The Meat Mafia Podcast

Dr. Cate Shanahan is a renowned nutrition expert and author of "Deep Nutrition" and "Dark Calories." In this episode she delves into the hidden truths behind modern nutrition and the profound impact of seed oils on our health. With over a decade of research and a passion for uncovering the root causes of disease, Dr. Cate provides invaluable insights into how our diet influences metabolic health and chronic diseases. Tune in as she shares her journey, discoveries, and actionable advice for achieving optimal health through better nutrition.

Key topics discussed:

- Impact of seed oils on brain health and metabolism.
- Insulin resistance caused by oxidative stress from seed oils.
- How seed oils change metabolism and increase sugar cravings.
- Practical solutions for reducing oxidative stress and improving metabolic health.
- Influence of prenatal consumption of seed oils on child development.


Timestamps:

(00:00) Seed Oils and Brain Health
(15:50) Impact of Seed Oils on Health
(26:15) Empowering Primary Care Doctors With Information
(30:00) Author's Excitement for Book Success


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Creators & Guests

Host
Brett Ender 🥩⚡️
The food system is corrupt and trying to poison us... I will teach you how to fight back. Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod 🥩
Host
Harry Gray 🥩⚡️
Leading the Red Meat Renaissance 🥩 ⚡️| Co-Host of @themeatmafiapod

What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?

The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry with the mission of addressing fundamental problems in our food and healthcare system. Our concerns with our healthcare system can be drawn back to issues in our food system as far back as soil health. Our principles are simple: eat real foods, buy locally, and cook your own meals.

When you listen to our podcast, you will hear stories and conversations from people working on the fringes of the food and healthcare system to address the major crises overshadowing modern society: how do we become healthy again?

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P2Cate
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Speaker: [00:00:00] one of the chapters that stood out to me in your book was, um, fat bodies, starving brains. And I, I think the, the neurological health and brain health aspect of this is really interesting. So I'd love to just kind of get your, get your take on that chapter and what context people should be aware of when it comes to seed oils and brain health.

Speaker 2: Yeah, because actually, um, I wrote that chapter and then I found out that a bunch of other doctors. medical doctors in psychiatry are using a keto diet and talking about how it improves brain energy. And so in, in chapter four, I talk about how the fact that these seed oils have changed our metabolism and they're not giving our cells energy.

I talk about how that causes something called hypoglycemia symptoms, right? We get like this falling, like we feel like our blood sugar is falling. We get brain fog, we get irritability. And we [00:01:00] get this abnormal form of hunger called hangry. That's why I call it starving brains are hangry is your brain is having an energy emergency.

And that's really important to understand because so many people now experience hangry and they think the solution is, well, I just need a snack. No, the, the needing a snack is, is a symptom of the problem. And if you continue to snack, you are not going to resolve that root problem of oxidative stress.

And you are very likely to just gradually gain weight. Like most people who slowly their weight creeps up over their lives, often they're snackers and they have a little snack here, a little snack there. They carry some food around so they can function while they're on the, on the, on the go or at work.

Um, And sometimes it doesn't creep up. But the problem is that our brains are starving for energy. We can't use our [00:02:00] body fat. So we keep eating. We can build fat that we can't burn. And the solution is we have to be able to start burning our body fat. So I, I, I walk you through the solution to that, which, which is.

Not to start by losing weight like right now, the metabolic health field is dominated by the thought that, um, or obesity medicine may be more than metabolic health dominated by the thought that being overweight is the problem. And all you need to do is lose weight doesn't matter how you do it. Any diet is going to work because you lose weight on any diet.

It's true. You lose weight on any diet, but it doesn't fix the problem. The problem that you have body fat that you can't burn, you have less of it. And now you forced yourself to burn some of it. And gee whiz, this is maybe why we see that people who yo yo diet have a harder and harder time losing weight every single time, [00:03:00] because perhaps they've really damaged their body.

They've subjected their cells to oxidative stress. Now they have fewer, um, fewer reserves that help them fight off. oxidative stress, which will happen when they burn their body fat. So you have to, you know, they have a harder time burning their body fat. And some very strange things happen when you can't burn your body fat because it's full of, um, oxidative stress inducing fat.

A lot of people have told me that they don't want to move, that they will do anything to avoid Burning the body fat in their muscles because it makes them feel hot, like they're suffocating and that's what oxidative stress can do. That is energy being released as heat instead of ATP. You see, so our cells, when we have to [00:04:00] burn body fat that they don't want to burn unstable body fat, they can't generate energy.

Cellular energy is called ATP. Okay. But they can generate free radicals, which release heat. It's like an old car with an inefficient engine that doesn't get the same kind of gas mileage. It'll heat up. It'll run hotter. That's because of oxidative stress. It does the same thing to engines as it does to.

our mitochondria.

Speaker: It's so interesting. I think, you know, when I, when I'm hearing you talk, I'm thinking about friends that I know who are struggling to lose weight and the multitude of layers that they're struggling with, not only from just like the energy perspective of having less energy to begin with as someone who's carrying extra body fat around, But also somebody who maybe is like just struggling to, to move because [00:05:00] they're, um, you know, as you're, as you're saying, like, they just don't have that, that will, or, you know, their body is actually, um, heating up to the point where, like, they're not willing or able to, you know, be able to actually go burn that, um, extra weight.

So, you know, I think about the layers that it takes to actually. really comprehend, like, getting yourself to a place of true health, and there are all these, like, shortcuts being thrown out there for people, but what it would take somebody to really re establish a firm foundation of health these days, it needs to be a slow process.

It, it can't be something that happens overnight. It needs to be small habits that slowly leap, seep into everything that you do. Um, if you want it to be a bedrock of You know, if you want to get to a point where you have this bedrock of good health and not just be yo yo dieting for the next 20, 30 years,

Speaker 2: right?

So metabolic health comes down to being able to [00:06:00] be energized and, and the name that we have for, uh, well, your friends who are overweight, they have a metabolic, they have metabolic damage and they. They can probably, they feel it when they are, when you're saying that they feel like they don't want to move or they're fatigued.

That is a sign of metabolic damage. Difficulty losing weight and getting hungry, um, does sign of metabolic damage. We need to give this metabolic damage a name, and we actually have a name for it. But in order to cure it and understand it better, we need to give it a name. And the name is insulin resistance.

And in chapter three, I talk about my energy model of insulin resistance. And I explain in that chapter, why oxidative stress is the root cause of insulin resistance and why watching your vegetable oils is actually more important. then eliminating your carbs down to zero levels. You can just use healthier forms of carbs, but you don't need to eliminate carbs.

And in fact, you may not want [00:07:00] to. So there's so much that, um, is changes in our metabolism. When, you know, vegetable oils have taken hijacked our metabolism, basically, um, they direct us, they make us hungry so often that they direct us change our tastes. They, they make us crave sugar. Um, and this is what the chapter fat bodying, starving, fat body, starving brains talks about is that we are met when you have insulin resistance, you're metabolically addicted to sugar, metabolically addicted, your cells need it because when they burn sugar, they can get more energy than when they burn fat.

And some complicated things happen and then in the end you end up with higher blood sugar levels and and higher insulin levels and eventually we call that type two diabetes. But the root cause is oxidative stress and it doesn't come from carbohydrates or sugar primarily. It comes primarily from the fact that 30 percent of our calories are vegetable [00:08:00] oils and they promote oxidative stress.

And so what was it that like resonated with you in that chapter? Um, the starving brains chapter.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, it was really the fact that we're kind of setting people up to fail. Um, if like their brains aren't getting the energy they need, how they're already starting from a place lesser than, you know, somebody who has decent or good health.

Um, you know, if the introduction of seed oils is causing their brains not to get what they need in terms of energy, then, you know, if they're running into these metabolic issues. It just seems like we're steepening the curve to actually get people healthier through diet and lifestyle intervention. And, you know, I think mental health and energy are very closely intertwined and it really speaks to the [00:09:00] vim and energy that you're able to put out into the world.

Um, and I just think that the handicap there really is quite sad because, um, you know, I do think that people who are struggling with health problems, you know, it does take a lot of energy to then start to implement some of these changes. Like habit formation is not an easy feat for a lot of people.

We're reprogramming and unprogramming habits that you've formed over decades potentially. And so the mental energy that it takes to just form those habits Is a lot. So I think that that handicap that people, um, who might be, have just gotten used to consuming a lot of seed oils and now it's disrupting their metabolism.

I think it's really, um, alarming. And I think that your, your chapter here like really hits the nail on the head.

Speaker 2: Yes. I, you know, it, it is, uh, it does, like, I like what you said, like they're deprived, right? They, um, what is a good day? Like, [00:10:00] how, how do you feel when you, uh, wake up full of energy, right.

Compared to how do you feel when you, you know, for maybe it's just lack of sleep, don't have energy. But if you have lack of sleep and you have this damage to your metabolism, you're going to have just kind of a bad, a worse day every single day. Right? If you wake up full of energy, you feel like you can take the world on, you know, at least for that little day, you know, you don't dread the little things you're like, yeah, no problem.

And life throws you curve balls. But when you have energy, you can just handle it. You can roll with the punches. But when you don't have energy, everything is just. It's so hard to deal with mentally, you know, you can't sometimes even process, right? So some people who are completely normal weight. Have these problems what I found when I, um, was doing the research for this book was that [00:11:00] 99 plus percent of people in America are insulin resistant.

That means everybody's got this metabolic damage, just about everybody who isn't like a seed oil of order, avoid or from. You know, either because they know about it or because they just love cooking and they, they, um, or the rich, right. And someone else cooks good food for them. But the vast, vast majority of people have this insulin resistance and that includes normal weight people.

So insulin resistance. Makes you gain weight. It's not the other way around, which is what the way doctors talk about it now that being overweight is the cause of insulin resistance. So all we need to do is lose a little bit of weight and we start to see some metabolic health improvements.

Speaker 3: Um,

Speaker 2: but they don't keep going and you can't lose the rest of the weight, right?

You can see a little bit of weight because mostly what I think the most, um, I'm referring here to studies on weight loss that, um, show you can [00:12:00] improve your blood pressure. You can somewhat improve your blood sugar. Um, you can somewhat improve your body composition with weight loss by any means. But usually weight loss by any means is cutting out a little bit of the seed oils because people going on a diet at their doctor's advice.

They usually cut out the chips and the fast foods and, you know, the cracker snacks and stuff like that. And they try to upgrade their diets a little bit. So they are cutting out the CETOs. They're also certainly trying to cut out the sugar. But the point I want to make in that chapter four with fat bodies, starving brains is that if your brain doesn't have energy, you're going to crave energy in the fastest form that you can get it.

And that is usually sugar, sugary beverages. And I think this is why moms who, um, have children who have [00:13:00] been fed seed oils, not mom's fault, doctors don't tell them, don't help them with this. So children have been basically raised on seed oils and infant formula and totter formula, which are made out of these things.

And then all the snack foods, seed oils. And then they're also told, Oh, your kid is overweight now you need to stop the soda. But that child has a meltdown between meals if he doesn't get soda. So the mom is in this place where like, you're telling me I can't give my child something I think he needs because his behavior is all offline.

And that's the point of fat body, starving brains. It's not just us. You know, our age people trying to work or trying to intentionally diet, it's affecting kids

Speaker 4: and it's

Speaker 2: changing their relationship with food and it's driving their parents and their families crazy because they don't understand the problem and neither does their doctor.

They can't explain this crazy behavior and why their children are so insane for sugar. But I just [00:14:00] explained it in that in that chapter, so it is explainable and there's something you can do about it besides, you know, listen to more screaming and have your doctor should finger wag at you

Speaker: what I think is so powerful about this chapter in the book in general is.

What you're hitting on here is talking about how health changes our perception of the world around us. So it isn't necessarily just about these CEDAWs being bad for us in the sense of making us like fat and look bad. It's These are actually causing us to interact with the world in a different way, show up in relationships in a different way, because your brain is now tied to an entirely different metabolic system.

And it's, it's not one that's promoting good health. It's one that's actually not getting you the energy that your body is accustomed to receiving over decades and centuries of biological, um, like our biological [00:15:00] makeup and just how we're designed. So, To me, it's, it's so much more than just health in this entire conversation.

And this is like what Brett and I talk a lot about on the show is getting your health in order is a cornerstone moment for people to then be able to show up in their life and live with intention and go pursue the things that they want to pursue and be around and influence the people that they want to be able to influence, whether it's their kids, their wife.

their wife, their wife, their immediate family. Like there's so many benefits from getting your health in order. And this one to me just, It's this one that I think just sits at the center of everything, you know, where, where we're talking about how do we get our energy and where are we getting our energy from?

And that's changed.

Speaker 2: I'm glad you think so. Um, so yes, because I, you know, that's why I called it the energy model of insulin resistance, because energy is at the center of how we interact with people in our lives. [00:16:00] You know, lack of energy, we, What is it? What do we call it? Like when a child needs their nap, right?

That's a meltdown. They have all kinds of behavioral, like it's normally a good channel. I don't know why he's behaving this way. Oh, he didn't get his nap. And what do you do very often? You can give him some sugar, right? That's energy. Children do need their naps, but they need them more desperately. And you know, the seed oil thing affecting children, I think is a, um, is a big, big family problem because It makes it hard to get children healthy food and and it makes children like little addicts, like they're manipulating their parents to get them the sugary fix that they literally need in order to function.

Speaker 4: Like, uh,

Speaker 2: you know, like the way they want in order to not feel bad, they need their sugar fix and they won't manipulate their parents. So they will have meltdowns [00:17:00] in public, right? I mean, it's just how this has changed the parent child relationship. I mean, I think we kind of see it in the fact that now how many parents Eat the same foods as their children.

Their children are running the show,

Speaker: right?

Speaker 2: And those foods are going to be the starchier quick energy foods. So the plan in the back of dark calories, the last third of dark calories, you know, put on your own oxygen mask for start getting yourself to where you feel energy, follow the plan yourself first.

But as much as you. Can get your children to get on board. It's going to pay itself back in spades because they'll, they'll be behaving better. You'll be able to handle them better. Right. So it's just, um, it's a complete. It's the opposite of a vicious cycle where, you know, [00:18:00] the, where people are trapped now, right?

The lack of energy leads them to process foods, more vegetable oils, more refined carbohydrates. That's a vicious cycle. That's the processed food industry having American consumers exactly where they want them. That's a vicious cycle. It also leads you to the doctor with all kinds of symptoms that they can then throw drugs at you to treat.

So the drug company really likes this too. Um, but the virtuous cycle will free you from all of that and it will. Give you, it all starts with getting energy and getting the healthy fats in your diet and learning the few other strategies that will help your body recover from the metabolic damage that it has right now due to seed oils as quickly and as easily and as deliciously, hopefully as possible.

Speaker: I love that. Is there, was there anything that you found in your research or in the process of writing this book [00:19:00] on prenatal? Like if a mother is consuming vegetable oils, is there anything at play there where like it's affecting the health of the baby or anything like that? You just made me think of that as you were talking about, you know, taking care of your children, like even before You have your child and you're actually, you know, in that prenatal phase, like, is, is there negative effects there?

I'm sure there is, but I'm curious if you found anything.

Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as evidence for that. So theoretically, you would predict based on this first principles approach. You can make predictions. If something increases oxidative stress, it's going to increase the states of disease with pregnancy with fetal development.

It's going to reduce the ability, the capacity for health. So you would certainly predict that. So do you see any evidence of this? Well, yes, they have actually done animal studies because they can't do this sort of thing in humans where they've fed, you [00:20:00] know, adult female mice, uh, food that's been, um, um, adulterated with oxidized oil, like the kind of stuff that we would get when we eat chips, right?

It's just that, um, they, they stir the, the oxidized oil into the mouse chow, instead of feeding mouse mice chips, they just use the same kind of oil. Um, and so that is, you know, arguably that's the worst of the worst stuff. And so if anything, we're going to cause visible results. It would be that stuff. And do you see visible results?

Yes. You see serious brain development disorders in the, the, when these female mice give birth and that is whether or not they continue eating that same diet, it's worse if they continue. And it's regardless of what the mice eat, because the mice are still weaning. Um, so they're, they're just doing the breast milk mostly and they get normal chow.

So. So [00:21:00] you see, um, uh, like encephalomalasia, which is maldevelopment of the brain and all kinds of neurological problems where they can't walk. They don't learn how to socialize. They don't learn how to groom properly. They can't learn anything. So like this is an extreme example because they fed them really the worst of the worst stuff.

But you think about that and you think about all of the, um, what are we supposed to call them now? Not neurotypical children. Children with autism and Asperger's and other sorts of learning disorders that are not, that are new, never been seen before, um, not well defined. That is a parallel, like how can that not be like a causative thing there?

Speaker 3: That

Speaker 2: would affect us and then there's others, there's other somewhat, you know, more circumstantial evidence because like I say, you can't do these sorts of randomized controls [00:22:00] trials and in humans, but we do know that women who have preeclampsia or prediabetes or obesity, they are all subject to more oxidative stress.

And their children are all at higher risk of pretty much every bad outcome. They will be, um, small for gestational age. They will have increased rates of autism, increased rates of developmental disorders, increased rates of premature birth, um, increased rates of birth defects and on, on it goes, uh, it's, it's an enormous, enormous problem.

And it's preventable and forget about like the past moving forward. We can stop it. This is an actionable, right? There's all kinds of horrible things that are going on society right now. We've been lied to on so many levels. We certainly have been lied to about fat. We've been, um, you know, people have come on the air after [00:23:00] I've made some waves out there about vegetable oils and people have come on the air to lie and correct, you know, correct air quotes, scare quotes, the record.

Right. Dariush Mozaffarian from Tufts came on to defense oils after I was on Bill Maher back in 2022. Um, so they, um, they are lying to you and in order to protect your health and your family's health, you need to be, to realize that we are living in a war zone. We're living in the war is on our health at the cellular level.

And we need to have that mindset, but it is something that we can do. It's very simple. You just stop eating the seed oils and I teach you what to eat instead. There's plenty of alternatives and yes, there's habits you have to change. And yes, you will feel like you have to, your life will have to revolve around food for a little while, while you're changing those habits, but once they become habits, then they're habits and it's not [00:24:00] hard anymore.

And everyone who does that tells me exactly that.

Speaker 3: I

Speaker: just, I just love your perspective on this. I think thinking about things from the cellular level in terms of how it's impacting everything is just. It's a thread line that I don't think a lot of doctors are making. And so I, I just, I love the fact that you're not only identifying that as a big problem, but also saying, Hey, like, These seed oils are actually part of the, the big problem here.

Um, and then you give a playbook on how to actually overcome that and start making some of these changes. One of the things that you hit on that I would love to talk about was really just the information battle that we're fighting right now. And I, I do feel like we're entering this new age of information with artificial intelligence and all these new AI models that are out there.

And what I find interesting is I can type in our seed oil is bad [00:25:00] into chat, GPT or any other AI tool. And I'll get an answer that seems to be very much in line with what, you know, the standard conventional doctor is going to be saying about seed oils. And where we're at with the internet and where we're at with the power of AI, I think it just creates this propensity for these messages to get, to compound at a rate that they've already been compounding up until this point.

And now these tools are going to be able to get. So much more powerful and spread information that might not be true at a much more profound rate. So I'm curious, how do you think the truth actually ultimately ends up getting to the surface here?

Speaker 2: Well, I have to say that like it has already somewhat, and I hope it will continue.

And when I say it has already somewhat, I mean, um, you know, my husband goes to shop at Costco. So now he sees. Avocado oil, you know, spray. He never used to see that. Coconut oil, pan [00:26:00] spray, cooking spray, right? That used to all be vegetable oil. He used to see just rows of canola, corn, soy, the whole row. There was no avocado oil.

There was very little coconut oil. So it has changed. Now, granted, a lot of that took place, um, in the early, you know, because I think a lot of the publicity that happened around seed oils when I was with the Lakers is in the early 15, in the early, like, 2010s. Um, and then a lot of influencers who are not robots were, were, um, started talking about it.

Um, and now we have to deal with the robots. So what do we do? Well, I think the answer is doctors, because I believe that a lot of, especially the primary care doctors, because we went into medicine. Because we do care about, like, what is actually causing our patients their disease. Like, we're the detectives that have to sort it out, right?

We hand people off to [00:27:00] cardiologists when we know there's something wrong with the heart already. But, um, but primary care, and also we didn't go into it to get rich, like, you know, some of the subspecialists who make 10 million a year. So we went into it because we like to do the right thing, at least a certain portion of primary care doctors.

And I really think that helping doctors. Get access to this book to the kind of information that you share and your company probably shares, right? It helps people share, um, helping doctors learn, uh, reshaping medical education a little bit. And that's already happening somewhat, at least with the metabolic health movement, but again, that's all about keto and carbohydrates and seed oils are an afterthought and it's, uh, you know, not ideal, but still it's, you know, moving in the right direction at least.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think your, I think your book is going to be one of those pieces that people will go back to. [00:28:00] And really be able to pull on and hopefully inspires a lot more doctors who are the source of information for so many people to start getting this information in front of their patients so that they can make some of these changes.

So we just, I personally really appreciate all the work that you've done on this front. It's been decades in the making. I know you and your brother, uh, were working on deep nutrition long before 2009. And. Just the work that you have been doing, um, in primary care and seeing all the different problems that people are having.

So for you to actually go through the process of creating materials for people to go deeper themselves, I think is truly, um, a testament to who you are, but also just so empowering. Like I think giving people information, the tools, the resources to start making these changes is the best thing that we can do.

So truly appreciative of all the work that you've put into this, this book.

Speaker 2: Well, thank you. And it's my husband. He was the co writer on Deep Nutrition. Oh, sorry. We have the same [00:29:00] last name, yeah. You took my last name, that's why.

Speaker: I love it.

Speaker 2: My brother helped with the illustration, so I get a whole family involved.

Speaker: The Well, Dr. Kate, where's the best, um, best place for people to find more about what you're up to with dark calories and all the other products that you're working on.

Speaker 2: So my website really is the nexus of Dr. Kate information and it's drkate. com, which is D R C A T E. com. And please sign up for my newsletter, which you can do at the big orange button up there that says free resources or subscribe.

They're trying to teach you. Um, and once a month or so, I will tell you what I've been up to, just so that, you know, um, about new, new resources that I've created to help people adopt this sort of healthy lifestyle in a world that doesn't want them to eat right or stay out of the doctor's office. [00:30:00]

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's my mission.

Speaker: I love it. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate you coming back on the show and, um, Yeah, I'm really excited to see how this book turns out and how it lands. I know it will do incredibly well. So thank you so much for coming on.

Speaker 2: Well, thank you. And thank you for your support.

Speaker: Awesome.