Cate Shanahan Quotes

“As far as your body’s cells are concerned, healthy diets are all essentially the same, resting on the same Four Pillars: meat on the bone, fermented and sprouted foods, organs and other 'nasty bits', and fresh, unadulterated plant and animal products.”

“Eliminating vegetable oils will enable symptoms of all sorts of brain disorders to improve from autism to Alzheimer's.”

“Epigenetic researchers study how our own genes react to our behavior, and they’ve found that just about everything we eat, think, breathe, or do can, directly or indirectly, trickle down to touch the gene and affect its performance in some way.”

“Fermentation and sprouting are crucial for one simple reason: Plants didn’t evolve with the idea that they should be good to eat. In fact, plants spend a great deal of energy thwarting overzealous grazers and other creatures that would gladly eat them into oblivion.

Not as helpless as they may seem, plants protect their foliage, stems, seeds, roots, and to a lesser degree even their fruits, with natural insecticides and bitter toxins that make some plants unsafe for human consumption.”

“In a sense, our lifestyles teach our genes how to behave. In choosing between healthy or unhealthy foods and habits, we are programming our genes for either good or bad conduct.

Scientists are identifying numerous techniques by which two sets of identical DNA can be coerced into functioning dissimilarly.”

“In effect, DNA seems capable of collecting information — through the language of food — about changing conditions in the outside world, enacting alteration based on that information, and documenting both the collected data and its response for the benefit of subsequent generations.”

“No combination of supplements has the right balance of bioavailable minerals and collagen-derived growth factors to fortify your body as effectively as meat on the bone.”

“Since for every instance of vegetable oil use there’s a far better and tastier alternative, why not just go with a healthier, tastier fat? Switch out the canola oil dressing for an olive oil alternative. If you can’t find one, make one yourself.

Instead of the usual brand-name mayo, have a taste of Primal Kitchen’s new mayo product, which I can tell you is pretty good. At your local restaurant, where they no doubt fry the fish in a vegetable oil or 'blended oil', ask if they can cook yours using butter.

If you want to make yourself a batch of home-fries, make sure it’s either peanut oil or (if you can afford it) duck fat, and that you change the oil after every couple uses.”

“So the Deep Nutrition formula for weight loss is simple: Get rid of inflammation that blocks cellular communication, and eat foods that enable you to convert fat cells into healthier tissues.

Of course, there’s more to health than a healthy diet. Sleep and physical activity generate other chemicals that help your body know what you are expecting of it.

So in order to reshape your body and achieve maximum health, your regimen must include eating real food, resting properly, reducing stress, and doing the right kinds of exercise.”

“Taking action based on what a given study recommends would require personal initiative on the part of individual healthcare providers. But as corporate culture goes, so goes medical culture.

We live in the age of consensus and groupthink, where otherwise curious and capable professionals avoid being singled out by huddling in the center of the herd. The herd, in turn, waits for an authority figure to lead the way.

So if there is no authority figure acknowledging the importance of a given article’s findings, nothing happens. It’s as though it were never written.”

“Though you can boil, extract, and refine living tissue to isolate the protein, carb, or fat, you do so only at the cost of everything else that held the cells and organs together.

Yanking certain components from living systems — as we do to make flour, sugar, protein slurries, and 90 percent of what’s now for sale in the store — and expecting them to approximate their original nutritional value is like removing someone’s brain from their body and expecting it to respond to questions.

That is not science; it is science fiction. So is the idea that heavily processed food can be healthy.”

“Vegetable oils make your brain more susceptible to damage by sugar.”

“What you need to cut from your diet:

1) Vegetable oil
2) Added sugar and honey (to tea, coffee, etc.)
3) Soda
4) Juice, except fresh squeezed. (Why not just eat the fruit? It’s got more fiber and more antioxidants!)
5) Energy bars and 'health' bars
6) Boxed cereals
7) Fried fast foods
8) Powdered 'proteins', and powdered milk
9) Salad dressings made with any kind of vegetable oil, including canola
10) Low-fat products, including milk, cheese, salad dressings, cookies, and other baked goods
11) Snacks and desserts — if you want to lose weight”

“When I interviewed with the Chief of Family Medicine at a large medical corporation on the West Coast, he explained that, since he was part of a team of people who arranged for pharmaceutical companies to issue cash grants, he was in a position to offer me a particularly enticing salary.

“What are the grants for?” I asked. “We have a quality improvement program that tracks physician prescribing patterns. We call it ‘quality’ but it’s really about money.”

And that’s all it’s about. It works like this. In his organization, any patient with LDL cholesterol over 100 is put on a cholesterol-lowering medication.

Any person with a blood pressure higher than 140/90 is put on a blood pressure medication. Any person with 'low bone density' is put on a bone-remodeling inhibitor. And so on.

The doctors who prescribe the most get big bonuses. Those who prescribe the least get fired. With a hint of incredulousness in his voice, he explained, “So far, every time we’ve asked for funding for our program, the drug companies give it to us.”

If this is where healthcare is headed, then these hybrid physicians-executives will instinctively turn their gaze to our children and invent more creative methods to bulldoze an entire generation into the bottomless pit of chronic disease.”

“When you have finished reading this book, you will have completely revised the way you think about food. We’re going to do away with calorie counting and struggling to find the perfect ratio of carbs to protein to fat.

These terms aren’t useful because they say nothing about what really matters about your food. Food is like a language, an unbroken information stream that connects every cell in your body to an aspect of the natural world.

The better the source and the more undamaged the message when it arrives to your cells, the better your health will be.”

“Why vegetable oil is your brain's worst enemy

Vegetable oils attack the brain at seven distinct vulnerability points using seven distinct strategies.

All seven strategies are at work in causing autism and other childhood neurologic disorders.”