I am back to share some more information about Dr. Catherine Shanahan's book
Deep Nutrition Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food. There is so much wonderful information that I could not cover it all in one post. I left off talking about how our grandparents ate compared to how we eat today and how this related to the book. In Chapter 7 of Dr. Shanahan's book The Four Pillars of World Cuisine, she talks about how organ meat, meat on the bone, fermentation and sprouting, and fresh, raw foods are the keys or pillars to optimal health and beauty. I really liked this chapter because she goes into great detail about how to incorporate the four pillars into your life and why they are so beneficial. I kept going back to what my grandparents ate while reading this chapter. They ate liver, oxtail soup, broths, blood pudding, and whole, real, fresh foods right from the farm and garden. They have good, strong bones and I always marvel at how beautiful my grandmother's skin is! My mom has the same genes and looks so much like my grandma and ate a similar diet until the processed, sugary foods starting entering the picture. I strongly believe that the introduction of vegetable oil as well as processed, refined foods along with bad information from the government and health professionals had an effect on my mom's health in the long run. Everyone knows this is a touchy subject for me. I then began to think about myself and my brothers. I had allergies at a very early age and was given soy formula for some time(not happy about that), but never did a doctor suggest a dietary change. Instead I was given medications and had to get allergy shots once a week. I had belly aches every other day, but lived with it. The food pyramid was our food guide, but luckily I had lean genes so even though I was extremely inflamed, I remained pretty lean. Even more interestingly, my younger brothers have grown up with so many fractures, sprains, hip, and joint problems I don't know where to start. It has really made me think. The physical therapists and orthopedists are baffled by the number of injuries that are occurring to children at such a young age. Could it be related to poor nutrition? Why is this generation experiencing so many different issues? It doesn't seem fair. Sorry for my rant.....back to the four pillars.
Here is how we have started the process of working them into our eating. Paul and I have been experimenting with chicken and beef broths for us and the kids. We buy marrow bones from either the Amish market or Wagners Meats in Mt. Airy. Throw them in a crock pot with 32oz of beef broth and fill the rest up with water. Let it cook for 8 hours or so, the marrow falls out of the bones and I blend it up with a hand blender. The kids love it over rice and we drink it like hot tea. We will keep you posted on any differences we see related to our health.
I tossed around the idea of fermenting and sprouting my grains to ensure I am getting the most nutrients from them, but decided to keep them off our menu for now. I don't have the extra time that is required to sprout and ferment grains, but I would love to further explore this option and experiment with it in the near future. For the time being, we will treat the children to french toast on the weekends and will buy fresh sourdough bread. They love this treat:) I tried Ezekiel bread for the french toast, but Kylie's eczema reared its ugly head so that was the end of that.
Fermented veggies have been a little easier to incorporate. We have started with sauerkraut and it reminds me of my childhood- sauerkraut and kielbasa:) Yummmmm! I would love to eventually make my own, but I am not there yet.
Organ meats have been a lot harder for us to embrace. We both have a mental block that we are wrestling with, but we are open to the idea. I am going to try the recipe that Dr. Shanahan recommends in her book and we will let you know how it goes! As for the fresh, raw foods, we do our best to get fresh vegetables(we love our South Mountain Veggie delivery), grass fed beef when possible, and grass fed cheese for the kids. We would love to incorporate more raw veggies and are working on some healthy dressings for the kids that don't have vegetable oil as their main ingredient.
The mention of vegetable oil brings me to a dilemma I have been having since reading Deep Nutrition. I am shocked at how many foods have vegetables oils in them! I have had to put many items back after reading the ingredients thoroughly. Sugar and Vegetable oil are at the heart of so many foods, both of which are highly inflammatory.
Vegetable oil is the lipid extracted from corn, canola, soy, sunflower, cottonseed, safflower, rice bran, and grapeseed. Vegetable oil doesn't come from broccoli, and it doesn't equate to a serving of greens. It is found in almost all ready-made foods, from granola and squishy-soft baked goods, to rice milk and soymilk, to vegetarian cheese and meat substitutes, to frozen meals and side dishes, even salad dressings that say olive oil on the front.
In the following passage, Dr. Shanahan discusses how vegetable oils can actually negatively change our genes:
Frying in vegetable oils doesn't so much cook your foods as blast them with free radicals-fusing molecules together to make the material solid. Chemists call this series of reactions a free radical cascade. Free radical cascades damage normal PUFAs, turning them in to ugly molecular ghouls(the Zombie effect). Just a little MegaTrans in the bottle of canola oil can become a lot of Mega Trans after you-or the cereal/donut/frozen dinner manufacturers-cook with it. On the plus side, free radical cascades make your food extremely crispy. (Free radical cascades also happen to play a role in the polymerization reactions that make plastic solid. This is probably the origin of the well intentioned, but not strictly scientific, assertion that "margarine is one molecule away from plastic.") On the minus side, free radical cascades make your arteries extremely crispy. They will also damage other bodily tissues, which can generate inflammation, a kind of chemical chaos that interferes with normal metabolic function.
We had learned early on in our nutritional studies that vegetable oils are not the way to go when they are heated and we have eliminated them completely from our diet. I enjoyed her zombie effect analogy and it helped me to understand the destruction of these trans fats on our cellular function.
Dr Shanahan touches on so many important topics that I have only skimmed the surface in both of my posts. To read part I, click
here.
I do want to mention that some people who I have recommended the book to have found the first few chapters hard to digest since she focuses on beauty and the role genes play in our physical beauty. I found the first few chapters to be fascinating so you will have to decide for yourself. I would love to hear other people's opinions so please comment when you finish reading. Happy Reading!!!
