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1-Page Summary of Deep Nutrition
Overview
In 2008, Catherine Shanahan wrote Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. In it, she explains how ancient nutritional wisdom can help us live healthier lives by focusing on the Four Pillars of World Cuisine. These four pillars are all based on the same principles and lead to optimal gene functioning.
Although average lifespan has increased, the quality of life in people hasn’t. Cancer and heart disease rates are rising, as well as obesity and diabetes. The root cause is poor nutrition. Processed foods that contain sugar and toxins are causing genetic damage to people’s health. In addition, there’s a lack of information about what it means to eat for optimal health.
Most Americans view food as fuel and believe that eating a lot of protein or limiting carbohydrates will improve their health. This belief is in sharp contrast to modern cultures with strong culinary traditions, who see food as sacred substances that are connected to the land. The disconnect from ancient culinary tradition has led people to consume processed foods without considering how it affects them on the cellular level.
Genes are not static. The field of epigenetics has proven that genes can be transformed, for better or worse, by the foods people choose to eat—sometimes in the span of a single generation. Eating unhealthy food creates an environment where disease flourishes and takes over your body.
Therefore, if parents eat poorly, their children’s health will diminish as well. Sugar and vegetable oil are two major toxins that compromise genetic function and lead to a host of health problems. They’re in many processed foods, so it’s hard for people to avoid them entirely.
In this book, we’re going to learn about the Four Pillars of healthy eating. The first pillar is animal organs (liver, heart, kidneys), then comes meat eaten from the bone (fish with bones in it). Next up are fresh plant and animal products (vegetables and fruits) as well as fermented foods (yogurt, kefir). These foods will help us get more nutrients that support our cells. This will reduce oxidative stress and other processes that result in genetic deterioration. Health improves when people are connected to nature and the land.
Deep Nutrition provides a philosophical, biological and physiological background to the medical field. It’s an alternative to pharmaceuticals and medical care that can help improve society as a whole.
Key Point 1: Modern medical training does not offer sufficient education in how nutritional choices impact health.
Medical schools don’t teach students about the importance of nutrition. Students are taught to use technology, like pharmaceuticals, to treat health problems. However, they’re not learning how to prevent people from getting sick in the first place and that’s a problem because it won’t help people get healthy over time.
Patients who rely on doctors for advice are at a disadvantage because of the lack of nutritional knowledge among the medical establishment. Take Beth, for example, a middle-aged woman with advanced colon cancer whose liver is compromised by malignant tumors. She enters the hospital for extreme pain related to her cancer growth but doesn’t know which foods could help support regeneration of her liver and ultimately help her absorb heavy pain meds she’s taking, making them more effective. If those doctors had an understanding about how nutrition can heal and support the body, they would inform Beth that foods such as beets, garlic and carrots could support her liver and ultimately help her absorb the heavy pain meds she’s taking, making them more effective.
