Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine and Luke Shanahan (she's an MD) is now in my own personal Top Ten books of all time. I could never say enough good things about this book; it's off the charts. I'm a health nut from way back, always telling my friends the latest about Omega-3's, the horrors of trans-fats, the crucial need for Vitamin D and more. I learned most of it first from my sister, I admit, but I found Barry Sears by myself. My sis actually has a 1938 publication by Weston Price, and first got going with Adele Davis. I've read countless books, magazine articles, newsletters, and manuals trying to understand what's what. I'd trade all I've ever read about diet, nutrition, and health food for the book produced by Catherine and Luke Shanahan. Regarding the massive amount of research these two have done, they have really sifted the chaff from the wheat. (Oh, but too bad about that metaphor, wheat is kind of on the outs now for me.) What we should be eating, and WHY, is what this book is all about. This narrative has unusual insights and connects things you would never expect to see in a book about nutrition. This book is so engaging and well written; you certainly come away with a bit of the personality of its authors (a couple of minor typos are not a problem for me, unlike the reviewer who gave it two stars). Your paradigms will shift! You know sugar is a problem. How bad? Pretty bad. You need to know why. Catherine and Luke explain it is so well you will wonder why candy is ever allowed in schools. But cheer-up, nutrient rich foods are nothing if not delicious! The more flavor, the more nutrition. Rich cream is good for you, and butter! Who knew? Olive oil is still OK, but I did not know how much damage the canola, soy, sunflower, and other veggie oils where doing. I had no idea. Vegans will have the biggest challenge in their path to health. Our bodies did not evolve eating soy and veggies alone. Soy has major issues, well explained here. I'm now eating liver and liking it (I am shocked, actually), making my own yogurt from raw milk and loving it (remembering trips to Greece), and learning to ferment veggies (delicious). French cooks, Julie and Julia fans, rejoice. Those French sauces, creamy or made of stock from slow cooked bones, are not only yummy, but super healthy! Young adults who are getting married and thinking about babies, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE read this wonderful book before you conceive. There are way, way, too many unhealthy kids in the world. You want one that is as perfect as possible. Deep nutrition starts before conception. Boomers....do you want to be in the joint replacement brigade, dealing with cancer or heart disease, forgetting stuff all the time? Of course not. READ THIS BOOK!! Amazon readers are always told "If you liked this book, you will like _______" I didn't think it was possible to have another book out there as good as this one, but Nora Gedgaudas wrote one. Her book, Primal Body--Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended, is one you probably should buy at the same time you order this one. These two books are joined at the hip. They fit together perfectly with minimal duplication. They both give jaw-dropping insights into who we are bio-chemically, and what we can do to survive in a world where profits drive food production and medical care. If you don't have heath care (I mean sick care), BUY these books. You'll be fine, unless you are hit by a truck.

With so many theories about what is the best diet to follow, in addition to the misguidance set by the medical and industrial food industry, It is good to know that dissidence like Catherine Shanahan MD and Luke Shanahan are here to dismantle misleading information and simply enlighten readers with the truth that proper diet should come from traditional foods. "Deep Nutrition" reveals that by going back to what our grandparents, great-grandparents, and ultimately our ancestors have eaten for centuries, traditional foods are what we should be consuming on a daily basis for optimal health and longevity. The authors give outstanding explanations chapter by chapter as to why traditional foods should be the mainstay of our diet. Backed with loads of scientific evidence, I am convinced that traditional foods provide great health benefits. Ever wondered why the French are among the longest living people in the world, despite having a diet rich in saturated fats, like butter and lard? The French diet is what the Shanahans consider a part of the "Four Pillars of World Cuisine" that includes a healthy diet full of the naturally saturated dairy and animal fats, meat on the bone, fermented vegetables/dairy products, and chicken/beef bone broth. All of this, however, goes against the traditional western diet that has been sickening us with disease boosting pro-inflammatory polyunsaturated oils and sugar. The ailments plaguing Americans today are all linked to a common factor- rancid vegetables oils and tons of refining sugar. One would find it difficult to escape the ingredients in processed foods loaded with vegetable oils and sugar even when it claims to be "Organic." "Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food" provides details to all of this and more. The authors' reasonably and scientifically explained findings of the health benefits of traditional foods will transform someone who adheres to American conventional wisdom about what types of foods to eat into one who will no longer tolerate the false claims about what is sup​posedly healthy from industries, like the Food and Drug Administration.

First of all, this is THE best book on nutrition out there. Get this book. I own three copies: one for my own reference, and two to lend out. It's that good. Deep Nutrition is an easy read, witty and engaging. It reads more like a novel than a nutritional text. You will find yourself turning the pages and wishing for more. It will change the way you look at food forever. It has for us. The main premise is that you can change your life and the lives of your children by following the principles of traditional eating. In a society riddled by adult and childhood health problems, this is good news indeed! For the couple looking to conceive, it means having tools to have a healthy and beautiful child. For both children and adults with current health problems, it means hope for recovery. By eating a traditional diet, we can change how our genes work and how our children's genes work. We can also change the way our children look. Using principles from Stephen Marquardt and from modern scientific research, Catherine Shanahan shows us how beauty is objective, transcending all cultures and races. There is a certain dynamic symmetry that the human brain looks for and recognizes as beautiful. I know this sounds abstract, but the book provides some very convincing pictures. Especially interesting are pictures of siblings showing that the later born siblings have less dynamic symmetry, presumably the result of less optimal maternal nutrition. The latest born siblings have features similar to fetal alcohol syndrome. Could second sibling syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome both be related to maternal malnutrition? See for yourself, but you will not be able to look at facial features the same way again. So what is Deep Nutrition? What is traditional food? It's the food our grandparents and great grandparents grew up eating. It's soups and sauces made from bone stocks and broths, pasture raised meats and organ meats, fish, fresh vegetables, fermented vegetables, raw milk, nature made fats and fruits. Compare this with the modern American diet of frozen dinners, Pop Tarts, Cap'n Crunch, Doritos, Oreos, Gatorade, soy milk, "vegetable" oil, and Coke Zero. Our ancestors would not have recognized these products because they didn't exist until recently. So, how do traditional foods help us? OK. I'm in my 30's and I grew up thinking that soup had to come out of a can or a little envelope full of powder. My husband's mother made homemade chicken soup out of a real chicken, bones and all, for her children as they grew up. My 92 year old father-in-law tells us over and over about how, as a child, his mother made them real homemade chicken soup every Sunday and how they would eat the leftovers all week. He still walks without a cane. People cannot believe that he is 92. My husband is in his 40's and is as strong as he's ever been. He looks to be following in his father's footsteps. I grew up being overweight and plagued by soft tissue injuries, including injuries to the tendons in my arms, a ligament in my knee, and problems with my lower back. I was given an honorary t-shirt at the local physical therapy practice and told I had been there so long that I was considered to be part of the family. After learning that the Deep Nutrition in broths and stocks made from bones contain substances that help the body heal tendons, ligaments and joints, you'd better believe I learned how to make these stocks and broths myself. It's easy, by the way. I now use homemade stock in everything I can. It makes an ordinary meal taste extraordinary, makes delectable sauces and gravies, yummy soups, and my soft tissue injuries are finally healing! Talk about a win, win scenario! Oh yes, that's the other thing. Deeply Nutritious food tastes GREAT! Those little envelopes full of flavored powder that promise to become tasty if you will only add water and heat them up taste nothing like the real food that is Deep Nutrition. Expect to be inspired to spend more time in the kitchen crafting the foods that will craft and heal you and will deeply satisfy you and your family. Deep Nutrition is not a cookbook. It's a unique guidebook to traditional foods - what they are and why we should eat them. Whether you are already experienced in cooking these foods, or like me believed that soup came out of a can or a little packet, Deep Nutrition has something for you. I have not seen such clear explanations in any other book. Much research went into this book, and while scholarly, it is amazingly accessible. Also included are lists of good foods to include in your diet which have the power to transform your health, foods to avoid and why, a list of baby steps to help you change your diet to healthier traditional foods, and even tips on using nutritional know-how to lose weight and stay young. You need this book! While you are at it, just order two. You're going to want to share this with all the important people in your life. Seriously. Happy reading!

This is a pretty good book, lots of references, and presents a nice story and a new way, or different ammunition, to discuss the matter at hand (which in this case is what you should eat to stay healthy). I didn't need any converting as I long ago gave up processed foods and meats from dubious sources. My purpose for buying the book was to keep abreast of the science which discusses healthy living (and science which does not). I was slightly disappointed that there wasn't more discussion centered around the "DNA ghost" and particularly more in-depth science concerning what is known and what is conjecture in the field of epigenetics and most particularly, how what we eat affects gene expression. I would love to see a book which has more depth in this regard. However, the discussion of Marquardt's mask and "second sibling" syndrome was new to me and gives fodder for thought although there are a few comments by the author which seem a bit tenuous in their conclusions. Again though she may be right I felt that the science doesn't always support the conclusions to the healthy skeptic (read the book and make your own call on that, don't want to spoil things for ya besides it wouldn't be fun if you agreed with everything an author says). The author's dismay over the lack of institutional agreement on this matter is likely the same dismay we all have come to understand however the ramifications of having 7 billion people eating fresh vegetables stewed in bone stock makes this line of reasoning enough to fill several books alone so don't even go there. Personally I will await Luke's cookbook with bells on. If you're interested on the related issue on how the American diet got sooo bad, or at least one aspect of this, check out "death by food pyramid".

An excellent book highly recommended for anyone wanting to further their knowledge in nutrition and health. More people should read her work so that we can change the grocery stores for the better.

This is a book destined to radically alter our view on nutrition. Along with Primal Body, Primal Mind, this book represents the best nutritional information one can currently get in a book. I highly recommend getting these two books together if you want to create the best health you can. One distinguishing characteristic of this book is the incorporation of the breakthrough science of epigenetics in nutrition and health. Combining the recent discoveries in epigenetics with the landmark work of Price and Pottenger, creates the most complete picture of our diet and nutrition available to date. The fact that recent research in many areas of health has vindicated Price's work is an important addition to our health knowledge. This author presents even more of that research in a very powerful synthesis. Taking the information about the dramatically superior health of previous generations and finding scientific grounds for understanding that will go a long way toward undoing the tremendous damage that last 150 years of commercial interference has wrought on our population. This book is a full-on broadside in that battle. As the author (an MD) describes her own struggle to understand her own experience and that of her patients, she also treats the reader to a clear view of the corruption of modern science, the lack of proper nutritional information in our medical schools, and the wisdom of our ancestors, which "modern society" prefers to ignore (at its peril.) She also exposes some of the corrupt junk science which has ruled nutrition for the last 60 years or so, especially taking time to thoroughly document the atrocity of Ancel Keys sloppy pseudo-science, which still rules dietary recommendations of backward and corrupt organizations today. It is high time we call to accountability people like Keys, who have caused more pain and death than Hitler and Stalin combined. She explains how epigenetics shows us that genes are not set in stone, but can be changed by environmental conditions, especially nutrition. All throughout the book, she cites research and gives ample end notes and references. She also goes into detail about proportion and symmetry in biological forms, and introduced me to Marquardt's Mask, a geometrical construct based on the Golden Mean, which formalizes the physical patterns of symmetry and "beauty" in the human face. It is in this research that we find the refutation of the Eugenics crowd, much as Price showed over 50 years ago - genetic expression depends more on environmental conditions than on "racial purity." The idea that malformed poor people are that way because they are racially inferior is now completely shown to be false - it is clear that their genes cannot express properly because of conditions such as poor diet, usually caused by poverty, not the other way around. Another topic she discusses is one of my favorites in which to rub the noses of the mainstream types - the fact that our quality of health has been decreasing over the last 100 years, not increasing. The percentage of the population living to 100 years has been declining over the last 180 years, drastically so in the last 20. This is in direct opposition to the idea that we are living longer, healthier lives today. The figures are usually skewed by the use of "average" life expectancy, which is open to numerous errors in addition to the usual problems with using the arithmetic mean. The median age of death is much more telling than average life expectancy, and those figures don't tell us as much about health as does the dramatic rise in chronic disease striking a greater proportion of the population at ever earlier ages. She cites similar information about height changes. She also discusses birth order and spacing along with nutrition, and its impact on long term health over many generations. All this is in addition to discussing what a really healthy diet looks like, and the science and history behind that. The science vindicates what Weston Price and others like him taught, based on research done around the world at a time when "the disruptive foods of commerce" had not yet had time to destroy many people's health, and there still existed large numbers of truly healthy people to study (no longer the case today). She concludes with great advice on how to adjust one's diet to the greatest advantage, including some meal plan ideas. As I said, along with Primal Mind, Primal Body, this will give you the best grounding in truly healthy nutrition possible today. I would strongly suggest reading both together for the best nutritional information. I also recommend books by Ron Schmid, Mary Enig, Sally Fallon, Bruce Fife, and Uffe Ravnskov. You are responsible for your health today. Doctors are mostly drug pushers, drug companies only want your money, organizations and governments are thoroughly corrupt, and insurance companies only want your money as well. They couldn't care less if you live or die. Learn the facts and take control of your health.

This book fills in so much physiology information for those who are going low-carb and or paleo nutrition. Dr Cate explains how traditional foods, the Four Pillars, actually convey information to your genes and how the genes use this information to nourish, build and energize your body. I appreciate her work and do so wish I had had this information while younger. I could then have had a slimmer, healthier body, better luck with fertility and transmitted better health to my only child and perhaps have had better fertility ). Following Dr Cate's Four Pillars I immediately felt the difference. It sounds hokey, I know, but believe it, or try it yourself and you will know what I mean. My body simply became more comfortable and limber, I got to feel the feeling in that saying "comfortable in her skin" I believe that the whole idea of adding saturated fats back into your diet makes a tremendous amount of sense. The little physiology and biology I studied showed that cell membranes and other tissues as well as hormones are composed of these fats. You don't eat 'em your bod doesn't have them to build with. Seems pretty straightforward. It is, however, scary (as the goody two shoes follower that I am) to buck the conventional wisdom and medical recommendations and eat these forbidden fats as there is heart disease in my family. Not any less important than feeling great is the fact that my body fat is being metabolized - 15 lbs in 5 weeks. Oh, yeah! To Weston Price's amazing nutrition findings on traditional foods, Dr Cate adds information on the inter-generational effects of strong versus weak nutrition on the following generations. It is so very interesting. Only problem is that this information may raise your ire and therefore your blood pressure! To realize that the medical / research community and conventional wisdom in partnership with the government have, over the years, steered people away from traditional foods and been absolutely ruining the health and well being of Americans now and into the next generations with their Standard American Diet and drugs is actually sickening. (See the interaction Dr Cate has when she tries to suggest studies to obstetricians) That the Weston Price research findings have been out there for decades and ignored is heartbreaking, in fact it is in a way criminal. Bought a second copy as the one I lent out was not returned. (Weston Price nourished parents give birth to healthy babies: [...]) Read this book if: You want to feel wonderful You want to lose weight You want to feel more energetic You plan to ever have children (men, young men, this does apply to you too, the sooner you beef up your genetic health the better for your children) and You want to give your children the healthiest possible start in life. God bless Dr Cate.

Last year my triglycerides were elevated and I started a quest to learn about LDL, HDL and what I could do to clean-up, yes, even reverse, any narrowing or plaque formations in my coronary arteries via changes in my diet. The explanations in Chapters 8 and 9 of this book showing how free radicals from polyunsaturated vegetable oils (excluding olive oil and coconut oil) and elevated levels of blood sugar precipitate plaque formations are easily the most informative, logical and plausible explanations I have found. I have been on a quest to understand the mechanism(s) leading to the formation of atherosclerotic plaques for the past six months, have downloaded and studied over 90 medical journal articles and bought five medical texts including Molecular Mechanisms of Atherosclerosis edited by Joseph Loscalzo. Figures 6 and 8 in Chapter 8 of this book are priceless. The table on page 174 listing 10 categories of foods containing inflammatory fat is worth more than 1,000 times the price of the book. Her chart on page 170 showing how Ancel Keys' 7 countries study conveniently left out 15 other countries that skewed his data is the simplest, most concise and memorable treatment of that I have seen anywhere (I have 3 other books that agree on her conclusion that Keys unfortunately managed to put conventional wisdom on cholesterol and fat on the wrong track.). The great weight of the evidence today is that the animal fat/cholesterol theory started by Keys has backfired with tragic consequences to our national health. (Dr. Malcomb Kendrick calls it The Great Cholesterol Con). Obviously, she disagrees with Drs. Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn about the harm from eating foods that have a mother or a face; but she is not really at odds with their approach. Hers is simply more narrowly tailored on the one hand; and her points about epigenics actually helps them since it explains why we can reverse plaque formations through diet. [chemical signals happen all the time; especially in regulating the storage of fat and the level of blood sugar]. All three say cut way-back on any food containing added sugar. Soft drinks are lethal. Chapter 9 in this book says much more than any other book I have found or any journal article I have ever read about why even a little bit too much blood sugar wreaks such havoc on our intricate biochemical balance. Moreover, her point that you can turn-on or turn-off your own genes simply by what you eat is so profound, it's staggering in its implication(s). Finally, her lesson in the cell biology of fat cells going back to stem cells and remodeling on the way (page 244) should be required reading for many if not all of of the professionals laboring daily in the highly critical and fertile fields of wellness, weight loss and nutrition. You fail to read this book at your peril. The reviewer who put this book in their All Time Top 10 is spot on. I bet it sells out in less than 2 months.