Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

Catherine Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition offers an in-depth look at the science, epigenetics, and history behind eating an ancestral diet. Broken into three parts--- “The Wisdom of Tradition,” “The Dangers of the Modern Diet,” and “Living the Deep Nutrition Way”--- Deep Nutrition provides resources for how to become metabolically healthy, feel younger, improve energy, sharpen your mind, and ensure the health of your children.  

Shanahan argues that the two worst foods in our modern diet are sugar and industrial seed oils. Seed oils, which are polyunsaturated fatty acids, create free radicals that disrupt our lipid cycle and damage vital lipoproteins in the brain. Also, seed oils are prone to oxidation and are dangerous when heated. Sugar and seed oils cause inflammation in the gut and increase our risk of heart disease and atherosclerosis. Despite these health risks, restaurants and grocery stores continue to use and promote canola, vegetable, corn, and other seed oils because they are cheap and mass-produced by big agriculture. 

Removing sugar and seed oils from your diet will undoubtedly improve your health, and Shanahan suggests that you should also adopt the "4 Pillars of the Human Diet” to maximize your health. The 4 Pillars include Meat on the Bone, Fermented and Sprouted Foods, Organs and Other “Nasty” Bits, and Fresh, Unadulterated Plant and Animal Foods. At the end of Deep Nutrition, there are extensive resources for creating your food plan, sticking to your lifestyle changes, and planning your grocery shopping. Shanahan also has a FAQ section that is very helpful for starting your food journey.  

Through the Food Initiative, we encourage healthy lifestyle changes and believe that avoiding sugar and seed oils will improve your health and happiness. The Food Initiative has resources and recipes for making the foods that Deep Nutrition promotes.

— Nicole Hatfield