Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - A Simple Diet Shift to Take Control of Your Metabolism with Dr. Cate Shanahan

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Did you know the oils in your kitchen could be sabotaging your health? In this episode, Dr. Mindy sits down with Dr. Cate Shanahan to uncover the surprising dangers of seed oils and how they impact your metabolism, cravings, and overall wellness. Learn why these oils are more harmful than sugar, how to avoid them (even when dining out), and the benefits of a 2-week seed oil-free challenge. Plus, discover practical tips for nourishing your body with the right fats and carbs. It's time to take control of your health and feel your best! To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep265 Catherine Shanahan, MD, is a board-certified family physician specializing in the promotion of health and reversal of disease using traditional food as a first line of treatment. She has studied biochemistry and genetics at Cornell University and ethnobotany at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kauai, Hawaii. In 2010, she was invited to relocate to the mainland to direct The Bedford Center of Nutritional Medicine, the first clinic of its kind in the country to bring farmers and chefs together with exercise therapists, massage therapists, and dietitians to form a multidisciplinary patient care team.  Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

on this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I am welcoming back a repeat guest from a very pivotal discussion on metabolic health, Dr. Kate Shanahan. Now, Dr. Kate is not only a board certified family physician with an incredible depth of knowledge, but she's also a leading expert on nutrition and metabolism. Many of you may know her from her best-selling book, Deep Nutrition, which has changed the way countless people think about food, health, and longevity. But the conversation you're about to hear goes even deeper than anything she's ever written in her books. This conversation with Dr. Kate is all about uncovering the hidden dangers of seed oils in our diet and why they may

actually be more harmful than sugars and carbs. Yes, oils could be causing you to gain weight more than carbs and sugar. And what Dr. Kate is going to do, in this episode is she's going to break down how these oils wreak havoc on our metabolism, how they fuel our sugar cravings, how they promote insulin resistance, and how they contribute to the epidemic of obesity and diabetes. We also are going to dig into the value of natural carbs. I've been talking about this, nature's carbs, nature's carbs, we got to go into nature's carbs. And the fun thing that I love about Dr. Kate is she does not hold back when addressing the misleading narratives out there from the food industry. Let's call them out. It's time to call them out and the toxic

chemicals they're putting in our food that is making us sick and causing us to gain weight without knowing, even realizing it. So she's going to share some powerful and practical tips at the end. So please keep that in mind. She's going to talk about what do you do when you eat out. She's going to give you her top recommendations. She's going to give you a two-week trial, a challenge for two weeks that is simple and an incredibly helpful way to get these oils out of your body and to experience your energy levels and your hunger in a whole new way. So if you're looking for new guidance and more guidance, also know that Dr. Kate has a new book out called Dark Calories. You can also find her at Dr.Kate.com.

This is a conversation everybody needs to hear. So as always, it's such a joy to bring these guests to you, and some of them are more life-changed. Some of my discussions are more life-changing than the others, and this is a huge one. Please share it with a friend. Please take notes. When we're informed, we save ourselves. It is time to save ourselves from the toxic food industry. I hope this helps.

Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in you. to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. I want to start by welcoming you back

to the Resetter podcast. I always tell my repeat guests that I don't bring everybody back. I have to really love the conversation. I have to really feel like it's a necessary one. And the first time, which I think was like a couple of years, ago, I had you on here and yeah, it was so good that I'm really happy to have a repeat conversation. So let me just start by welcoming you back.

Well, thank you. I'm happy to be back with you. I look forward to what we're going to talk about today. Yes, me too. So listen up everybody because this is one of the most pivotal, pivotal conversations around metabolic health that I just feel like we cannot scream loud enough. So I want to start with this question. What is worse? Carbs and sugar or seed oils? Oh, great question. Yeah. So I wrestled with that for many years before I came to the conclusion. And here it is. Definitely seed oils, hands down, seed oils are worse than carbs and sugar. especially when you don't qualify what you're talking about in terms of carbs and sugars that, you know, especially just like generally, right?

Because broccoli has carbohydrates. So when you get, let's say you get 50, 70 grams of carbohydrates from vegetables or other whole foods, that's definitely beneficial. Okay? I just want to say that. Like, those are beneficial. You know what I've started saying now is nature's carbs, versus human-made carbs because we have villainized carbs so deeply and we forget that nature

provides a lot of really healthy carbs to your point. Well, yeah. I mean, the fact, just even talking about food in terms of these macros, that has nothing to do with nature. Yes. Nature doesn't grow carbs. Nature grows plants and animals. Yes. And that third kingdom, fungus we all forget about. Let's not forget about. Let's not forget about fungus. You know what? It's a really important point because I've been in watching the keto movement forever and since it became really popular. And we went into this phase where we started villainizing carbs and we forgot to just like fat, we forgot to say there's good fat and bad fat. We forgot to say there's good carbs and there's bad carbs. And I just have not found nature to make any

health mistakes. It's what we do with what gets comes out of the earth and how we manipulate it, that now we have a problem. Yeah. But on the concept of seed oils, for starters, just help us understand why is the metabolic expense so much greater with a seed oil than even a piece of bread? Yeah. So to start with, the seed oils are the opposite of something nature makes, right? So just to piggyback on the conversation. Nature doesn't make bad food. Nature makes plants that can have toxins that protect themselves, but human beings also are not so stupid that we have to be taught those particular lessons too many times. So we know what foods are safe. We cultivate them, right? So what you said also is important because it does something that we don't get when we

start diving into macros and going real deep into details. And that is the big picture is we need to just respect nature. And that's what I've been talking about and doing. And that has been my guiding principle since I was born. I think. I think it was just born with this idea that, you know, respecting nature. Nature is not stupid. We need to bow down to her dominance over our lives. And, you know, amen. Amen to that. I agree. So Cito is the operas. The opposite. of natural. And what they do to our metabolism, and one of the things that convinced me that they are worse than even refined carbs and sugars is that they change our metabolism. They change it in ways that seed oils and sugars can't. And what they do, and here's the real

kicker, is that they make people crave sugar. And I think I just misspoke there. I think I said, Seed oils change our metabolism in the way that sugar and carbohydrates can't. Even the refined sugar and carbohydrates cannot change our metabolism in the ways that the seed oils can. And the name of the change, we all know this name. We've all heard of it. We just haven't tied it to seed oils. And that's what I did in dark calories for the first time or maybe the second time. So I talked about it and fat burn fix too.

but I talked about it more, more like clearly, I think, in this one. And what seed oils do is they make us crave carbohydrates and sugar. And that is called insulin resistance, that state where we crave these things. Not for flavor, I need to specify. Most people are not craving them just for flavor. they're craving them mostly for what, for energy, for brain energy, because that's what insulin resistance is. And nobody's defined it that way.

So that's one of the things that's new in dark calories, which is insulin resistance is the state where our brain needs sugar for energy, because nothing else in our metabolism will give it energy. Our metabolism is broken. The name of the break, the broken metabolism, insulin resistance. that leads eventually to pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes. So it's familiar. It's relevant.

It's not some theoretical metabolic issue. It's something people are dealing with. Millions of people are dealing with diabetes. Twice as many people are dealing with prediabetes and even more are dealing with undiagnosed insulin resistance. So are you saying that if I'm repetitively eating seed oils, it is changing my metabolism for the worst, as opposed to if I have some bread or, or, you know, crackers, I always call it bread crackers, desserty things, which probably have seed oils in them too.

But if I have a bread and sugar that doesn't have bad seed oils and I have bad seed oils, the bread and sugar is not going to have as lasting of a consequence to my metabolic system as the seed oils are. Correct. Because the bread and sugar do not have toxins in them. And the seed oils do. Wow. So, okay.

And what ultra-process foods are is we put them all together. Like, right? I mean, we put the bread, the sugar, and the seed oils together. Yeah. Alter processed food, you just defined it way better than, you know, the people at Tufts, the geniuses in South America who came up with this new Nova classification system that all the academics are saying, oh, it's so brilliant, ultra-processed food. And when you ask them what, what is it? They give you like five pages of lists and none of it makes any sense because their ultra-processed food list, the Nova classification that now public health is going to be subservient to this. They're going to be saying things like, you know, a steak is less healthy than lucky charms because they.

What? Yeah, this is the, this is like people have been up in arms about how absurd this. thing is. But it's coming from Tufts University. It's coming from a university in Brazil. And it's coming to destroy our food supply even further because it's, it's grading food in such a way that real foods like steak and eggs and cheese and butter, those foods are graded poorly. They are considered ultra-process somehow. Like a hamburger is a pre-formed hamburger. When you go to the grocery store and you buy 100% ground beef, but it's preformed in the shape of a hamburger, that is considered the worst kind of ultra-processed food, right? So that's why I'm saying we need to be clear on,

I wanted to highlight that you're defining ultra-processed food in a much more concise and accurate and helpful way than all the academics and all the king's horses and all the king's men who are leading, you know, the officials leading this conversation around hell. And I, and I, And I do define, I have one more thing that I add on to it in dark calories. I make that definition clear in dark calories. And the one more thing is protein powders. Those are also really refined. Like, you know, the hydrolyzed weight protein isolates and soy protein isolate and all this stuff that, you know, unfortunately, people rely on for their protein because, you know, they don't know how to cook often.

Yeah. You know, it's like going back to simplicity is what we have to do. You know, when I hear you talk about the way that they're redefining food. My brain has to go to two places. One, it goes to almost like, I want to cry. I want to be angry. And then it goes to, but wait, why would they do that? Like, are these people really trying to kill us? Or are they just so focused on profits that they can no longer see the damage that they're doing? Like the information is too close to them. Yeah, it's more the second than the first, I would argue. I would say there's a lot of I don't care about people mixed in with that. I don't care about other people's health. Wow. And I don't, certainly there's a ton of I don't respect nature. And so in the end, a lot of these people are, you know, like they're wealthy enough, the people leading the conversation, they're wealthy enough that they go to restaurants that use, that don't use these oils or they have personal chefs. They're just not exposed to them. So they don't even, they're protected in ways that they don't necessarily even understand that these oils are bad. They don't even have to.

They just know that they make money by doing what they've been doing, which is ignoring the science on seed oil toxicity and, you know, running nutrition departments at universities that get funded by the processed food companies and or the drug companies. Hello. Conflicts of interest. Hello. I mean, how is that?

It's really just a simple matter of, well, this is what's, some people used to call crony capitalism. You know, capitalism can be good. It can be bad. And crony capitalism is bad. It's out of control, money out of control. No, no ethics, no care behind it, no thought for the good of the other people. It's only the good of your pocketbook. That's what crony capitalism is, and that's what got us here. Do you think that the seed oils has been the number one contributor to obesity, and now we have a world that's obsessed with these weight loss drugs. Do you feel like there's a tie between those two? 100%. So chapter three of dark calories makes the connection there that, again, has never been

made before. So I love bringing new science to the world. That's what I've been doing since my first book, Deep Nutrition. I love making sense of science. And because in my way, it's bringing people over to my thought of like, let's respect nature, right? That's why I love doing this. Respect her. Yes. Let's put her on the pedestal. She deserves. There. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so how do they make us gain weight? Well, they make us hungry because they shift our metabolism. So that metabolic shift that I was talking about called insulin resistance where we crave sugar, we crave it because our body fat has been corrupted. The chemistry of our body fat has been corrupted by the seed oils.

And it no longer gives our brain the energy it needs between meals. A whole job of our body fat is to serve up energy and fuel to all of ourselves between meals. And the main sensor of the effectiveness or the fuel levels, if you will, in our body, the main sensor is right in our brain. So when our brain isn't getting energy, we have to take action. What is that action? Well, it makes us hungry. and we eat, we snack. So what we see with this obesity epidemic

that almost nobody is talking about is a snacking epidemic. There are more people snacking now than ever in history. We have more people eating five and six times a day now according to the surveys on how often people are eating than ever in history,

according to these series of surveys that have been done over the past 10 years. It's very simple. what's complicated is understanding the chemistry and the biology of the connection, and that's what's in the book, so people can really understand it so they can see that there's really something here. I'm not just making these claims. But that's the bottom line, is that when we've based our diet on seed oils in the amount that we now consume, we have totally corrupted our metabolism and the chemistry of our body fat, and that makes us

snack. It makes us hungry. It makes us more hungry, yeah. It makes us more hungry. And the foods that we eat are generally when we're in that state of, oh, my God, I'm having a snack attack. I'm hungry. I need something now. We don't eat foods made from scratch. We eat more fast foods. And those foods do not have the cholesterol and the saturated fat and the things that satiate us. So we overeat those too, right?

So we were doomed to gain weight on this in this paradigm of seed oils are healthy. Just listen. Don't listen to nature. or just listen to the latest food recommendations from the latest set of academics who are getting all their money from big business. Yeah. So it's interesting. I just saw an article this week that came out.

I don't know when it was actually published, but it was showing that a high, this is the way it was explained, that a high fat diet actually will shut down or no, will upregulate the bacteria that shuts off the protection of genes. So it's a high fat diet, right? You see the irony. So it's a high fat diet that uproaculates bad bacteria and that bad bacteria shuts off GLP1. So now we're going to go give a bunch of these GLP1 drugs to people to start to fix that system that was shut off by a high fat diet. So then I went into the study to try to find out like tell me what fats. And we're still, we're still, we're still in the same conversation of lumping all fats together and they wouldn't break it. I couldn't

find what fats they had looked at. And that's the problem. And I guarantee you that it was the vegetable oils because if there were normal dietitians in there, and by normal, I mean, not the very few who have adopted the keto diet, right? There's no dietitians who truly understand seed oils and their toxicity. And the very things we are talking about, and I'm sure you've been now talking about to your audience for a while since if you've been talking about seed oils, since maybe the last time I was on. Forever since the last time I've been talking about for years. And like when I told you when you came on, I'm like, we still have to go into this because

people don't even realize what's happening to them with these seed oils. Right. And dietitians have no idea. So when a dietitian is designing any nutrition study, when they design a high fat diet, they are not allowed. They are generally disallowed by the internal review boards to use butter and eggs and high natural fat foods. Because they are cut by this 10% limit of saturated fat.

And their belief system is that more than 10% of total calories coming from saturated fat is deadly, going to cause a heart attack. So they are bound by that mythology, mythological belief system that's been instilled in all of us now for reasons I talk about in dark calories. And it's so important to understand the story. But they don't know that story. They don't know the history of why these things are considered heart healthy. They just believe they're heart healthy. So that's what they use. And so whenever you see a diet, unless it was, I'm in a study, unless this study involved in a known low-carb advocate, then you know you can read, you don't even have to dig around.

You already know that they're not studying saturated fat and cheese, and they're not, they're disallowed from using that. And that's why they don't tell you, right? They don't, that's why. There's a reason they don't disclose what's in the diet. I mean, don't you think that's wildly wrong and. irresponsible and to just say high fat and not say, well, oh, we're actually using vegetable oils that didn't exist before the industrial era. And we're depriving people of a whole set of

foods that everybody used to eat until the American Heart Association made these false claims about cholesterol and, you know, heart healthy oils. So I think it's, I mean, to me, that is just like so egregious. Yeah. I spent a couple hours on this one article. a few days ago trying to figure out. And, you know, reading, as you know, reading a research study is not like picking up a juicy novel. No, I know. You have to like unpack the words and stuff, but I could not find anywhere that they separated the fat out. Yeah. Well, no, they don't, on purpose. And so Dr. Midia, I'm just like, like, welcome to my world. This is what I've been doing, you know, on, I don't know how many hundreds, maybe thousands of these studies.

And then the debunkers out there, they say, well, you don't have any evidence that these oils are bad. And I'm like, yeah, that's because they hide it. Because when they talk about high fat diets being unhealthy, they're not disclosing what fat they are using. And I've dug around and successfully found the answer quite a few times. But it's not easy. You have to go down and track earlier studies and earlier studies. and then very often they will cite the exact tool that they are using or the exact diet that they are using. And then you have to go and look that up elsewhere and you have to have full text access to all this stuff.

And you don't always guarantee to have full text access to all the journals in the trail of discovery that is necessary to get to the root of what they're actually saying. So, you know, it's just so irresponsible for anyone out there who, in that healthcare space to say there's no evidence because they haven't looked. They haven't tried themselves. They haven't done what you and I have been doing, spending countless hours going down these rabbit holes to find that they are not telling us something very, very important. The key thing. They're hiding it. They're keeping it behind. So just so that we can keep this really action oriented, can you explain for the person who doesn't know what a seed oil is, like which one of the oils or seed oils that we need to stay away from? There's eight. I call them

the hateful eight so that you can remember that there's eight of them because the word seed oil doesn't quite cut it, right? Because there are actually sesame seed oil is not unhealthy. Right. And the word vegetable oil certainly doesn't cut it because, I mean, what does that even mean? You don't get vegetables from broccoli and olive oil is a vegetable oil and that is healthy. So I had to create my own term, right? This is necessary. byproduct of the fact that academics are not talking about this. So we have to take control of the conversation. I had to take control of it and create my own term. Payful eight. So there's eight. So memorize these. Soy, sunflower, safflower, corn, canola, cotton seed, rice bran, and grape seed. And of those

eight, the first six are the most important. And there's three Cs and three S's there, corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower, those are the important ones to memorize, because when you're out grocery shopping, those are the ones you're going to see on the nutrition labels. The other two are mostly in restaurants. So the safflower and the sunflower oil, those are the two that I actually see in health food stores. Like, right now I'm in L.A. and one of my favorite places to go to is Air One, which technically you're supposed to be able to walk into Air One and everything's organic and non-GM. But when you actually start to pick up the packages and you look, the oils are all off.

And the two oils that just keep getting permeated into the healthy products is sunflower and safflower. I think people are waking up to vegetable. They're waking up to soy. They're waking up to canola, hopefully. But sunflower and safflower seem to fall under the radar. Why is that? Well, they just have this healthy aura. You know, they've managed, they're a little more expensive, and they've promoted themselves as healthy.

They have a good PR team. Basically, yeah. And to be honest, sunflower oil could be healthy, but they don't make it healthy because what they do is they don't, there is no virgin sunflower oil. They just industrially, I mean, it's not in our products. It's not, you know, you, I'm sure there's some artisanal company out there that's selling. tiny bottles, like a pint of virgin oil for $16, you know. And that's guaranteed not what's in these health food stores. But make no mistake. These, they're all can be made organically. Like all eight. Air quotes. Organic. Yeah. They can be. Because what is it, what is required that makes it be organic? Well, you can call something organic if you don't add any hazardous materials to it during any point of the processing, right? That includes in the farm and also then in the factory, right? So when they make soy oil, they can make it, you know, without using the hazardous,

they can make organic soybeans, and then they can make it without the main hazardous material added to these oils is called hexane. It's a solvent. It helps dissolve the oil away from the seed to get more bang for your buck there, more dollar, squeeze the out of the oil, more oil squeeze out of the seed. And that hexane now is disqualified. Anything that was made with hexane, even though most of the hexane is removed, and there's, there are trace amounts, but they're like parts per million or parts per billion. And, and that, that's, that's still disqualifies it from being called organic. So the organic label,

though, isn't protecting people from the toxins that develop in the hateful. eight seed oils during the refining, the storage, and the cooking processes. So that's the problem and that these toxins are there in significant amounts. They're not insignificant at all, especially the more that the oil gets longer as stored, the more light it's exposed to, the more you heat it, the more toxins are there. And just to give people some qualitative idea here, there was a toxicologist who just picked up serving of fries from the local McDonald's, the local Burger Kings, and studied how many toxins are in there. And he found that it's equivalent to the toxicity of cigarettes. Like one French fry

equals the toxicity of one cigarette of, and that's just of this, you know, even as bad as that and shocking as that is. He was studying a type of toxin called alpha, beta, unsaturated aldehydes. That's just one category of toxins. There's two. Oh, it's only one of the many that are in there. Yeah. Yeah. Those are called second order reactants.

There's first order reactants and third order reactants that he just doesn't study. Wow. So if I'm eating these hateful eight, one way of looking at this. And I just, I really so want my listeners to understand this because the way I'm interpreting what you're saying is when I eat these eight, I am actually. depriving my brain of energy. And if I deprive my brain of energy, it will do everything it can to get me to eat again so that I can give it the energy back. So if you want to increase your hunger, eat these eight over and over and over again, and you will be more hungry. Yes. And the one thing I

would just say to add to that is that when you've been eating these oils over years, right, which we have. have because the short-term effects are different than that metabolic disease consequence of insulin resistance. That takes modification of our body fat. It takes depletion of our body's antioxidant systems. And that process takes consuming these oils for a matter of, you know, well, I guess months maybe for infants or year. But year, it seems like years, right?

And I have to say it seems like because no one actually studies how fast can you give a human insulin resistance by serving them up the diet of these oils. But when you do this, these studies in mice, you do it in a matter of weeks. Of course, their life's been in shorter. They're life's been short. So, you know, how does that translate? Well, I mean, we were just left guessing. But you can just look at the numbers of people who are who have insulin resistance. And I haven't mentioned this. But. It's more than 99% of the American population is already insulin resistant. And that's because the American population has no clue that they are eating 30% of their daily calories from these oils now. It wasn't quite as high 20 years ago, but we've been eating them in massive quantities, hundreds of calories a day for decades. Yeah. I've been sitting with a lot of people who are on the weight loss drugs and just asking, tell me what you experience.

And the only thing that people can really, that's a unifying idea, is they're like, I'm less hungry, so I eat less. So I'm thinking if I look at that mechanism around the upregulation of these bad bacteria that shut off GLP1, and now we'd have to add that in to calm hunger, the real thing that I would do would make sense is let's get rid of the hateful eight. And then let's lean in to eating the right oils. So what are the right oils that will be healthy for me? So let me just that study that you brought up, I'm glad you brought up again because I want to push back against that conclusion that they make us draw. Right. I mean, you correctly picked up on the fact that whatever this, whatever it is doing that

that is bad is coming from the vegetable oils. But that business about GLP1 is nonsense. It's, it's the fact that it's damaging the metabolisms of whether it was people or rats or whatever animals, probably animal that they're getting these studies from. It's damaging their metabolisms in the same way that it damages human metabolisms. The microbiome is this black box that folks are using to just blame everything now on the microbiome. I don't know. know if you notice that, but like everything is the microbiome. We've got to, you know, blame the microbiome on everything instead of just blaming our diet. But certainly the oils change the microbiome. Okay. Yeah, there's no doubt about that. The studies have shown that. Whatever you eat will affect

your microbiome. But the idea that it is as direct as, and simple, as cutting down your production of GLP. That is a fancy. People who are insulin resistant, they produce GLP. The problem is their brain is not getting energy. What is GLP? It's just a satiety hormone. Right. And when your brain... Could both things be going on at the same time? I suppose. But, you know, if there's any truth, let's talk about the relative importance, I would see there's like one, you know, tenth of a percent relative importance. because vegetable oils do so many other bad things to our health. Right, right. That has nothing to do with the microbiome.

And I'm sort of, you know, like, I don't mean to poo-poo the idea, but we have to get our story straight here. We're listening to people who don't understand what vegetable oils are. They're drawing conclusions because the microbiome now has become the scapegoat for everything that they can't otherwise explain. Have you noticed that? Yeah. I mean, I think, here's what I think is that the human body is very complex.

and it always does the right thing at the right time. It's always adapting to whatever environment you put it in. And we now have it in a toxic soup. And in that toxic soup, the brilliant body does not know what to do. So it takes all these toxins and it stores it as fat. And fat is really a way of saving our life. And we go and we villainize it and we try to, we're trying to make it go away, but we haven't addressed the toxic soup.

That's really, you know, the way I look at it. And so, but what you are bringing to the conversation that I think I really want to point out is why is everybody so hungry? Why is everybody so hungry? And, you know, I can tell you that I live what I call a fasting lifestyle where I tack on a fasting window almost every day, not always, but a lot of most days I'm fasting anywhere from 15 to 17 hours. And then when I eat, I've, I'm really.

really oils is the number one thing that I am protective about. And the biggest challenge I have at 54 years old is I'm not hungry. I am not hungry. And I think a lot about the Okinawa women that we put up on a pedestal as being like, why do they live so long? Well, they eat less calories. Well, why do they eat less calories? Because they eat real food that came from nature.

It's not complicated people. So we, this is where I start to get irate. I'm like, let's go back to simplicity. And so whether we're going to throw the microbiome under the bus or we're going to throw genetics under the bus, the bottom line is our food system has gotten to new levels of harm. And we have to start calling them out, which is what you're doing. And we need to start pointing our fingers at thinking that. at things like olive oil and avocado oil and like other other oils that people can lean into

that don't have the PR team that the hateful eight have. Right. Like anything else is good. Like you'd ask me what is, you know, good. So I mean, I'll give you my favorite five. And that is butter, olive oil, peanut oil, this unrefined and sesame oil also unrefined and coconut oil unrefined, right? So, you know, anything, any unrefined oil is going to be good. And oils that are refined, some of, you know, those that are not the hateful eight are not as good for you, right? And they're best avoided if you can do it. Like, so avocado oil that's refined is not as good as unrefined avocado oil. But it's not as bad as the hateful eight. So, but every other, there's a middle, there's a middle category. Yes, there is. Yes. It's, it's, I call it, I call it okay,

but not great. And it's essentially empty calories, right? So, you know, we were talking earlier about sugar and refined flowers. Those are empty calories also. So the refined oils that come from coconut and the refined peanut, those are basically the empty calories of the oil world. And they're not something you want to seek out, but they're better than the hateful eight. So it's important to understand that there are, you know, those three categories.

And there's the good, the bad, and the middle ground of just empty calories, right? So like, you know, we were talking about carbohydrates when they're whole foods, they're actually good for you. But when you refine them, then they're no longer good. But they're not toxic, directly toxic. You know, I mean, you could argue that if you eat enough sugar and spike your blood sugar, that has toxic effects. And indeed, it does. But the toxicity is slow motion compared to the toxicity of how seed oils affect our health. Yeah.

So how do I get around these seed oils? because now I can tell you as somebody who travels a lot, I go to restaurants when I travel, and they all have the hateful aid in them, even the high-end restaurants. So when I, so, you know, my husband and I've kind of come to the conclusion that when we're home, we're going to make our own food, or when we travel, we go to Airbnbs and we try to make our own food. But it's even for somebody who's educated on the topic, it's really hard to get around them. Do you have any strategies when, for people?

people on like when you're at restaurants or, you know, out and about, how do we get around the, how prolific these oils are? Yeah. So the last third of the book is devoted to practical strategies that will help you accomplish exactly that. And so just as an example, one of them is when you go to a restaurant, if it's a sit-down restaurant, all you need to do is say, do you have anything that you can cook for me right now in real butter, not? butter oil rather than trying to go through the exercise of asking what oil they use because we already know the answer if they're not telling you that it's seed oil-free restaurant then they're not paying attention to the oils for the most part unless it's like you know a super fancy restaurant then they

might be using olive oil for they say in like as a traditional French or Mediterranean or something from Spain and they're all talking in Spanish or French or something and they say they get their oils from that country but does rare so for the most part you have to take control the conversation And that's how you do it. And I give you all kinds of strategies and tips on how to do that. And also another really common question that I get is, gosh, when I start looking, I find these oils are in everything and, you know, how much is too much. And so I tell you how to tell how much is too much too, right? Because there is such a thing as an insignificant amount of a toxin, right? I mean, I'm not like saying you can't even have one part per billion of this stuff. If that's basically what it's. amounts to, it's not significant. You know, like, let's not worry about that. Let's do what matters and focus on what matters. And, yeah, and that's what I've been about my whole career is, like, let's not focus on the

fact that some people have celiac and can't eat gluten. That doesn't mean everybody needs to avoid gluten, you know, and, you know, let's not focus on the fact that some people have problems with peanuts. That doesn't mean everybody needs to avoid peanuts. Let's not get lost in these contaminants that are, although not great, they're somewhat overwhelming when you try to think about all of them. There's a lot of toxins, right? Our food supply is not great.

Let's just get that out of the way. But there's what we need to do to stay sane in this world is learn the worst of the worst. It's called hierarchy, right? We avoid, we put the worst of the worst. we know that this is number one. This is our priority. Let's make avoiding vegetable oils the priority. And then the next thing I say is don't eat excessive amounts of unnutricious,

non-nutrative carbohydrates. And sometimes that includes things like rice. I mean, you know, white rice does not have very much nutrition. And even though it's, you know, people think of it as a whole food. It's not really a whole food. We've removed the brand, white rice. So, and, but so, yeah, so that's the hierarchy. I like the way you think that.

I really think that's important because, you know, again, this topic is so confusing for people. And I think we have to start with the understanding that the food system is getting worse and worse. And people are really struggling. I've been really intrigued by a concept that I hear a lot of people talking about right now called food deserts. And how in parts of the United States, we have, people don't have access to high quality foods. and so they're going into their 7-Elevens and they're eating meals out of there that are packed with these seed oils. And then we're creating all these cardiovascular and metabolic problems and then our immune

systems going down. And then now Big Pharma comes to rescue us all from that. So I love how you've put this at the top and I really, really agree. I think educating yourself is really important. Here's a couple of sticky spots for me. One is let's use, I'll use myself as an example. I love sweet potato fries. They are my favorite.

If I go to a high-end restaurant and I'm going to have a grass-fed burger and I'm going to have sweet potato fries and I know they're cooked in the wrong oils, am I doomed now? Like how long I've heard some things say that those, that oils, those seed oils stay in you for years. Like if I have one batch of sweet potato fries, what's the metabolic consequence? of that for me down the road? The dose makes the poison. So if you're doing that every single day, you're going to be getting more toxins.

So it's not just that the fats, it's really less of a problem that the fats stay in your body fat for years than the consequence of the toxins that we consume that deplete our antioxidants. And so this is the new information that's in dark calories that will really help folks like you, Mindy, and, you know, other people who are really into health. understand what these oils are doing to our bodies. And it has to do with the concept of oxidation and oxidative stress. And those are new terms, but they are the key to unlocking your understanding to all of it.

And I explain what they are. By the time people are done with it, they're able to put it together in basically one sentence. And that really, really is essential so that you understand cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease. that you understand that you can get control of your inflammatory diseases, whatever it may be, whether, you know, celiac is an inflammatory disease, right? It's an autoimmune disorder driven by inflammation. And psoriasis, skin conditions are driven by inflammation. You can get rid of if your family has a history or if you're worried about somebody with memory problems,

you're worried about dementia, you're worried about Parkinson's, that is all related to oxidation and oxidative stress. And the reason that I knew seed oils were problematic, basically the very soon after I discovered that they existed was that I knew that they were, they oxidized easily. And the oxidation really was the key to understanding it. But oxidation happens in our body. And that's the missing link in all of medicine. That's why doctors cannot tell you why you have thyroid disease or why. you have leaky gut or why you have an autoimmune disorder or why you have brain fog. Doctors cannot tell you that because they do not understand oxidation and oxidative stress.

I, I, a thousand percent agree. And if we've learned anything from the weight loss drugs, I'm going to keep coming it back to this one, it's that the thing that will motivate people to make change is something they can notice in themselves, which is why I really love this idea that when the brain is deprived of energy, when you're eating all these seed oils, your hunger goes up. Now we have a very motivating conversation. Oxidative stress, as challenging as that is, I don't think the lay person typically can understand that or is motivated by that. But where I want people to take this conversation and run with it is if you're hungry and you can't get your hunger under control,

go on a seed oil free diet for 90 days and see what happens to your hunger. Prove it to yourself. People are paying $1,000 a month for these weight loss drugs. Let's do just a test. And I don't know if you've done this or a challenge. Let's just get off seed oils for 30 to 90 days. and let's see what happens to everybody's hunger. You're going to notice it.

Yeah. Two weeks. Okay, that's what I want to know. That's in the back of the book. I help you take your own two week challenge. And I walk you through exactly what to do, how you're going to clear out your kitchen covers, what to check for, what to shop for. I have a shopping list.

I have a meal plan. I have very easy recipes for people to follow. And yes, absolutely, the understanding the link between brain energy and hunger is key. And I have an entire chapter devoted to that. It's chapter four, it's called fat bodies starving brains. That is the connection. I mean, to understand that there's science behind this, it's not just me making stuff up. That's why we want to, you know, we want to be, let's not scare people away from terms that they need to know.

You know, oxidative stress, I'm not saying you did that, but, you know, that oxidative stress is the term we need to know. We've already adopted all these crazy terms, right? GLP1 and microbiome. Yes. Those terms don't help. you as much as understanding oxidation and oxidative stress. Again, hierarchy, let's understand what is going to help us the most and use our limited brain time, limited concentration. We all have limited, you know, things we can learn to learn the thing that is the central concept of what is

going to save our life because oxidation and oxidative stress right now have been killing us. Yeah. They are. They are in the process of killing you right now if you're still eating the vegetable oils. Yeah. And I would a thousand percent agree. with that and I have little tantrums in my house all the time when I look at the news and I and I watch people who are well respected like Oprah stand up and you know advocate for the weight lost drugs. I feel like the weight loss drugs, although they are helping a lot of people temporarily, it's like the elephant in the frickin' room is that we're not talking about what our food supply did to create this obesity problem. And then if we bring it down to

the person level. It's like, okay, if you're just struggling to lose weight, if you're just finding yourself hungry all the time, take your two-week challenge. Try getting off the seed oils, buy your book, follow the two-week challenge, and then go and see how your hunger changes. And to me, that's giving the person the power back. And I'm just really grateful that you are fighting such an uphill battle because I know that the food industry probably has your name as a target. Yeah, I wonder sometimes. Yeah, it's not very excited about books like this because there is a huge profit in keeping

us overweight, sick, medicated, and coming back for more. And, you know, so sad. Since your, since your audience is concerned about GLP1, you know, whether they should take them, whether they will help them, part of chapter four, I explain exactly how they work and why they help. And so that you can understand that, yes, so sure, maybe they can be like a temporary thing that helps you at least be less hungry so you can adapt some of these changes. But then, you know, you'll be able to, you won't be able to get off and stay off unless you

adapt some of these changes. I use the drugs. They've been around for decades as diabetes treatments. And what everybody said was, you know, they were disappointed that it didn't really help their sugars that much, but boy, they were able to eat less. And it exactly, it helped their blood sugars exactly as much as it helped them eat less of the foods that were raising their blood sugars. And it just took, you know, the pharmaceutical company a few years to, for that to dawn on them, and that that's what was going on, that they're just an appetite suppressant.

They're just an appetite suppressant that is not like the other appetite suppressants, which made people jittery and elevated their stress hormones and their adrenaline and caused arrhythmias and caused them to sweat and all kinds of horrible digestive side effects. This is a appetite suppressant that our body normally makes. And that actually it does make. It's just that it doesn't make a thousand times the normal amount. But when you inject yourself with a GLP1, make no mistake, you are injecting yourself with a thousand to 10,000 times the normal amount.

amount of GLP1 in your body's system. Right. It's not, now you've put yourself in an abnormal situation. Yeah, it is hardly natural. But that doesn't mean that they don't help some people because some people are just metabolically damaged or have like relationships with food that are really deeply, deep-seated and makes it very difficult. They have food noise.

I don't know if you ran across that term, but that's what people told me when I was using it for diabetes medication. And they would say it calmed the food noise. Yeah. No, I've had a lot of people tell me like I can think about other things, which, you know, so it's like such a double-edged sword because you're like, it's a miracle for so many people, but we are still not having the right discussion around it, which is how did we end up in this place? Right.

And I want to go back to how we started this. I think your insulin resistance is causing a deficit of energy. in the brain so you start to crave more is brilliant. And I hope that people are really motivated to, if nothing else, get the oils out so your hunger changes. And I just, I think that's incredible. So, yeah, absolutely. That is, I think that's the key. That was a lot of what drove me to write this book was to help people understand what I call, I call it the Dr. Kate's energy model of insulin and resistance because it's a new idea. You know, like right now, there's no explanation.

The American Diabetes Association says, we don't know what causes type 2 diabetes. It's a mixture. It's a who knows. It's genetics. It's the lack of exercise. It's being overweight. Oh, no. Now it's the microbiome again.

Can't forget that. It's the toxins, right? It's all these things. Mish-mash of confusion. We don't know. We don't want to know, right? Because we like things the way they are. So this is a new idea.

Now, the other idea that came along that made sense even to me for a while was insulin, the insulin carbohydrate model proposed by folks like Gary Taubes and Jason Fong. I don't know if you've had any of them on your podcast, but those folks talk about the carbohydrate model of insulin resistance where it's driven by insulin. But that's why that is wrong. I mean, that was a better idea than what the American Diabetes Association says, which is just give up, it's hopeless, take our drugs, that at least gave people, oh, okay, I can cut out all my carbs, and then I won't be producing this insulin, which is a hormone

that has somehow become toxic in my body. And I'm saying that, you know, so almost sarcastically, because it is a stupid idea. Insulin does not a toxin. It's a hormone. And your body is producing insulin when your type 2 diabetic is producing a lot of insulin because you're insulin resistant. and the carbohydrate model does not explain how we got into that insulin resistant state or why, you know, why are we, you know, all obese now because it does not draw those connections.

It cannot explain it. So it's the energy model of insulin resistance. I want that phrase to be out there now because it helps people understand energy in their brain, and that is the key to resolving all metabolic disease, getting their brain that energy. And I show you how in dark calories. Yeah, I love that. So let me finish on this. I always love to understand the depth of the way people look at health.

So the last question I've been asking this year is what is health, what's your definition of health and how do you know when you're healthy? Oh, I would say now. I would say energy, right? Like if you wake up in the morning after you've had a good night's sleep and you wake up and you feel like you have energy, you feel like whatever. the day is going to bring you, you can take it on. You're like, bring it on, man, I got it. I got this. I can do it. You know, like, look at the Olympic champions. They're bursting with energy, right? They're not

like schlepping out onto that gym floor and then like perking up a little bit when the music comes on. They're bursting with energy. And so really now, you know, my answer has changed a little bit too, right? It used to be, you know, connecting, putting your body in alignment with nature. Now, since everybody is dealing with these energy problems and, you know, lack of energy, that is the answer right now. Get it. If you get your brain, your body energized, you can do so much more. And one just final thing I want to leave people with is that I myself experienced this transformation. I, too, was insulin resistant.

I wasn't particularly overweight, but my brain energy was not there for me. And when I changed my diet, I literally feel like I get 30% more. life out of my day every day because I have more brain capacity to live and think and deal with stuff. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. So how do people find your book and how they find your work? And I'm going to really take it one step further and ask everybody to try the two-week challenge. So get the book, try the two-week challenge, and then report back what you notice. So how do people tap into your resources? Yeah, so come to my website, which is Dr. Kate.com, and that's that's spell, d-r-r-c-a-te-e.com, and please sign up for my newsletter.

So you scroll down to where it says get a free basket of goodies when you sign up for Dr. Kate's newsletter. And you'll get my newsletter, which comes out about once a month after you get a few free goodies and a couple of short emails to figure out, like, do you want to read one of my books? But those resources that you will download for free will help you, even if you don't read the books and staying in touch with me and emailing me, please, if you do have to, you of success with this, I want to hear about it because that helps me. Yeah.

And post about it, like this is a problem we're all in. And so people listening to this, if you take that two-week challenge, you get a result, post about it, send her a message about it. Like this is something that the time has come to call out the food industry and to call out these oils. So Dr. Kate, I'm just, thank you for fighting the fight. I know it's not easy. I really, I can hear it in your.

your voice. I know many of us who have been trying to empower people one by one by one. It's frustrating when we don't have the money that the big food industry has. We can't get to the researchers, but we watch big pharma profiting from big foods, egregious way of making food. And it gets exhausting. So thank you. Thank you so much for fighting the fight. Well, thank you doing this, you know, for fighting with me. You know, we're in it together, girl. I guess you could say. Yeah, agree. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for saying about the posting about it. That's brilliant. I like that. I've hit a new level of, okay, everybody, rise up. Like, that if we don't advocate for ourselves, we are going to continue to watch people we love die.

The chronic statement that I make is even though your health situation right now may not be your fault, it is your responsibility. And when you make a change, you can ensure that you inspire others by posting about it. So again, Dr. Kate, thank you again so much for your passion, your knowledge, and fighting the fight with me. Thank you. I've really enjoyed our conversation. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.