary oil. So, so that’s the difference at, at the high level. And then there’s some chemistry behind it too, that has to do with the nature of the fats, the difference between the saturated and the monounsaturated butter, you know, being the famous high in saturated olive oil, being high in monounsaturated. And then these seed oils are high in polyunsaturates. And including sesame and peanut. But because they’ve been bred, it’s all right. They don’t have to put it through that factory refining, which destroys the protective factors that make it all right from when it comes from sesame and peanut.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:10:49]:
So that’s not the case in cottonseed oil. It’s not the case in soy oil. It’s not in case. The case in the other members of the Hateful Eight because they’re just too unstable. The chemicals, the fatty acids that are in the seed, these polyunsaturates that the car your cardiologist is going to tell you are healthy. Polyunsaturates are very unstable. And they don’t know that. Cardiologists do not know that.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:11:16]:
And they just don’t learn that kind of chemistry. Right. Like, you know, if you in the audience and now I’m talking to hadn’t heard the word polyunsaturated before don’t really know what it is. You’re not alone. Your doctor doesn’t either. And they don’t know that these things react with oxygen and, and turn into toxins. They degrade from a healthy, healthy nutrient that the plant made. When they react with oxygen, and they do in the factory, that that becomes a toxin.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:11:50]:
It breaks down into a toxin. And that is just a fact, and it’s not even disputed by the seed oil industry. That’s why they have to take such difficult and extreme measures of all the many different refining steps that they do, because they got to get rid of most of the toxins.

Nick Urban [00:12:12]:
When I was reading your book, I think you said there’s between 40 and 45 steps from harvesting the raw seed to what we receive on the shelves in the supermarkets.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:12:23]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s insane. And it’s a little different for different seeds. They have different, different issues, so they have to do, solve different problems. I mean, it’s insanely complicated. And it is just like a sign that we shouldn’t be eating these things, but, but we eat them because we grew them. And it’s as simple as that. It really needs.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:12:43]:
Needed to be the other way around. Right. That we, we should grow what we need to eat, but instead we’re eating what we needed to grow for the war for machines.

Nick Urban [00:12:55]:
It’s confusing because the bottles have the AMA heart healthy stamp on them. And how could that ever be wrong? But so what I think you’re saying is that a lot of the oils that we’ve bred for food consumption over the centuries, they’re protected by antioxidants inside the oil itself, such as maybe vitamin E. And that helps stabilize the PUFAs, the polyunsaturated fats, from breakdown in the body. And therefore they’re not, I guess, breakdown before you can reach the body and then also inside the body. So that helps protect it and gives it different properties than the oils which lose the natural antioxidants through the refining process.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:13:34]:
Yes. I mean, so the difference between like a peanut, which is high in polyunsaturates, but okay to eat, and you know, cottonseed, which is high in polyunsaturates, but. But not okay to eat, is that the breeding created this basically easy, free and easy source of oil where all you need to do is just squeeze it and you don’t get harm happening because there’s no enzymes that start oxidizing them and there’s myriad polyphenols. And so vitamin E is, is you know, technically it’s a polyphenol or it’s a, a phytonutrient. All these many, many different antioxidants that protect the oil. And it’s not just vitamin E, it’s. You need a whole team of antioxidants to prevent oxidation. So when, you know the soy soybeans have a lot of vitamin E, right? But they also have a lot of polyphenols.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:14:40]:
Most of the polyphenols and other antioxidants get removed, but they specifically isolate out some of the vitamin E that gets boiled off and they capture that and they add it back. So it has some vitamin E, but that doesn’t help much at all. It doesn’t help. You know, it helps like one kind of oxidation. Turns out that there’s all kinds of oxidation reactions, and that’s why you need so many different antioxidants. If you’re a plant, if you’re a seed, if you’re a human being, you. You don’t need plant antioxidants. You need human being antioxidants.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:15:22]:
So that’s a whole different strategy that humans have to fight oxygen. And the seed oils make that very difficult for our bodies. The seed oils make it impossible for our body’s own antioxidants to function properly. So that’s another way that they damage our cells, every cell in the body.

Nick Urban [00:15:42]:
The main things that break down these polyunsaturated fats, these are like the high temperatures, exposure to light, oxygen. Are there any other big ones that cause the breakdown?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:15:54]:
Well, yeah, so it’s. It’s mainly oxygen. And so it’s, I mean, it’s always oxygen. And so there’s other factors that accelerate the reaction between oxygen and the polyunsaturated fatty acids. Right? So the, it’s the removal of the factors that stabilize it is one of the problems. We just talked about that. But then there’s other things that accelerate the reaction. And heat is definitely one.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:16:21]:
Minerals are another. Like, for example, iron and magnesium. They can accelerate the reaction. So if you cooked your meat in soy oil, then you are accelerating the reaction because meat has iron, right? So the. And you’re heating it, so you’re really excelling accelerating the reaction. And so, you know, there a lot of folks doing a carnivore diet, the opposite of a vegan diet, are like, well, you know, I can eat all the meat at a restaurant. I don’t need to worry about seed oils because there’s not very much on it or in it, but there it’s kind of a super bad combination because of all the iron and the iron is very bioavailable and very available to the oxygen. Whereas if you’re talking about plants that iron is usually bound up unless bioavailable, unless reactive.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:17:16]:
And, and by the, you know, most vegetables don’t have appreciable amounts of iron. Only if you do.

Nick Urban [00:17:22]:
When I’ve read through your work though, I’ve seen that you’re not a fan. Even if the, those oils, the hateful eight are cold pressed, if they’re like meticulous, I say meticulously. If they go through the normal process with a less harsh approach than they usually do. But you also mentioned that by the time they’ve reached the shelves of the supermarket, unless they’re done in like small batches and really done in a different way than they usually are, they already contain all kinds of toxins and breakdown products.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:17:52]:
Yes. I mean that’s the problem is that you cannot stabilize the, you cannot prevent these reactions. Right. So once you, if you have a seed and you have run it through a factory and stripped it of all of its antioxidants, even by the time it’s left the factory, there’s already toxins in the bottle. Even before it’s opened, even before it sat on the shelf and been exposed to life, there’s already, because you can’t, you cannot clean it up. And they’re present in like parts per million or parts per billion depending on which toxin. Toxin. There’s multiple toxins.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:18:28]:
And that bottle is really an expensive experiment. It’s a chemistry set. And it’s a chemistry set that, that creates, it’s a live, living, you know, dynamic thing going on in there. It’s an experiment really. And it’s an experiment in generating toxins out of polyunsaturates because there’s always a little bit of oxygen in the bottle. You can’t remove it, they don’t eliminate it as you can. And so it’s a slow going chemistry set and slowly mutating and you accelerate it when you cook with it. And so just to give you like a handle on how toxic, how much toxin you’re eating, if you eat rest, a serving of fries from a restaurant, a large serving, you’re getting equivalent toxicity of smoking an entire pack of cigarettes.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:19:19]:
And that is measured by, you know, world renowned toxicologists. They tested french fries. They went to, they just drove up to a drive through and got a large serving and they tested a bunch of them and the average amount was equal to the Toxins that you get from smoking cigarettes. And, you know, it’s similar toxins, too. Now, that might be confusing. How would you get similar toxins from burning, from burning cigarettes to cooking in oil? And the answer is it’s just hydrocarbons, right? We’re, we’re talking about the same, fundamentally the same kind of chemicals that the molecules are made out of. And so when they react with oxygen, breaking down these similar molecules, you’re going.

Nick Urban [00:20:11]:
To get similar toxins during the manufacturing process. I mean, I think part of the confusion is like, okay, cold press with most oils is healthier. And I think that there’s a misconception that when you cold press one of these seed oils, you’re completely devoid of all the chemicals that are added during the manufacturing process. I think that hexane is sometimes still used. Is that correct?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:20:34]:
Well, yes. And so I. So understanding why these oils are toxic starts in the factory. And I take you on a journey through a factory in my book Dark Calories, right, in chapter one. And I explained there that it’s an absolute misnomer that expeller pressed or organic means that they’re healthy. All that it means is that it wasn’t extracted with hexane, that it was never touched by hexane. But everything else, all the problems are the exact same. It’s just that it’s not contaminated with trace amounts of hexane.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:21:15]:
Right? And the hexane is there, you know, in parts per billion or parts per trillion, because they do take pains to remove it. And hexane is less toxic than some of these other things that develop that I’m talking about that are the real problem with these oils. So it’s way off base to believe that it’s all right because it’s expeller pressed. It’s also way off base to blame the toxicity on hexane. And, you know, a lot of people who are talking about seed oils now, while they know hexane sounds bad and they haven’t really studied what I’m talking about very carefully because you really, honestly do have to put that thinking cap on when you’re. If you want to understand this stuff, there’s just no two ways around it. I do my best to lay it out and make it simple. And many people have told me that, you know, they don’t know anything about chemistry, but they sure have a handle on seed oils after they read my books carefully.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:22:21]:
So don’t be intimidated. You will understand it. And once you do, you will know way more than your doctor about These oils and then you will come to see just how, how little that they know about nutrition and how wrong they are when they start telling you that you need to take a medication to lower your cholesterol. Right. Because the, the, the whole reason seed oils were promoted as healthy is because they lower cholesterol. And that’s something that’s very, very important to understand that cholesterol is actually a nutrient and lowering cholesterol is actually bad. And I talk about that in the middle portion of Dark Calories and there’s three, three chapters that focus on this myth that seed oils are heart healthy and they reduce heart attacks and all this nonsense that we are taught in school. Dietitians are taught this and we don’t question it, but we need to question it because we’re hurting our patients with wrong headed science.

Nick Urban [00:23:25]:
Yeah, I think I’ve even seen some research that like these seed oils, they might improve a marker of what’s considered to be cardiovascular health like ldl C or ldlp. But it’s increasing oxidized ldl. And oxidized has is more correlated with like bad outcomes than just the LDLC or LDL pr.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:23:47]:
Right. Well, they don’t improve. So the first thing that you said is what everyone hears, which is that they improve biomarkers like ldl. They lower your ldl. But rewind to what I just said like three minutes ago. LDL doesn’t cause heart disease, cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease. And, and it’s very important to know, and so I explain this in the book, that when you lower your cholesterol, you are actually depriving your body of necessary nutrients. And so for doctors to say that seed oils or dietitians or anybody who’s like out there debunking that seed oils are bad when they say that they improve biomarkers of heart health, that is wrong.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:24:32]:
And they don’t even know it. They don’t, like you might think, oh, they’re paid to lie. No, they’re just miseducated and they really believe it. But they don’t know what they don’t know and that makes them dangerous.

Nick Urban [00:24:47]:
So you’ve mentioned megatrans in your work and I thought that trans fats were banned from food or at least discontinued and they’re no longer in the food supply.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:24:57]:
Yeah. So, okay, so megatrans is a term that I used in my book Deep Nutrition to describe the diversity of toxins that are produced when the, in the refining and that are basically in that bottle. And that self Multiply and create more of themselves. And so megatrans is just a term that I came up with. The correct chemical term is lipid oxidation products. But megatrans was a little shorter to type and. And people knew we were talking about trans fat at that point in time. So, like, mega, like, the point of that was that there’s a lot more of them and it’s a lot worse.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:25:39]:
But. Yeah, so I, I want people to know that, like, as bad as you might have heard trans fat is, the toxins in the bottles of vegetable oil are way worse. And now we don’t even have trans fat in the food supply anymore. So whether, you know, deep nutrition was originally written or published in 2008, and the trans fat ban didn’t go into effect until 2018. But now, even though we think we’re not eating trans fat, of course we’re eating trans fat, because these molecule. Trans fat is just, is, is not like one thing, it’s many things. In other words, trans is a kind of like bond. It’s, It’s a bond that is present in artificial fats and not in natural fats anywhere as near as much.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:26:32]:
Most natural fats are this other confirmation of a bond called a CIS bond. And, you know, now CIS and trans have totally different meanings, but it’s the same idea. Like CIS is on the same side, like the two hydrogens are coming off the same side and trans is on opposite side. So you’ve changed, right? So it’s, it’s changed from what it was, what nature makes, to being something that nature doesn’t make so much anymore. That’s the meaning in chemistry. And so the random mutations that occur to the chemicals, to the fatty acids in the factory, it’s just random reactions with oxygen. They’ll just randomly form in whatever shape. And so they’re not going to be natural shapes the way nature made it.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:27:19]:
So this is just another example of how, you know, how the toxins actually form and just how uneducated physicians and dietitians are who think that trans fats have been removed from the food supply. No, you’ll never do that, because until you get seed oils out, and even then you won’t fully do it because there are some naturally occurring trans fats. A trans is not the problem. It’s. It’s the fact that these are unstable and they react with oxygen. And all the things that I talk about in my book that makes them toxic and makes them destroy our mitochondria, destroy our cell membranes, destroy our abilities, our, you know, Our. Our body’s ability to function ideally and optimally so that vegetable oils really accelerate the aging process and bring about all these diseases.

Nick Urban [00:28:09]:
When I look through someone’s pantry and I see these hateful eight, it’s like the first thing I can do, like the lowest hanging fruit to make a radical difference in their overall health. And because of the half life of these fats in the body, can take a long time for it to be totally cleared out. What would you say is like the best substitutes that you recommend? You alluded to dairy fat earlier, and eliminating the hateful eight is obviously a good start. Where would you go from there?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:28:37]:
Yeah, so I have my favorite five that I always keep on hand, and that is butter is probably my favorite favorite. And then olive oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, and sesame oil. And I just love the flavors of peanut and sesame oil. And you know, those are polyunsaturated, so they will react with oxygen eventually. And so I’m just very careful to. I mean, I don’t use them for like deep frying. You know, I use them sort of at the end or for brief, like heating, you know, stir fry. That’s.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:29:07]:
You don’t cook it very long. So it’s great for those kinds of uses to add wonderful flavor and then those kinds of oils because nature protects them with all these beneficial antioxidants. You’re getting all these antioxidants, and they’re both pretty high in vitamin E as well. So you just get a lot of great nutrition with it along with that great flavor. Those are my favorite five. I always have them on hand.

Nick Urban [00:29:39]:
Yeah, they’re pretty simple to have. Is the main reason that cereals are used, just their cost. They’re very cheap because they’re basically an industrial product that are left over from previous other uses.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:29:54]:
Yes, I mean, it’s. We. That’s, you know, the crazy part of all this is that we eat what we grow, not we don’t grow what we need to eat. Right. So we. They were basically surplus. So the way it happened with soy oil, and again, that’s the main one, that’s like 80% of 80 to 90% of all the seed oils out there are coming from soy oil. The way that went down was that first it was grown for its oil, and then to get the oil, they have to press the soy.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:30:32]:
And pressing the soy out of the seeds creates a meal. They call it soy meal. Well, they fed that to animals. So cows used to be 100% grass fed all the time. So once they had this Soy meal. They were like, well, why don’t we start feeding this to animals? And by the end of World War II, they had restructured the food chain so that animals were like no longer getting pasture or grass. Whether it’s true, whether we’re talking about pork or, or beef or chicken, all the animals started being more confinement fed on meals, just meals. It was cornmeal and soy meal and silage instead of their natural forage.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:31:15]:
And so now we had the opposite problem. Now we needed to produce meal for animals and we didn’t know what to do with oil. And that’s why we ate it, that’s why they sold it to American consumers. And I talk about how we convinced American consumers to buy this not very tasty oil and replace, you know what they were used to replace delicious butter with soy oil. That’s really important to understand that story, but I don’t think we have time to go into it. But it has to do with the American Heart association and just basically buying doctors who are willing, scientists who are willing to not tell the truth for money.

Nick Urban [00:31:58]:
Sad that that happens more than it should. Do you recommend anything for people who want a say? The pushback I hear sometimes is like in baking and different things. These oils, the healthier five or just other non seed oils, they don’t have the same properties or they have a taste and it alters the final result. Are there any things that are like direct substitutes?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:32:24]:
I’m not sure I understand. Substitutes for the seed oils or substitutes for the flavors? If you don’t like the flavors.

Nick Urban [00:32:30]:
Yeah. That are like neutral in the flavor, but then they also have like the same properties when they’re baked with and used in different applications. Because the pushback I’ve heard around butter and certain other things is that they alter the recipe. It doesn’t turn out the same way.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:32:42]:
Yes. And what I would say is, there you are, you can make anything you want without seed oils because that’s what people used to do. I mean, cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, pie crusts, donuts, you know, apple fritters, you name it. You can make crackers. I mean, you can make anything at home without seed oils. Just find a better recipe and, you know, you don’t need a neutral oil. That’s one of these lies that they’ve convinced like I, you know, they’ve not only have they convinced doctors that these things are heart healthy, they’ve convinced chefs that it’s okay to use seed oils because they’re neutral and that you really want a neutral flavor. No, you don’t.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:33:26]:
You want flavor. Why do you want non flavor you want. So you’re telling me that every teaspoon of seed oils has 100 calories and it’s not going to bring any new great taste. That’s a ripoff right there. Like that. You lost me already. And so if you have a cookie, I guarantee the two cookies probably has like a one and a half tablespoons, at least one, at least 100 calories going to be coming from, you know, the fat. And if it’s coming from a seed oil, it’s not adding flavor.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:34:01]:
But if you use butter, it adds tons of flavor, or if you use coconut, it adds tons of flavor. So, yeah, like there is no such thing as. I mean, I guess to directly answer, counter that myth is flavor is nutrition. And if you’re eating a flavorless oil, you’re getting a nutritionless oil. There’s no nutrition in it. It’s empty calories. Do you really want that? I mean, we know cookies aren’t exactly health food, but they at least could have some kind of nutrition if it’s made with a healthy, like butter, for example, has vitamins A and D and E and some K in there and healthy essential fatty acids, omega 3. That’s a lot of seed oils do not have omega 3, except canola oil.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:34:49]:
So a coconut, you know, has wonderful flavors and, you know, it’s got unique fatty acids that have unique properties that are good for us too. So don’t believe, don’t, don’t fall for that. You need a neutral oil.

Nick Urban [00:35:03]:
Yeah. And if I also think through other oils such as non extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil, those probably don’t have the same level of polyphenols and other substances within them that give them the same health benefits as like the other alternatives.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:35:19]:
Exactly. Like, because they’ve been rendered neutral, the nutrients have been removed, the polyphenols have flavor, the. Even vitamins have some flavor. Right. We can. They. All these nutrients that we remove during refining had benefits to our body. At least a lot of them do.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:35:39]:
And so if you’re getting a flavorless oil, you’re getting a nutritionless oil. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be toxic. So that’s really important to understand that it’s not like it’s toxic or healthy. There is this middle category and the refined palm oil, refined coconut oil, the neutral oils that are not polyunsaturated as much, they are in this middle category where they’re empty calories. And if that’s what you need to do. Because that’s what you need to do. That’s fine. You’re not, you know, you’re just missing out on flavor.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:36:13]:
I was, you know, I would just be like, you know, if you can afford a better oil that’s going to have flavor, you’re going to like your food better. But some people just can’t afford that and they have to do the refined versions of it.

Nick Urban [00:36:25]:
Dr. K, earlier you mentioned some of the different things that consuming seed oils can do to you. And that’s not just oxidative stress. I think that’s a bit vague of a term for the average person listening in. They don’t understand the implications of that. You mentioned the impact on mitochondria in your book Deep Nutrition. You mentioned how when the seed oils reach the gut, then they mix with stomach acid and they become 4HNE. 4H E, I think it is, and maldonaldehyde and other toxins and the impacts on the.

Nick Urban [00:36:58]:
Has on the whole body. What are some of the other effects that people notice? Or they’re occurring biochemically when we consume seed oils.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:37:07]:
Yeah. So one of the most common ones is. Right. Where the seed oils enter our body, they start inflaming the intestinal tract and it can start in the mouth and it can start in the esophagus. A lot of people get heartburn. Or they get. It’ll end up with pain in the stomach. That’ll be gastritis.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:37:26]:
Or you’ll have dysfunction of your gut and you’ll get bloating after you eat. Or you’ll end up with so much inflammation in your gut that you’re diagnosed with irritable bowel. Right. And you have chronic diarrhea or chronic constipation or just chronic pain and chronic bloating from your gut. That goes away when you get off seed oils. For most people, if it doesn’t 100% go away, it’ll definitely improve. Especially if you’ve been eating a lot. Especially if you’ve been eating the worst of the worst, which are the fried foods and the snack chips and the stuff like that.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:37:57]:
Yeah. So that’s just one example. And there are millions more. Because every process, our body has probably millions of processes. And these oils, because they are so full of toxins that are so powerful, can disrupt all of those processes. They can. They can. After years of eating them, they change your cravings so that you become a sugar addict.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:38:20]:
That happened to me. Or a carboholic that happens to a Lot of people who struggle with weight. Right. So it’s just every problem that you suffer from, whatever it is, you write it down. Write down your list. Not one of them are going to get worse when you avoid seed oils. And I bet at least one of them will go away completely if you stop them for six months, and probably all of them will get dramatically better.

Nick Urban [00:38:50]:
It also changes the composition of the membrane around each of your cells, doesn’t it?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:38:56]:
Well, it does and doesn’t. So that. And this where it gets a little complicated, and there’s a lot of people talking about that. And it depends on what cell we’re talking about, because the body tries its best to regulate exactly the composition of the membranes, but in some places it has a harder time, like red blood cells. And certain, certain cells are very well regulated and certain cells aren’t. But. So the change in the composition of the membrane isn’t really what makes them dangerous. It’s the fact that they deplete our antioxidants.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:39:26]:
And when we do that, we open up our cell membranes to attack by oxygen and free radical formation and all this bad stuff that we. That is what brings on all diseases. This, these terms we’ve been using are the root causes of all diseases. And that is not controversial. Oxidative stress is a root cause of all known diseases. And so for dietitians to say, oh, no, seed oils aren’t that bad, they’re saying the root cause of all known diseases doesn’t, you know, doesn’t matter. Go ahead and eat it.

Nick Urban [00:40:02]:
So let’s unpack that, because that’s also a really important point to cover, oxidative stress being the root of all disease. People have heard that it’s inflammation, and oxidative stress and inflammation are not the same thing. But also, as I understand it, certain things that we do might create some level of oxidative stress. And perhaps the benefits of that activity, say, exercise, outweigh the increase in oxidative stress. What’s your take there?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:40:27]:
Let’s break that question into. Just like there was a lot of different questions in there. So. So pick one.

Nick Urban [00:40:34]:
All right, let’s explore oxidative stress, just what it is and why that’s so important to address as a root of disease.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:40:40]:
Oxidative stress, what is it? That is the loss of control of oxygen by our bodies. And, you know, we have oxygen all of our cells. That’s why we breathe. That’s why we constantly need to breathe. And oxygen is a very powerful molecule. That’s why it can burn down A forest, it can burn down your house. It’s oxygen oxidizing the wood. So we don’t want oxygen to go out of control in our cells.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:41:05]:
It’s not going to make us spontaneously combust in a, in an instant. But you could almost think of these diseases as sort of like slow motion, spontaneous combustion. But that’s what oxidative stress is. Another oxidation reaction that’s familiar is when you slice an apple and let it sit around in the air for a few minutes, it starts to turn brown. Those are oxidation reactions that occur because when you slice the apple and you open it up there, there was no oxygen in there. Now there is. And you’ve also damaged some cell cells. You so, so that you’ve really exposed the cell membranes to oxygen and it will get, it’ll turn brown.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:41:43]:
That is like an extreme example of what does happen in our cells. Like little segments of our cell membranes become damaged when we have ox and when we, you know, our cells are, are like living dynamic. They’re very complex. They’re like miniature cities enclosed in a, you know, in a little three dimensional sphere. And the sphere, like compared to a balloon, that outer sphere of the water, like a water balloon, is a membrane that’s like your cell membrane. And in there is a million more different types of membranes. So it’s a lot more complicated than a water balloon. But all of those membranes inside your cell can become damaged from oxidative stress.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:42:26]:
And so, you know, your cell can’t function normally and it needs. When that happens, the body can’t tell why it happened, they just know that it happened. And so the body mounts an inflammatory response when there’s such a crazy dysfunction going on inside a cell that the membranes are just not working right and being attacked by oxygen. And so that’s why we get inflammatory responses from seed oils in our diet. It has nothing to. Do you notice I said nothing about Omega 6 and Omega 3, which is a myth circulating out there that a lot of people are talking about. Seed oils have come to, you know, glom onto that because it sounds simple, right? Oh, it’s an imbalance of a 3 and a 6 ratio. I know those numbers.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:43:12]:
They sound simple. And what I’m talking about can sound more complicated. But what I’m talking about is really true. And what they’re talking about is oversimplified and untrue. Sorry. You know, the body is complicated. It’s. What we’re talking about are the mechanisms of life.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:43:30]:
You know, it’s gonna be complicated. But I do and I hope you agree with me, Nick, that in the book when you actually. What, did you read Dark Calories yet?

Nick Urban [00:43:37]:
Yeah, I read part of it. And I’m. I’m focusing more on deep nutrition right now because I tend to not read books that are multiple years old. I feel like they’re either timeless and like, very, very old, or they’re like brand new off the press. But now that I’m going back through this, I’m like, wow, there’s a lot here, even though it was published many years ago, not that many, but a lot that still holds very true in light of, like, the new research and the new things that I’m learning at the same time.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:44:02]:
Yeah, so. And I hope, like, you agree that, like, there is science in there, but it’s easy to understand because of the way that it’s written. It’s logical. Right. We’re just following some logic and, you know, we can understand. You can understand, anyone can understand very complicated topics as long as they’re explained logically. And so that’s why it takes so long for me to write my books, because it’s very hard to make these complicated concepts tell, to tell a logical, clear story around them. But that’s what I strive to do with all of my books.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:44:34]:
The. The older ones like Deep Nutrition, which was re released in 2017, and then the newest, latest one, which was just released less than a year ago.

Nick Urban [00:44:43]:
Yeah, I think Brain Killer, the chapter I’m on is chapter eight, and there’s already 350 references to the research. But you also word it in a way that makes it very easy to digest.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:44:55]:
So fear not. Right. Like, if it seems like there’s going to be crazy, sciencey, you know, things you’re going to have to learn and memorize. Absolutely not. It’s one concept builds on another builds. And the concepts are intuitive concepts, not like research concepts.

Nick Urban [00:45:13]:
Well, this is related to our current discussion, but one of the things you mentioned in, like, a study that caught my eye that you referenced was New Zealand researchers that concluded after 30 days of a fish oil supplement just sitting on the shelves at 4 degrees, actually C. Celsius, so chilled that it was too heavily oxidized at that point to be considered a nutritional, healthy supplement.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:45:39]:
Right. So fish oils are similar to seed oils in that they have this polyunsaturated fatty acid problem. Polyunsaturated fatty acids don’t oxidize easily. And so fish oils oxidize easily, and they oxidize even easier than seed oils so easily that even encapsulated you know, somewhat protected from oxygen that way and even chilled within 30 days. There’s, it’s, there’s significant toxicity having developed so significant that it was considered unacceptable. You really should need it. And I think that this is probably why a lot of people used to have, you know, intolerance too. Like they would burp, right? A lot of people, and they did something to make the burps go away.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:46:31]:
They probably improved the process a little bit, but they still don’t control for oxidation. And I think that’s why studies on, on fish oils are contradictory. Some studies show that they improve something and some, some study studies show that they don’t. It’s like a toss of the dice. It’s, you know, so it’s not, it’s not really known really whether or not most supplements are beneficial. And my guess would be probably not because of what I just said about the logic of chemistry there. If toxins form from oxidizing the oils, then they’re not going to be beneficial for your health. Don’t eat them.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:47:14]:
Same applies to seed oils. Why that’s controversial speaks to the massive miseducation campaign that started in the 1940s that I talk about in Dark Calories where I talk about the lies that the American Heart association teaches doctors. People really need to know that.

Nick Urban [00:47:35]:
It’s interesting because the fish oils are touted as like one of the most essential supplements right after vitamins, minerals and then fish oils often. I was looking to it earlier today that when fish oils are transported, they have to have like a warning or procedures in place because they sometimes spontaneously combust.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:47:53]:
Really, they’ll like catch fire.

Nick Urban [00:47:55]:
I guess it’s because they’re so fragile. I’m not sure why exactly that happens, but that’s a unique thing to fish oil transportation in the big shipping cargo containers.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:48:03]:
Wow. You gotta put that link in the show notes and I want you to send it to me, please.

Nick Urban [00:48:09]:
Awesome. Well, we’ve covered a good amount of ground. I want to leave people on an optimistic note of what they can do. You’ve already mentioned some of the oils, but let’s just refresh everyone’s memory of what is the best way to go forward, knowing that seed oils probably aren’t going to be something they should consider for their long term or even short term health. And I challenge anyone who’s listening in, if you pick up either of Dr. Kate’s two books and she has others as well, convince me that you read the book and that you still are convinced that seed oils are worth having in your diet. And I’ll be very impressed. So, Dr.

Nick Urban [00:48:48]:
Kate, any final words?

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:48:50]:
Please come to my website, drkate.com because I am about to launch a course that will walk you through, step by step. What is the first thing you need to do to rehabilitate your body from all the damage that seed oils are doing? How do you get rid of your sweet tooth? How do you change your cravings so that you actually enjoy healthy food? How do you even make healthy food? What does it look like? How do you stock your fridge? All these practical, practical things that are just not part of our lives anymore. I want you to have that in your life because that is the path to health and I want to empower you with that. So sign up for my [email protected] and when I launch the course, you’ll be notified.

Nick Urban [00:49:34]:
And you also have some great recipes, too, for people who want to make nutrition delicious and not feel deprived from not having their oils. So thank you for that.

Dr. Cate Shanahan [00:49:42]:
Yes, it’s so fun. I just love, like, I mean, discovering new, delicious recipes and I want everybody to have that kind of empowerment. It’s just like, it feels so empowering to be able to. I can cook whatever I want.

Nick Urban [00:49:54]:
There you go, guys. DrKate.com, you can pick up either any of her books and join her new course. And until next time, be an outlier. Thanks for tuning in to high performance longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.