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Weight LossSeed Oils and Your Sugar Cravings with Dr. Cate Shanahan
June 26, 2024 By
Leanne Vogel
June 26, 2024
In today’s episode of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, we have an absolutely eye-opening episode for you. We’re joined by Dr. Cate Shanahan, a renowned MD and nutrition expert, to dive deep into the often-overlooked world of seed oils and their massive impact on our health. Dr. Cate is here to blow our minds with her insights on “dirty fuel” and the transformative benefits of cutting out these harmful oils from our diets.
Dr. Cate Shanahan, a pioneer in nutrition science, has made significant strides in understanding the health benefits of dietary choices. Known for her expertise in the keto and low-carb diets, Dr. Shanahan emphasizes the importance of not just focusing on carbohydrates or ketones, but also on the less-discussed aspect of diet: the elimination of seed oils. Over the past five years, as the definition of keto has evolved, she has observed that the primary benefit many people experience comes from cutting out these oils. Her bold insights challenge conventional dietary wisdom, prompting deeper discussions about what truly contributes to healthful eating.
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Transcript
Dr. Cate Shanahan
These oils make us crave sugar. So no matter how badly you want to cut sugar and get rid of your sweet tooth, you will be obsessed with thoughts of sugar while these oils are still in charge of your metabolism.
Leanne Vogel
Hello and welcome to another episode. Today we are chatting about oils, and before we get talking about all the bad oils and what they’re doing to your membranes and how terrible they are, I want to just bring in a nice, balanced perspective on this conversation. There are a couple of people that I follow on Instagram that are so good at sharing about the toxins and the terrible things that are in our food. And it can be a lot. It can be a lot to take in, and it sort of feels like doom and gloom, like the world is out to kill us. And though the conversation around oils and what they’re doing to our body is helpful to understand, so when you’re at the grocery store or when you’re out ordering food, you understand the implications of the foods that you’re ordering. And when you feel a certain way after you’ve eaten foods that aren’t so awesome on your body, you connect the two things. And that’s really what it’s all about, is connecting your experience with your body, with the foods that you’re choosing, the activities that you’re choosing, the thoughts that you’re having, and you start to understand the signals that your body is sending you.
Leanne Vogel
This is my life goal to educate women, especially in understanding those signals that our body is sending so we can start to connect our environment with our body. And so I don’t want you to walk away from today’s conversation doom and gloom. Like, I have to perfectly avoid soy and corn and canola and cotton seed and safflower and all of these oils without first sharing kind of how I approach this topic, there are certain foods that I really enjoy that do have oils that cause free, radical damage. That’s just the way it is when I’m visiting my parents. My dad loves eating potato chips and watching golf. And I am going to partake in the potato chip situation, knowing full well that there’s canola and safflower and probably soy combination vegetable oil situation happening in those chips, but they’re nice memories. Or if there’s like a high quality, delicious meal at a restaurant that might use certain oils. And I’m just having a nice time with my husband and it’s romantic and I don’t feel like bringing up all my allergies.
Leanne Vogel
In addition to asking the cook to make sure that there’s no vegetable oils. I’m just going to do it. But I would say, overall, 90% of the food that I eat is not going to contain these oils, and I’m okay with that. Like, the 10%, the five to 10% I don’t fret over. There are these wraps. They’re protein wraps. I enjoy them a couple times a week called be free. They are delicious, but I believe they have sunflower oil in them, and I don’t fret about them.
Leanne Vogel
They’re high in fiber. They make me feel great. I eat them. So I think it’s really important that when we’re having this conversation, it’s really geared toward when you’re at the grocery store or when you’re eating out, if you get to make different choices, just do it. It’s not hard. And when the opportunity presents itself to have that balance, it works out really great in your favor, because you’re not going to be dealing with as many symptoms. And so recently, my husband and I were at bonefish Grill, and I found out that they have an olive oil that’s a blend of olive oil and canola. And so I just asked them, could you just cook my fish without any oil? And they were like, no problem.
Leanne Vogel
And so my meal came out without any oil on it. It tasted amazing. I had a little olive oil packet that I keep in my purse. I put it over top, and bada bing, bada boom. So those quick and easy things are quick and easy, and it tasted fine. But for the foods that I really, really enjoy and the moments that I really enjoy, I’m not gonna stop doing those things just because there could be bad ingredients in there that could damage my body and all the things. Now, that’s what I choose to do, to just have balance. Coming from a place of education, knowing that when I’m eating those potato chips, yeah, I’m probably destroying some of my cellular membranes.
Leanne Vogel
But I’m also with my dad and building this experience. And do I have four bowls of chips? No, I make a little bowl for myself. My dad and I enjoy our time together, and those are memories that I will never be able to recreate. And could I choose to not have the chips and still have a great time? Sure, totally. And I do. But sometimes I partake in those things. And so I wanted to start our conversation with that. Just because I think when we’re doing all doom and gloom and talking about the deterioration of our cellular membranes through the oils that we choose, it can get, like, a little bit heavy if you want to learn more about how to check restaurants and communicate with restaurants about their seed oil choices, there’s a great app called Seed Oil Scout that you might want to check out.
Leanne Vogel
Now, the app itself is free, but a membership is kind of costly. And so what I do a little hack here for you is I have the app, I don’t have a membership, I do not pay for it. And when I’m in a new city, it’ll display the locations of the safe restaurants, but not their names. And so I will just look up the location on the app and then find it in Google, do a little sleuth work, and figure out what restaurant it is. So that works really, really well for me. So if you want to learn more about that, and also, just when you’re at restaurants, they know how they’re cooking their food, and oftentimes it will be with these seed oils, and it’s a great opportunity to have a conversation with management and with the chef and just chat about these things. I have never had a bad experience where a server has said, you know, you’re crazy. So every conversation I’ve had, I feel like it’s not the first one that they’ve had.
Leanne Vogel
And so the more of us that go out there and say, I don’t want my food with soy oil, or I choose not to have canola oil, can you please cook my food without canola oil? These conversations change the way that our world works over time. And so I encourage you that when you’re out and about, whether that’s at the grocery store, the purchases that you’re making, the foods that you’re filling your grocery cart up with, all of this makes a difference. So our guest today is doctor Kate Shanahan. She’s an MD. She’s Cornell trained physician scientist whose works have inspired entire movements involving bone broth, live culture ferments, and seed oil free business empires. Together with NBA legendary Gary Vitti, she created the La Lakers pro nutrition program, which has been emulated by elite championship teams around the world. Dedicated to her field, she runs a telehealth practice as well as a health education website, drkate.com, and lives with her family on a peaceful lake in Florida. Okay, let’s get to our conversation with Doctor Kate.
Leanne Vogel
Hey, my name is Leann, and I’m fascinated with helping women navigate how to eat, move, and care for their bodies. This has taken me on a journey from vegan keto high protein to everything in between. I’m a small town holistic nutritionist turned three time international bestselling author turned functional medicine practitioner offering telemedicine services around the globe to women looking to better their health and stop second guessing themselves. I’m here to teach you how to wade through the wellness noise to get to the good stuff that’ll help you achieve your goals. Whether you’re seeking relief from chronic ailments, striving for peak performance, or simply eager to live a more vibrant life, this podcast is your go to resource for actionable advice and inspiration. Together, we’ll uncover the interconnectedness of nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, and mindset empowering you to make informed choices that support your unique health journey. Think of it as quality time with your bestie mixed with a little med school so you’re empowered at your next doctor visit. Get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn about your body and how to care for it healthfully.
Leanne Vogel
Join me as we embrace vitality, reclaim our innate potential, and discover what it truly means to pursue healthfulness. Hey, Doctor Kate, how’s it going?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Hi Leanne. It’s going great. Thank you so much for having me on. And you know what? I have been dying to be on your show because your audience, more than, like anyone else I’ve talked to lately, might have their minds blown by this conversation and maybe even you.
Leanne Vogel
I love having my mind blown. There’s always, when I have a guest on, I’m always like, yeah, we’re going to talk about this thing. I have a vague idea and then I always walk away from an interview being like, wow, I never knew that. And I learned just as much as my audience when we have conversations. And that’s why I ask what I do, because I’m legitimate curious how you see the world. So it’s great. I’m so glad to have you on.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yes. And Harold, I’ll just drop it right now because, you know, I’ve literally been dying to say this for years, but I didn’t really have my ducks in a row or a book to kind of like, back this up. Ready?
Leanne Vogel
Yes.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
When we’re talking about, when we’re talking about the keto diet or low carb, we put the focus on carbohydrates or ketones and of, of course, paying attention to our macros and knowing what ketones are and experiencing the joy of ketones are important. But I am now convinced that the main benefit folks get from going keto in the past five years, since what keto actually means has changed, I’m convinced that the main benefit comes from cutting the seed oils. And so that’s a pretty bold claim. So I hope you’re going to ask me some questions about that that I didn’t even maybe send you ahead in the show notes. But anyway.
Leanne Vogel
Oh, girl, I have so many questions for you already. My mind is, like, reeling, because I know when I started the ketogenic diet, I started eating this way in 2014, and quickly I realized that there was a ketogenic diet where we were eating slim Jims and Diet Coke, and there was a ketogenic diet where we were eating macadamia nuts and avocado oil. So I knew right off the bat, and I connected with a lot of keto folk there at the beginning, where they were like, yeah, just slather. Like, let’s go to longhorn steakhouse, and just, like, give me all the mayonnaise, and I’ll put it on top of my steak, and I’ll. And I’m like, this cannot be good for you. Like, yes, you’re gonna be generating ketones, but that is dirty fuel. Like, that is dirty. I do not want it in my body.
Leanne Vogel
So I think you’ve come to the right place.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Good. Okay, good. I’m glad you’re not mad at me yet.
Leanne Vogel
Dot, dot, dot. So how did you get started? You know, looking at oil? Like, what was the. I know I’ve done your, like, official bio, but what was the thing that kind of got you started on this adventure?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
I began with this. Well, the backstory is, I was gonna say I started with the oil because, like, that was my entry point of that. Once I knew the fatty acid composition of these oils, my mind was already blown that I had been eating these things and that I hadn’t learned about the fact that I was eating vegetable oils, soy, corn, canola, all that stuff. I had not learned about that in medical school, and that everything that I learned in medical school was probably a lie. Like, the minute that I knew what the heck an essential fatty acid was. So let’s go back in time to the 1990s. I was in medical school. We did not learn about omega three, omega six.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
I just. I didn’t. Before medical school, though, I was a biochemist, so I have this affinity for molecules, and I didn’t know the term essential fatty acids or omega three or omega six until my husband gave me a book. When I was. At one point, I was really sick. So this was, like, in the early two thousands, I myself got really sick. I was a medical mystery. I hated life.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
I couldn’t walk. I had an infection. Nobody could explain what it was or what to do, how to get over it. So finally, my husband, who had been kind of hounding me for years to not eat so much sugar, finally, I was ready to listen, because as a sugar addict, which I was, I was not ready to listen until my career was at stake. And I was actually literally having a hard time working because I couldn’t walk. So he gave me a book called Spontaneous Healing. And in that book, that’s where I first learned about essential fatty acids. The book was by Andrew Weil, who was kind of like a guru of the 1990s.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
He’s still. He’s really the father of alternative medicine in this country because he brought a lot of new, wonderful ideas. So. But as soon as I looked at the molecules, the names of the molecules, and looked at their essential structure, I recognized something that took me back to my days at Cornell. That was that they had two double bonds, and those two double bonds were going to be attacked by oxygen, and they could cause free radicals, and that would destroy our membranes. So that’s why I started focusing on oils, because I knew that couldn’t be good. And the fact that I hadn’t learned a thing about them in medical school, I knew that not only was it important, but doctors had no clue about it, and neither did dietitians or nutritionists. Experts in the field of supposedly healthy eating had no idea what these things were.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And that meant something really important to me, which was perhaps these could be a root cause not only for my stuff, for making me better, which, by the way, they did. Like, I avoided them. I changed my diet. I cut carbs, and a lot of. Did a lot of other things. I got. I was able to walk again. It was amazing.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
But really, though, perhaps even more amazing was that this knowledge filled an empty hole in my soul, because I had been a practicing physician, just doling out drugs and not being able to get to the root cause of people’s real problems. And I thought this might be an answer. So I dove into it with all. With, like, all the enthusiasm of, you know, like a nerd in a candy store heaven kind of scenario. And I haven’t stopped, I really haven’t stopped since. Since 2002, because there’s just so much to it. So that’s what I want to share with you.
Leanne Vogel
That’s amazing. So when we’re talking about the oil specifically, you mentioned soy, corn, canola. Guessing Safflower is part of that. Sunflower. What else?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Couple more. So there’s a total of eight. And that’s why I created this term, the hateful eight, just so that people know, like, how many there are to start with, what they’re aiming for in their listen. Then the list is three cs and three s’s that are the most important to memorize. So three c’s. We’ve got corn, canola, cottonseed, three s’s, soy, sunflower, safflower. I think you mentioned all of those. And then the other two are not as important to memorize just because they’re mostly, they’re not on, like, ingredients lists.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
They’re. You’re not going to see them on stuff in the grocery store, at least I have. Not yet. They’re mostly in restaurants. And so you just need to know that they’re bad and they’re not what you want when you order out at a restaurant. But yeah, so there’s a total of eight of them. And this is my list. It may differ from other lists that you’ve seen, and other lists differ because people have different criteria for what makes the list.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Most folks just pay attention to one of the two of the polyunsaturated fatty acids. It’s an omega six, and it’s called linoleic acid. So anything with a certain amount of linoleic acid that’s bad in their book. But I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I don’t think that’s even close to accurate. So I have a different list. So the differences people are going to see just to set people up for what to expect and what to ignore. A lot of people think peanut oil is worse than it really is.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And a lot of people think sesame oil is worse than it really is. And a lot of dietitians especially think canola oil is okay because it doesn’t have that omega six stuff, which is supposedly pro inflammatory. It has more omega three, which is supposedly anti inflammatory. I think we should talk about why I’m saying supposedly, but we should get to that later. But, yeah, so you’ll see different lists, and my list is the one that I stand behind in. And other lists I think will just make your life harder and they won’t make you any healthier.
Leanne Vogel
Completely. And is rapeseed considered canola oil or is that something different?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yes. Great point. Outside of the United States, they don’t use the word canola. Outside of North America, in Canada, where canola came from, they use canola, but it’s really a branded, it’s a canadian brand of rapeseed oil. And so they are the same thing.
Leanne Vogel
And so when you’re talking about the fatty acid composition. You talked about the issue with free radicals, that they destroy our membranes. Why is this bad? Like, what are our membranes doing? Why should we care?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yes, we should all love and be grateful for our cell membranes, which are very sensitive to oxygen, right? Which we also have in our blood, and oxygen can harm them. What does that do to us? Well, it makes the cell not be able to do its job. So all of our cells, every single cell in our body, has a membrane. It’s made out of the membrane. That membrane is like the hands and feet and mouth of the cell. It enables the cell to take in nutrients, to discard wastes, and it also enables the cell to signal to the rest of our body whether it’s in trouble or that it needs certain nutrition. It can signal the immune system to come over. It can signal that it’s infected by a virus.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
A lot of the communication with the rest of our body happens right on that cell membrane, and stuff comes in and out of the cell through the cell membrane. So if that cell membrane isn’t working, right, literally nothing in the cell can work, right. And so the analogy is that, like, vegetable oils and free radicals kind of. It’s like, giving us anything between, like, a stub toe or, like, all of our limbs have been amputated and we are now deaf and mute. Right. So it can be a minor little thing that the cell can recover from, or it can actually kill the cell. So there’s a lot of different things it can do. And now, how does that manifest in symptoms? Well, it depends on where this free radical damage and inflammation is occurring.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
If it’s happening in your skin, you’re gonna have a skin problem. You might get acne or eczema or psoriasis. If it’s happening in your lungs, you might get asthma instead of just having, like, a regular cough. Right. It might become an asthma attack. If it’s happening in your lungs on an ongoing basis, it starts to destroy your lungs, and they lose their elasticity, and you get emphysema. If it happens in your brain, you can get a migraine. That’s kind of a minor, a more minor example, you could get seizures.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And if it happens in a way that your brain, it changes how your brain uses energy, you can get bipolar disorder. So, like, every single thing that our body needs to do is disrupted by free radicals, damaging our membranes. Oh, and they also damage our mitochondria because they have the same type of membranes, and our mitochondria generate energy for us. And so the reason I knew this was important when I first started learning about these very basic concepts of the free radicals forming in our membranes, and something called oxidative stress and inflammation is because those are at the root of every disease that doctors right now just have to treat with medication, and we don’t have a good root cause explanation for. So this chemistry and the stuff that I’ve been sort of yapping at you about, I hope I haven’t lost anybody, is vitally important to your doctor being able to help you. But because your doctor doesn’t know any of this stuff that I just went through, there’s root cause. He has no choice. But if he wants to help you to give you drugs or send you off for procedures and other specialists and lots of tests and things that aren’t going to truly help you, they’ll just kind of shove numbers around.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Maybe they’ll help a little bit, but they might cause something else worse. So that’s why I knew that these things were super duper important and had an extraordinary, profound ability to harm us. And therefore, when we stop eating them, an extraordinary ability, our bodies can recover from these things. So much will get better. When you get off of these oils, pretty much whatever ails you is likely to get at least a little bit better. And the longer you stay off of them, and the more 100% you avoid them, the more whatever it is can improve to fully reverse. In some cases.
Leanne Vogel
My hair would not grow. No matter what I did, it just wouldn’t grow. It was thinning, breaking, then the broken hairs were causing a lot of frizz, and I was responding by taking collagen to make it better. And the collagen literally did nothing. No rapid hair growth, no epic nail health, no skin changes, no joint changes. Now, you see, what I didn’t know is that the majority of collagen in the market today is derived from the entire carcass of the animal. Example, cow, pig, marine. And these materials are usually more than 90% protein and labeled as collagen peptides or hydrolyzed collagen or collagen, hydrolysate collagen type one, or type two, or gelatin, which is also a form of hydrolyzed collagen.
Leanne Vogel
It’s a protein supplement, and an incomplete one at that. Because of its structure, it’s not going to epically make a difference to our hair, joint, or skin health. About a year ago, I decided to try bio cell collagen as a last ditch effort to figure out if my hair could be fixed. Biocell collagen is a collagen matrix made up of hydrolyzed collagen, hyaluronic acid, and chondroitin sulfate. Not a blend of individual ingredients, so it’s free of allergens, hormones, and antibiotics, but rather extracted from pure dietary chicken. Sternal cartilage. Okay, so the collagen, the hyaluronic acid, and the chondroitin sulfate is all extracted from the sternal cartilage. Two months into starting biocell, y’all started messaging me on instagram saying, what are you doing with your hair? It looks crazy good.
Leanne Vogel
And that was over twelve months ago. My hair has been growing. Okay, get this. One and a half to two inches per month for a year, my hair is getting caught in my pants. It’s so long, it’s thick. And all of those wispy, broken hairs at the side of my forehead and down below at the nape of my neck are now at shoulder length. There’s new growth. I have a healthier scalp.
Leanne Vogel
There’s no more flakes or psoriasis. It’s a night and day difference. Since sharing the struggles that I’ve had with my lack of confidence around my hair, many ladies have shared that they, too, struggle with a myriad of hair health issues, too. So I wanted to share what worked for me. If you go to mygrowinghair.com, i’ve outlined all the details, what I used for, how much and when. If you’re taking a collagen supplement and you’re not really sure if it’s made a huge difference in your life, if you’re losing hair or struggling with hair growth, breaking hair, you need to go to mygrowinghair.com for all the details. Again, that’s mygrowinghair.com. can we go through also a little bit on, like, what the safe oils are and what, on the flip side, they’re doing to the body, just so we can see these two side by side.
Leanne Vogel
Before we get more into the unsafe oils, and I want to talk practically about what this looks like, but just what are the safe ones and what benefit do they have to the body?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yeah. So everything else is safe. Everything that’s not on the eight list is safe, truly, because, you know, I was very careful in making the list and I wanted it to be comprehensive, but, you know, no more comprehensive than necessary. For example, like butter, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, even though it has a lot of polyunsaturates, that kind of confuses people. Sesame oil is delicious, and it makes asian food incredibly tasty and the reason that it’s okay, even though it has some of these polyunsaturates in it, quite a lot of them actually has to do with the fact that it’s been bred. People have selected these sesame seeds for thousands and thousands of years. Selective breeding has made it so that the oil comes out of the seed easily and cleanly. And that’s the difference between the seed oils that we make in a factory and the seed oils like sesame seed and flax, that can be quite healthy for us.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And what do they do that’s good for us? Well, a couple different, I mean, it depends a little bit on exactly which type, really. But first, there’s the butter and the more saturated, solid type of fats that you’ve probably talked about that give us energy. These are what our mitochondria prefer to use for energy, monounsaturated and saturated. So olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil and butter are like my top four examples of healthy fats that give us energy. They’re meant to fuel our cells. They’re meant for, our mitochondria are meant, are tooled to use those types of fats for energy and not polyunsaturates. But we do need polyunsaturates, right? We need polyunsaturates. So it’s okay to eat sesame oil and walnuts and fish and things that are high in polyansaturates because we need that stuff too.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Those are nutrients, and they build our cell membranes, they help our brain cells function. And one of the really important things that they do is they worked as signaling. They work as signaling agents and they respond to injury. And that’s how, like, that’s how people get this whole conversation confused, because they think that they promote inflammation in one way that has to do with omega six, but they really promote inflammation in an entirely different way that has to do with oxidative stress. And if you get that mixed up, it seems like a minor point, but the folks out there who are, have gotten that mixed up. Their arguments can easily be destroyed by people who are promoting seed oils, and that’s bad. So does that make sense? Do we need to break that down or does that.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah, I think kind of looping in the bit that you said before about supposedly things like sesame and peanut are supposedly not great, because my understanding is that they have higher polyunsaturated fat, which means that they are going to be higher in linoleic acid, which means that they’re going to be more unstable. And therefore, when a fat is unstable, then it can cause oxidative damage. Is that kind of the common thread that you hear when it comes to sesame and peanut?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yes, and it’s more complicated than it needs to be. It’s really simpler than that.
Leanne Vogel
Okay. And you’re saying that that conversation, when it comes to a high polyunsaturated fat content in things like sesame, peanut doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be unstable even when heated.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Right. If it’s in the intact oil, it won’t be because nature protects those polyunsaturated fatty acids. And that’s why I mentioned the breeding thing. We have been breeding these things for a long time, and we’ve bred them to have more oil. And along with that, to accommodate our desire for more oil, nature puts in more antioxidants and vitamins that we also need.
Leanne Vogel
And so you’re saying that if I were to eat a peanut that was heated, obviously, nature has made it so that there’s more antioxidants over time. But if I extract the oil from that peanut, there’s going to be the same amount of antioxidants in that oil, and therefore, it would be more stable than it was 200 years ago?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Well, no. So it’s not. Well, yes, except you’re right about everything. Except it’s going back way longer than 200 years.
Leanne Vogel
Okay.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
People have been, you know, that’s. It takes a long time. And so peanuts have actually been in use for thousands of years, like. Like flax and like sesame. And so that’s the difference. Right? We’re in our lifetimes. We’re never going to be able to breed like a soybean, to be able to be as good as a peanut in terms of a. So as a source of oil, because it takes thousands and thousands of years for nature to accommodate our needs like that.
Leanne Vogel
Fascinating. You’re blowing my mind with this specifically with the sesame and peanut. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it, I will be honest. Because we know that, like, you wouldn’t want to put flax oil in a pan and cook with it. That would be stupid because that would be dumb.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Because it doesn’t taste good.
Leanne Vogel
It doesn’t taste good, but it’s also really unstable. Right. Like, the heat will cause it to be unstable, which will cause more free radical damage, but with a similar profile. Similar profile with the high linoleic acid, with the sesame and the peanut. You’re saying that that won’t act like flax when heated?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
It won’t. Here, you got half of that. Right. It won’t act like flax when heated. The other half is the profile is not similar. And this is a detail that gets lost. The omega it has. Flax has omega three.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
That’s why we seek it out. Right. That’s why it’s supposedly healthy. I mean, superiorly healthy. It is healthy. It’s true healthy, but it’s not superior. So sesame has omega six. That’s the difference.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
What’s the difference? Omega three is at least twice as easily oxidized as omega six. And it’s different depending on different conditions. In certain conditions, it could be ten times as easily oxidized. And whenever something is oxidized, it’s going to turn into toxin. And so that means it’s going, if you were to cook with flax, you would get anywhere from twice as much to perhaps even ten times as much toxin out of it than you would as sesame. Right? And, like, flax was never used as a culinary oil. So I don’t even know, like, if there was, there was probably no breeding along those lines, but there certainly was breeding along the lines of sesame oil. Now, people did not use sesame oil for extended heating.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
They used it for, like, very quick cooking, just like stir fry or even not even cooked. Just as flavoring, as, like a finishing flavoring agent, you know? And so I do not recommend, like, deep frying in sesame oil. No way. I recommend it for very quick pan frying. That’s like just a few minutes. And I recommend it in combination. Now, this is, this is something that, like, I’m really proud that I discovered it, but probably other people know this. If you combine, if you combine sesame with peanut and coconut, that is so good.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And the coconut has the saturated fats that will protect the other two oils. And the peanut is also more stable than this, you know, has more of the stable fats than sesame. But what sesame has that the other two don’t is antioxidants. And those antioxidants make it so that when you’re cooking the food, the food itself doesn’t start to deteriorate into the fats in the foods that you’re cooking. It protects those. So it can be superior. Like, you can end up with a healthier food because you use sesame oil with all those antioxidants in there, because it’s not just the oil you’re cooking. You’re cooking food.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And those antioxidants can protect the iron that can react with the pufas. And it gets very technical pretty quickly. But bottom line is, when they do testing. It shows that you can cook stuff in sesame oil, and in certain conditions, it can be more stable than olive oil.
Leanne Vogel
Cool. I like this. I like being challenged. This is good. When it comes to, you mentioned deep frying. I love me some deep fried fries. You know, sometimes the hunger strikes and you just need some fries. What’s like, the best oil for deep frying? Or is deep frying just.
Leanne Vogel
It’s evil, just don’t do it with any oil.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yeah, deep frying can be not bad at all. It can actually be good, but it’s very expensive or it gets evil. And so the best thing is probably tallow. Truly, I mean, maybe better than tallow would be coconut. I’m not sure. No one’s really compared those head to head. And it depends exactly on what you’re cooking. Gets pretty technical, like I was saying.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
But the more saturated a thing is, the more stable it is. Now, any oil, though, will deteriorate. And don’t forget, we’re also cooking food. So things come out of the food that can start to react with the cholesterol in tallow or with certain fatty acids in coconut oil. So the real problem with deep frying food is that you can abuse any oil, and any oil will become not healthy if you abuse it. So don’t do that. But to not do that gets extremely expensive if we’re talking about tallow, since right now that costs quite a bit more than the other frying oil options.
Leanne Vogel
You mentioned the oil deteriorating. What are your thoughts on how to store oils? Like, is that a big part of the conversation? Also, because I could imagine that, like, a coconut oil stored in, or even an olive oil stored in plastic is probably going to interact differently than something stored in glass. Or does that matter?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
It matters less than how much oxygen is in there and how much light and just the temperature. But yes, it definitely would be better to be in glass than plastic.
Leanne Vogel
So for a lot of individuals, usually we’re seeing these terrible oils, like we talked about, soy, corn, canola, safflower, sunflower, cotton seed. I would say that where that shows up in my life is probably when I eat out, it’s really hard to find restaurants that don’t use these oils. And likely in, like, snack things, like gluten free breads or snacks or just like on the go stuff. And for the ketogenic diet, a lot of the sauces, mayonnaise, which a lot of us just use as a way to boost up our fat. Are there other places that you notice these in a quote, unquote, natural diet. Like a lot of the ladies listening, we eat pretty good. Like, where are we seeing these bad oils show up on a day to day basis?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yeah. So every single package in the grocery store can have oils in them. The number one most important habit that’s going to help improve your health is picking up whatever package you buy, turning it around. And if you’re my age, you have to adjust your glasses so that you can actually read those tiny little ingredients list and looking on there for those ingredients, because that will show up in everything. They’ll show up in, you know, veggie chips that we think are healthy. They’ll show up even if on the front of the bottle it says made with olive oil. That doesn’t mean there isn’t seed oils in there. Any kind of vegetable preserves, undried tomatoes, olives, you name it.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
So you absolutely have to be paranoid. And it’s sad, but we live in a world now where everybody just wants to give us the cheapest possible food and that equals more vegetable oil. And vegetable oil is coming at us from all directions. People, kids in school, like, if you have kids going to school, their lunch line is going to be nothing. No, healthy oils is only going to be the bad oils. And that’s true for all food service. It’s called food service. Like food service, they source these giant companies that make sauces and pre make foods for them.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
All of that, all of these giant companies that serve universities, colleges, prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, a lot of workplaces, they all use the vegetable oils. They all use that cheap stuff and it’s so much cheaper for them and it’s in fact profitable for them. So the world is forcing it down our throats and we do have to be on the defensive if we want to be healthy. And I think maybe I’d like to maybe segue into, like, what is the benefit of cutting carbs versus cutting these oils? Like, is that an interesting question, do you think, to people, you know what.
Leanne Vogel
My next question was? Like, of all the other things that we’re told to cut, like sugar, carbs, like compared to oils, how do we stack these priorities? So I guess kind of along the same lines. So, yeah, let’s go there.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Perfect. Okay, so these oils make us crave sugar. So no matter how badly you want to cut sugar and get rid of your sweet tooth, you will be obsessed with thoughts of sugar while these oils are still in charge of your metabolism. That’s what I discovered that convinced me that most of the benefits of the keto diet are coming from getting off these oils, and not entirely. You don’t have to cut out your carbs entirely, but you do want to get control of your carbohydrate consumption, but you cannot do that while your metabolism is hijacked by these oils. So, in chapter three of the book, dark calories, I explain how to connect the dots between vegetable oils in the diet and your mind obsessing about sugar, even after you’ve given it up for a few days, and perhaps even more after you’ve given up. Like a lot of folks talk about. Okay, well, yeah, the first few days are the hardest, or maybe the first few weeks are the hardest because you’re used to that sweet taste, right? But what happens is, seed oils, they change our body fat, and they make us need sugar, because our cells will be unable to get energy from our body fat.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Right, because our body fat is going to be made out of these pufas. They’re unstable. They damage membranes. Pufas plus oxygen equals bad. Well, mitochondria use oxygen to generate energy. So when we’ve had pufas in our diet, they’re in our body fat, and they destroy our mitochondria as they are trying to generate energy for us. So. And here’s where it gets a little complicated and a little technical, but our cells are really smart.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Inside our cells, they have the ability to detect whether they’re getting energy or not, and that’s pretty basic. And when they’re not getting energy, what do they do? Well, they put more glucose receptors on the surface, and they start slurping in sugar. So we literally need more sugar in our bloodstream when we’ve been eating these vegetable oils. They change our body’s physiology so profoundly that it is impossible for us to really feel great without sugar. Some people can adapt if they’re not too metabolically damaged, but some people cannot. And that’s, I think, why some people get over the low carb flu and some people never do, and they give up, and they think, oh, well, I just need carbs. And they’re right, but they’re wrong, because they need carbs only while they’re metabolically damaged. If they were to give up the seed oils and heal their metabolism, they wouldn’t need carbs anymore, because our bodies, you know, we can do that gluconeogenesis thing that I’m sure you’ve talked about, where our liver actually makes.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Makes sugar out of the proteins in our diet, right? So we don’t need a gram of sugar in our diet, and we can still have plenty of sugar in our bloodstream thanks to that. But when we are metabolically damaged from seed oils, we need so much more sugar in our bloodstream, and our body is basically battling ourselves because blood sugar is regulated. Insulin makes the blood sugar go down. You know, if our blood sugar goes too high, then we release insulin. Insulin makes blood sugar go down. So that battle is going on in everybody’s bodies who is insulin resistant, and that’s truly what insulin resistance is. A lot of people talk about insulin resistance being caused by eating too much sugar, wearing out the system. I’m sure you’ve heard that, right? And it makes sense.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
I even bought it when I first heard it. I was like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. And then I kept digging, and I was like, you know what? That doesn’t make sense at all, because I found a better explanation. The sugar, could it wear out our ability to respond to insulin? I mean, maybe theoretically, maybe. I don’t know. But a much more clear line to me to insulin resistance is, is this root cause of everything bad, which is oxidative stress? Oxidative stress is that stuff where I was talking about with free radicals damaging our membranes, it destroys our antioxidants, it wreaks havoc in the cell. Oxidative stress causes insulin resistance. Now, sugar high levels can cause a little bit of oxidative stress, but it’s nothing like the oxidative stress we get when our poor mitochondria are forced to burn polyunsaturated fatty acids, it kills them.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And I cite the articles and references and the experiments that show that this happens when our mitochondria are forced to burn polyunsaturated fats, it kills them. So killing mitochondria, that being bad, makes more sense to me than sugar maybe somehow wearing out the hormone system. I mean, to be honest with you, I don’t think that is a good explanation. It just. I shouldn’t have bought it. But the reason I bought it is because, you know, sugar’s addicting. Alcohol is addicting, and addicting substances. Our bodies get better at metabolizing those.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
That’s really what happens. It’s not that we get anything gets worn out. Our body metabolizes that alcohol faster. We eliminate the toxicity, the part that gets us drunk more quickly. Nothing’s getting worn out there. And so things really, truly don’t wear out. And the same thing with, like, heroin. It’s another analogy I’ve heard.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Just, like, sugar wears out your ability to. To respond to insulin, just the way heroin addicts need more and more heroin. That doesn’t happen. It just gets metabolized more quickly. So there’s nothing getting worn out. Our bodies are not, like, made out of metal that wear out. Our bodies are brilliant little biological machines, and they respond to stressors. Alcohol is a stressor, so we metabolize it more quickly.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Heroin makes our bodies go all goofy, makes our brain think wrong. So we start metabolizing it more quickly, or else we down regulate receptors. A bunch of other adaptations take place. So those are complicated adaptations. They are not the system wearing out. So that’s why I shouldn’t have bought it ever in the first place. But, you know, I did it. It seemed to make sense.
Leanne Vogel
You know, I look back on my 20 years in this space, and there are things that I’ve said and believed, and I look back and I’m like, I probably should have thought through that more logically, but you don’t know until you know. And I think that that shows, like, a good, solid practitioner, human being that realizes when they were, you know, the wool was over their eyes, and now they see and they’re like, okay, we’re going to make better choices. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
I mean, that’s science, right? And, I mean, it’s kind of a lot on us ordinary folks, though. And by ordinary, I mean, like, we’re not at the NIH, you know, we’re not in charge of nutrition guidelines, and it’s kind of a lot to put it on folks like us almost working a little bit in a vacuum, you know? But I think we’ve done a great job. I think that, on the whole, the keto community has so many answers for things that the medical community, where it totally falls short and it comes down to the bad guy in the medical community, which is the American Heart association. And that’s another thing that I discovered as I was doing, as I was writing the book, and another reason why I, I really want to talk about what I discovered with folks, because for a while, I was thinking it was the food industry, big, evil food scientists. But as I talked to the folks who were working in the food industry or who are in the food industry, from them I hear warnings that these vegetable oils deteriorate into toxins. They are the ones that are trying to make the food supply safer. And so who is it that is forcing these oils on us? Well, it’s the American Heart association. The folks who tell doctors and dietitians what a healthy diet looks like.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
That’s the American Heart association. And those guys being the bad guys flips the whole medical world inside out, because those guys educate doctors, and they make doctors think that a diet that is full of vegetable oils is healthy. They make doctors afraid of cholesterol. And they’ve destroyed our health. They’ve destroyed the health of our children. We’ve exported these deadly ideas around the globe. It came from the American Heart association, the idea that saturated fat is unhealthy, that we should, you know, that keto, that’s why you battle probably very often people saying a keto diet is unhealthy because it’ll raise your cholesterol. Cholesterol is good.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Raising your cholesterol is not the problem. It’s not the root cause of heart disease. And that story, like, the full story, and getting a handle on that, I think, is really important for anybody who’s interested in being healthy and following keto on the long term, because being healthy, whether you follow keto or not, it can raise your cholesterol. Then you’re going to have to sit in the room with your doctor who’s telling you, oh, God, your cholesterol is too high. And you have to be there thinking, gosh, my doctor right now is telling me my cholesterol is high. And that’s a problem. I know I heard other people say, it’s not. But this man in the room with me, that’s who’s in control of your mind.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
You have to respond to that at that moment. Right? So you have to have this strength of fortitude to basically say no to the most expert car salesman in the universe, which is what doctors are now in terms of selling cholesterol drugs.
Leanne Vogel
Yes. Yes. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out on doctors that I’ve said, nope, I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. It’s my bot. No.
Leanne Vogel
And if you don’t agree and if you can’t stand beside me on this. In fact, I was assessing a client on her blood work, and it was suggested that she go off her thyroid medication, and I thought maybe that wasn’t the best idea. Her doctor took her off the thyroid medication, and her cholesterol went up. And then he said, okay, well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna put you on cholesterol meds. And I’m like, but her cholesterol went up because ldl is cleared by thyroid hormone. If you don’t have enough thyroid hormone, it’s not gonna clear your ldl. And your ldl is just gonna sit there and so could it be that because she’s now low in her thyroid hormone that her ldl went up? Like, it’s so important that we listen to these things, and we can sit in those discussions, ask questions, and respectfully say, thank you for your information. I’m gonna look some things up, and I’ll get back to you.
Leanne Vogel
And that’s okay.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
That is definitely okay, because, you know, doctors are people, too, and they can make mistakes, and they know that a good doctor will be open to the possibility that there’s something that you as a patient might have read that is actually true, that they just haven’t learned enough about that yet. Unfortunately, those good doctors are, you know, in short supply because the doctors are not in a good mindset at their jobs. Like, I know this having, you know, I’m a primary care doctor. I worked in the system for 20 years. We’re rushed, we’re underpaid. We are penalized by our bosses and all of society. We are under the threats of lawsuits if we don’t get people’s cholesterol is down, if somebody has a heart attack on our watch. It’s not easy to be a good doctor anymore.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
So if you can find one, yeah, keep that person and just be nice when, you know, if they say, here’s a tip that I give to a lot of the people that work with me. You know, if your doctor’s forcing cholesterol on you, but cholesterol meds, I mean, but otherwise, you like them, just say that. Just say, I think you’re great. I want you to be my doctor. I have a different philosophy about heart disease and what causes it, and I will not come after you if I have a heart attack. You know, if you’re comfortable saying that, yeah, totally.
Leanne Vogel
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Leanne Vogel
Happy snacking. I want to spend the last couple of moments just talking about practically what this looks like on a day to day basis. In fact, my husband and I went for lunch. We had like, a date during the week, which we never do for lunch, and he chose a place that uses terrible oils. And I’m thinking, like, how am I gonna order something? And I ended up getting a salad. I didn’t do the dressing. I brought my own. Yes, I’m that girl.
Leanne Vogel
But there are some times where you just, you’re gonna have to eat some of these oils. It’s just gonna happen. Are there ways to combat that? Or is there some wiggle room? Like, I don’t want people to walk away being like, if you have a teaspoon, you’re gonna die. But, like, how do we practically approach this knowing they’re not so great, but understanding that there’s gonna be birthday cake that our friend makes us? That probably isn’t great. And are there things that we could do to help lower the oxidation when we’ve eaten the things?
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Well, yeah. So one of the things that I think is important to keep in mind, really, on the practical end of things, is that it’s not all seed oils. Right? And so in the back of the, the last third of the book, I give people strategies for fighting the root cause of everything. And it’s not all seed oils, but it is important to know that the root cause of everything is this thing called oxidative stress. And I spend the first part of the book helping people understand what that is. But truly, it’s the root cause of everything. So then once you understand that that’s the root cause of everything, the question isn’t how do I avoid seed oils, it’s how do I prevent oxidative stress? And there’s more strategies than just avoiding seed oils. Yes, of course you want to do that.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And I give you all kinds of tips for how to do that while you’re ordering fast food. When you’re at a sit down restaurant and the mom and pop restaurant, certain ethnicities are going to be more likely to use healthier fats than others. So that’s all important strategies to know. But the other thing to know is that you need nutrition to fight oxidative stress. There’s two things that cause oxidative stress. One is toxicity, mostly from vegetable oils, also from just toxins. But vegetable oils are the number one toxins, the only thing that is a main ingredient in our food. But the other things that help you fight oxidative stress is nutrition.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
And many people aren’t getting enough nutrition as they’re, you know, going through this now. Probably not if they’ve been listening to your podcast for a long time. But the key points, just to review that, I found that people are often deficient in nutrition wise. If they are on the vegetarian or vegan side, they are often low in protein. And if they’re on the carnivore side, they’re often low in certain vitamins, especially some B vitamins if they don’t do a lot of liver, and they’re often low in antioxidants. Right? So vegetables have a lot of antioxidants, spices have a lot of antioxidants. If you want to be more hardcore carnivore and still avoid vegetables, you can get spices and herbs. They have a lot of antioxidants.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
So you want to go after foods that are naturally high in antioxidants. You want to go after foods that are naturally high in protein. I already mentioned that. And you also want to go after foods that are naturally high in cholesterol, in addition to the right kinds of fats, which we already touched on that. So, you know, I think we talked about that enough. But the foods that are high in cholesterol, like eggs and butter and shellfish, those help your body fight oxidation directly because cholesterol is actually an incredible anti oxidant. Have you ever heard that before? I didn’t actually know that until two years ago.
Leanne Vogel
Yeah. I love it.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Yeah. So that’s why it’s in our bloodstream. It’s there to fight the oxygen that’s also in our bloodstream and protect the fatty acids that are supposed to be there in small amounts. Cholesterol does that. And so if we have high cholesterol, that actually helps us fight oxidation. And so that’s why it’s so important to get our heads wrapped around the true root cause. It’s very simple. Once you know that, you have to stay laser focused on the root cause of everything, which is oxidative stress.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
It’s literally the root cause of death. So when I say it’s the root cause, I mean it. It’s the root cause. And everything else that’s bad for us is bad because it promotes oxidative stress. Once you frame it up that way, the whole conversation gets a lot simpler. And that’s what I hope dark calories brings to people who have read it so that they will never lose that laser focus and never let people who are only partially informed or totally uninformed and wildly conflicted and outright evil derail them from a healthy diet.
Leanne Vogel
Such a beautiful summary. Doctor Kate. How can people connect with you and where can they find your book? Tell us all the places and ways to connect.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Great. Yes, absolutely. I am on my website is my main place to connect because you can sign up for my newsletter there, and then you can get a lot of free information and a lot of like, useful, helpful downloads immediately, like how very at a glance, how to calculate your protein intake. Then you’ll get like a newsletter, which I put out just about once a month. I’m not going to bombard anybody. But also, if I’m doing anything new and important, I will announce that in the newsletter, like, I am working on another company right now that I’m hoping to launch that will help people take charge of their health in a whole, like, in a really simple way anyway, a course, like one of those online courses that everybody has. And I’m like, way overdue for creating this. I’m finally.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
So also, I’m on Facebook at doctor Kate Shanahan. I’m on Twitter octor kateshanahan, and I’m on LinkedIn under Kate shanahan and Instagram occurkatechanahan.
Leanne Vogel
I will include all those links in the show notes, including links to your book. Doctor Kate, thanks for coming on the show today. This was a blast.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Thank you, Leanne. Let me ask before we go away.
Leanne Vogel
Yes.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Did I kind of convince you maybe like 5%, 0%, 100% that seed oils are, are the main important thing. Did I succeed in blowing your mind?
Leanne Vogel
You definitely blew my mind on the sesame oil. I’m anaphlectic to peanuts, so we’ll never, ever have peanut oil. But the sesame oil definitely mind blown. Oxidative stress. Totally agree with you 100%. That is the root cause of death. So that seems pretty. And then all the other pieces, like, that’s really when I realized that there was something more than nutrition at play.
Leanne Vogel
When it came to my own health, root causes really started to take root of just like what is the root cause and how do we get to that root cause and what’s kind of, you know, if we get distracted with hormones and all, like, that’s not, that’s not where we need to take this. So, yeah. Blew my mind on the sesame. Yes.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Okay.
Leanne Vogel
All right.
Dr. Cate Shanahan
Not quite on the seed oils. Okay, well, you, you have the opportunity to read the book and still have your mind blown blind. Blown.
Leanne Vogel
This was so fun. You can find out more from Doctor Kate by going to drkate.com. that’s drkat.com. she also has an instagram at Drkate Shanahan, and I will include all the details about her book in the show notes. If you’re unsure how to find it, head on over to the show notes today and we will see you back here for another episode of the podcast. Thanks for listening to the Healthful Pursuit podcast. Join us next Tuesday for another episode of the show. If you’re looking for free resources, there are a couple of places you can go.
Leanne Vogel
The first to my blog, healthfulpursuit.com, where you’re going to find loads of recipes. The second is a free parasite protocol that I’ve put together for you that outlines symptoms, testing, and resources to determine whether or not you have a parasite, plus a full protocol to follow to eradicate them from your life if you need to, that’s available@healthfulpursuit.com. parasites and last but certainly not least, a full list of blood work markers to ask your doctor for so that you can get a full picture of your health. You can grab that free resource by going to healthfulpursuit.com labs. The Helpful Pursuit podcast, including show notes and links, provides information in respect to healthy living recipes, nutrition and diet, and is intended for informational purposes only. The information provided is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, nor is it to be construed as such. We cannot guarantee that the information provided on the healthful Pursuit podcast reflects the most up to date medical research. Information is provided without any representation or warranties of any kind.
Leanne Vogel
Please consult a qualified health practitioner with any questions you may have regarding your health and nutrition program.
Hi! I'm Leanne (RHN FBCS)
a Functional Medicine Practitioner, host of the Healthful Pursuit Podcast, and best-selling author of The Keto Diet & Keto for Women. I want to live in a world where every woman has access to knowledge to better her health.
