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Simple Farmhouse Life
325. Seed Oils, Healthy Fats, and Why Nutrition Feels So Confusing | Dr. Cate Shanahan
00:59:08
Why traditional diets got fats right—and how simple swaps can improve your health
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A
The start of a new year makes many of us think about what we can do to set ourselves and our families up for success. It's that time of year where we have more structure, we're focusing on goals and what all we can accomplish in this fresh new beginning. For a lot of parents like us, that includes school. Maybe your kids need more flexibility. Maybe they'd thrive with something more personalized. That's why I want to tell you about K12 powered schools. These are tuition free online accredited public schools for kindergarten through 12th grade. We have with K12. Your child will get the support they need to learn at their own pace with tailored curriculum. But this is different from homeschooling. K12 has state certified teachers that are trained to teach online. They utilize hands on innovative technology to make learning interactive. And K12 knows education isn't one size fits all. Whether your family has a busy on the go schedule or your student is an advanced or diverse learner, K12 will set them up for success. K12 has more than 25 years experience helping students gain the skills they truly need to thrive in the future and it could be perfect for your child too. Charity Join the more than 3 million families who have been served by K12 and empower your student to reach their full potential. Now you can make the switch at any time. Go to k12.comfarmhousetoday to learn more. That's the letter K the number12.com farmhouse.
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B
K12.Com farmhouse One generation's nutrition can affect the next generation's health. Nothing about our health is random. I wrote books to help people understand that. In spite of what you know, maybe their doctors might want to tell them that there's nothing they can do. Just bad luck or bad genetics. There's a heck of a lot that they can do. Nothing about our health is random and a whole heck of a lot of it relates to diet and nutrition. And that is important because I didn't learn that in the medical system.
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C
My name is Lisa, mother of nine and creator of the blog and YouTube.
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A
Channel Farmhouse on Boone. On this podcast I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses Simple Sourdough and the Simple Sewing Series. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes and description box below.
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C
Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast.
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A
You know, on here we like to talk about from scratch cooking.
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C
We like to talk about taking our health seriously, but in ways that are simple and doable. I think that you are going to love this conversation with Dr. Kate. We are going to be talking about seed oils. So Dr. Kate is the author of Deep Nutrition. You've probably heard about that book if you've been around the whole food natural type of world. And then she has a new release called Dark Calories. So specifically, it is about seed oils. We've been hearing a lot about seed oils, and in some ways it feels like you can't run away from them and, and how to run away from.
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A
Them and what to even look for.
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C
So if you find that kind of thing interesting, which I sure do, I think you're going to love this conversation. Okay, well, welcome to the show. I'm really excited to talk about this topic. We get a lot of questions about what to avoid, what contributes to health. Some things it's like, okay, is that a scare tactic or does that move the needle a lot? Is it actually difficult to do? So let's start with introductions. Tell us a bit about yourself and your book, Dark Calories.
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B
Sure. Yeah. So I'm, My name is Dr. Kate Shanahan. I'm a medical doctor, family medicine doctor. And I believe that the body is extremely sophisticated and intelligent. And there's nothing really random about our health. If we get sick, it's for a reason. And a lot of that has to do with nutrition, either in our generation or previous generations. Because I actually, before I went to medical school, I was at Cornell and I studied genetics. And there I learned that one generation's nutrition can affect the next generation's health. So nothing about our health is random. And I wrote books to help people understand that. To help people understand that in spite of what you know, maybe their doctors might want to tell them that there's nothing they can do. It's just bad luck or bad genetics. There's a heck of a lot that they can do. This is what, like all of my books, I have five books, actually. The latest is Dark Calories. And that is what I want people to understand. They all cover different aspects of how your diet controls your health. Nothing about our health is random, and a whole heck of a lot of it relates to diet and nutrition. And that is important because in the medical system, I didn't learn that. In the medical system, I learned that because I believed that from the beginning. And then after not learning it, when I was being trained, I applied what I had learned to do better research and try and figure out what a really healthy diet should be and what it really can do for us. And, and the, all the books, what they tell you are just different ways that a healthy diet is going to save you from disease, save your children from problems, help you have, you know, help your genes basically function normally, help your cells do what nature designed them to do. Because our cells, we are made up of billions of cells, and each one of those billions of cells has its own kind of little brain and its own, like, goals in life, believe it or not. Like, that sounds like anthropomorphizing, but it's actually supported by science.
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C
Yeah, well, it is amazing, like just what our bodies do it. I think today with the social media, with so many different opinions speaking and, you know, not everybody, sometimes we speak on things that we don't really understand. And so there's a lot of muddied waters and it's confusing to know which to do. Like some people are, you know, no, no meat, no dairy, no gluten. And I think it can be really confusing for people to figure out and not just be like, ah, forget it. Just, we won't even worry about this at all. Which, you know, is not the right approach. Your book focuses on. This new book focuses on seed oils, which we've been hearing a lot about. Why is that a good place to start?
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, so. Well, I mean, for me, it wasn't the first place I started, so let me kind of unwind a little bit because you said a few things that are very important. You said there's so many conflicting people out there who are interested in nutrition, very passionate, but, you know, they don't know the full story. Even doctors don't know the full story. I didn't know the full story. I had to write the story that I've been writing. And in my first book, the first thing that I did was address that issue of conflicting ideas. So I was writing the book in the aughts, right? So, and at this time, there was like the French paradox and there was the Perricone prescription, and there was Atkins diet and the South Beat diet, all these diets that had different, different ideas. And what I. My strategy for figuring out how to make sense of all that noise was to basically look for what all successful diets had in common. And I didn't start with popular diets. I started with diets that had been tested for generations, which are traditional diets. And I based a lot of my thinking on Weston Price. And I'm sure you know who he is, right? So that's Completely logical. His premise that I was so attracted to was nature. You know, when you obey nature, you'll be healthy. And his journey to go around the world and identify people that were still aligned with natural principles, rather than having the overlay of civilization and capitalism and everything has changed with that. Just like the basic rudimentary way that people used to live in connection with the land, whether it was hunter gatherers or farming or herding or whatever, wherever they were, that was very appealing to me. And so what I did was I looked to see what were they all doing in common, right. And this is something that he himself did. But what I did then was I put science into it. Like there's been a hundred years now of science since he did his original traveling. And what I did was I was like, well, the field of genetics and epigenetics and oxidation chemistry and pathology validates the kind of diet that he found all over the place. And what I did was I simplified the rules and I broke it down into four. Right? There's four things that all traditional diets have in common. And this, this came from looking at where Price went and what he found, and looking at travel cooking shows where people, you know, like, I didn't have to travel like Price. Like, you had to get in there and travel.
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C
Yeah.
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B
But I could just get on my couch and turn, turn the dial, wasn't a dial, but turn the channel to Anthony Bourdain's no Reservation. That was my kind of like my favorite show because Anthony Bourdain was a chef himself and his shows had this structure where he would go to restaurants and stuff. But the best part was he would go to some house where some mamacita or, you know, a family was cooking together and doing this traditional stuff. Like, he didn't put it that way, but that's clearly what they were doing. They were, you know, just doing common sense based living from the land. You know, it was very, very different than the way nutrition science talks about food. And so I use that information to break it down into my four rules, which are the, the centerpiece of my book, Deep Nutrition. And. And if you're curious what they are.
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C
Yes, I am.
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B
I wasn't sure if you read that one too. But. So the first pillar is just simply fresh food and, you know, prepared really not at all or very minimally, because when you cook food, you actually change it. You change the nutritional value. Often things, nutrients are lost because heat can destroy nutrition. And the second one is fermented and sprouted food. Because when you have a whole ton of fresh food and you don't have refrigeration or canning. You want to preserve it. You can actually preserve it. Nature preserves it. Nature preserves it by fermenting. You work with nature and you. You can preserve fish guts by making, you know, fish sauce. You can preserve cabbage by making kimchi or sauerkraut and so on. And sprouting is. Is kind of a similar idea, like seeds are naturally preserved. So what you do with, with seeds to work with nature and enhance the nutrition is you let them sprout instead of just grinding them and, you know, pulverizing them, the way we've done for the past thousand years. We didn't used to do that. We used to, like, mostly just let them sprout and germinate. That would soften them. So that's a whole other strategy to maximize your nutrition. So that was the second pillar. The third is what I call meat on the bone, which really gets to the point of bone broth. Right. We don't want to lose the nutrients in the tendons and ligaments and bones and cartilage and all that, because that is a superfood and it's a missing pillar. It's a missing, like from our food pyramid. It's different than protein, it's different than carbs. It's not even talked about in, like, the dietary guidelines. But it has unique properties of benefiting our skin, our joints and so on. I'm sure, you know, I'm sure you probably make bone broth.
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A
Yes.
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B
So, you know, all that. But that was, that was something that's actually common to all traditional cultures, even going back thousands of years, thousands and thousands to Native Americans and, you know, everywhere around the globe. And then the last one is organ meats, which now, again, you know, in America, we don't value them. We don't even have recipes for. Most of the influencers are not even talking about them. But they're powerhouses of nutrients. And so that's what all common diets had in common. And when you include those four strategies into your diet, you are following a nutrient intense diet that helps those intelligent cells of yours do all of the complicated things that they need to do to make you healthy. It allows them to make you healthy. They want to make you healthy. It's not like we have to struggle. We just have to nourish ourselves properly.
- [13:42]
C
Yeah, makes sense. And in today's modern world, it's something that you have to know and recreate because back in the day, when a lot of these Studies were done. These are people that this is just what they had to do to survive. Like this is what was available. They had to use every part of the animal. But then today we have to know this and then recreate it. Even though we have very delicious food readily available, that maybe doesn't fall into those principles. Like when we fry something in a seed oil versus in tallow or something, they end up tasting the same. They're readily available. And so it's really knowing these things and then pursuing. It's not necessarily restriction and having food that is less tasty. It's. It's just harder to come by and knowing what it is you should actually seek out.
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B
Yeah. And then so absolutely. And like a lot of people think tal tastes better anyway. So like I know my sister who cooks with it.
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C
I agree, it does taste better.
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A
I just mean.
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C
Yeah, like most people like you have chicken fried in one and chicken fried in the other. It's like eh, you know, it's fried chicken.
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B
Exactly. Like it's the same thing that you might be craving. But just now it's not going to be toxic. So to finish your question, which is like why seed oils? Like why start there? Well, because. So deep nutrition was about understanding what does a healthy diet do for us. And in that book I started talking about, well, what is kind of like the opposite of a healthy diet and that is 70% of what people eat now, which is made up of seed oils as a 20 to 30% of the average person's calories, refined sugars and flours.
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A
Really?
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B
Yeah, 20 to 30% refined sugars and flours which make up another, you know, like 30 plus percent, 37% and, and then even protein powders which I am not a fan of. And that makes me a huge outlier in this space of people who are trying to sell protein.
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A
Yes, it does.
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B
Yeah. Like everybody's trying to sell protein.
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C
No kind like there's none that you would recommend. There's some like bone broth base. I don't really know how they're made though. Like it's kind of suspect that they taste good. So it should be so.
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B
Well, yeah. That they taste like chocolate. Like that's the suspect part.
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C
How does this happen?
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B
So yeah, so bone broth is kind of the best of the powders and it's good enough where I could say if you absolutely can't do bone broth or you know, make your stuff yourself, then this is better than nothing. But, but you know, it's not good. And the other protein powders like whether it's from beef or pea protein or whatever are. Are plain old not good at all. They are potentially toxic. It's way understudied. But just basing on the chemistry and what, what little research is out there. So. Okay, but, but seed oils come into this picture very powerfully because they are. I've identified them as the worst of the worst. I've identified seed oils as the reason that junk food diets make people sick. They are the worst thing. They put the junk in junk food. It's not incidental. Right. That. Oh, well, people who eat junk food are also eating seed oils and that's why they look bad or that's why you feel better when you stop eating. Right. You stop eating seed oils. Well, you're not eating junk food anymore. Well, there. It's not just in junk food. And don't forget that that's why junk food is bad. Because take a look at like the ingredients in something we would call junk food, like corn chip. There's three ingredients, and the first two are perfectly fine. Corn.
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C
Corn and salt.
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B
It's not even corn flour. It's corn and, and salt. Right. And then the main source of fat calories is the seed oils, usually quant oil. Right, right. So why isn't that a health food? Why doesn't that make people healthy? Why is that actually very unhealthy?
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C
It's the seed oil.
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B
Yeah, it's the seed oil driving all of that. And nutrition science has been so irresponsible around this topic that, you know, I get a little upset about it because of that, you know, because nutrition science, these are. There are. There are. Is so much money being spent on nutrition research. People go to school to be nutritionists, dietitians, physicians, because they want to learn the truth. But nutrition science is really the opposite of the truth. I believe nutrition science now is so dominated by industry that is really little more than advertising or indoctrination into, you know, promoting processed foods. Because if you look at what the typical dietitian is going to recommend, they're going to recommend soy milk, they're going to recommend cereals, they're going to recommend, oh, by the way, infant formula. Where does the fat come from for that? All of the polyunsaturated fat in infant formula comes from seed oils. Yeah.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
And here's something really interesting that happened about to infant formula about 10, 15 years ago that there's nobody talking about this. It used to be that soy oil and corn oil could be like the only fat in Infant formula. But quietly, they dialed that down. So now there's a lot of palm oil, coconut oil. And the difference is that palm oil and coconut oil, even though they're not good for you, because the ones used in formulas are refined, they're not the fragile polyunsaturated fats that are the part of the reason that seed oils become so toxic when we refine them. So, so quietly, like, that used to be the dominant, the very dominant fat, like the only fat. The first three ingredients basically used to be sugar and like something else I forgot what a whey protein powder and seed oil. Right. That used to be the first ingredients. And here's what I think happened. That there were so much research showing that children fed that type of infant formula solely seed oil based as the fat. That was actually a laboratory of information. Because when you compare that those outcomes from children consuming soy. I'm sorry, consuming infant formula in that era versus breast milk, the differences were so vast that somebody, some point, was going to have to point out, hey, maybe it's not just that breast milk is amazing. Maybe this stuff is also toxic.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Right.
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B
And so they dialed back the toxicity by pulling out the majority of the.
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C
Seed oil, but didn't advertise it because they say it.
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A
Yeah.
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C
That's interesting.
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B
I didn't even know it happened. I don't know when it happened. And no one's talking about it, but I. I notice it because, like, I had been in a pediatrician's office until 2010, and then next time I hear about it, I didn't look at all until 2020. Until 2020. Because actually a lawyer reached out to me wanting to sue the vegetable oil industry. And. And she was like, yeah, these things are an infant formula. And I was like, yeah, yeah, they are.
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C
Yeah. And then I looked, I was like, 99. You're like, wait, it's coconut oil now.
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B
Yeah.
- [21:26]
A
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C
The day there was some, I guess you could call it propaganda. I don't know, whatever. Because stuff used to be fried in coconut oil, right? Just like like your regular McDonald's. It was fried in like maybe not coconut oil but like tallow or other more healthier fats and Then at some point we were convinced that like vegetable oil was a healthier alternative and switched away from that.
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B
Yeah. And that some point was not just marketing. It wasn't just clever advertising. It wasn't just, you know, admin and the kind of, that kind of propaganda. And this gets to the heart of why nutrition science is so like warlike and tribal right now. That's because there are a group of people who have like read my work and the work of other people in this space who are talking about the role of the American Heart association and nutrition science itself in creating this false body of so called evidence. Just really creating the guidelines. They just jumped straight to the guidelines before they had evidence that promoted these oils as healthy and before they had evidence. Right. And so they said they were healthy before they had evidence. That is not disputed. And it seems to me and anybody who like understands that and understands how bad they are, that that is so, so criminal that it almost makes it very hard for those of us who are aware of this to even like talk with the other folks on the other side of it of that realization the way that they need to have the conversation go to open up to it because it's just too opposite of where they are. They, it's very hard to dial it all back. Once you understand the fact that it was basically a lie, like that seems like it should be enough, right? Once you understand it was a lie, what else do you need to know? These things were promoted as healthy before there was any evidence. Then they had a really hard time collecting any evidence. So they've radically changed the kind of evidence that they promote. No one notices this and it's just all a big mess. It's a sham. And no one's calling them out on the, the problems with what they are, what they're calling research. There's so many problems embedded in that that it's, it's hard for people in the field to even see because they're really good at hiding it. They're just really. It's something that's been in, in play for generations and the folks that want it to be true that seed oils are healthy are really good at that narrative. They've mastered it.
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A
Yeah.
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C
But there are so many people now like you who are speaking out. And so it's become more popular to know that seed oils aren't good to the point where there's avocado oil, fried chips and didn't somebody tell me like lay's potato chips or somebody was going to be switching their fat next year or something. Somebody told me that maybe it wasn't lays.
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B
Here's what happens. Like, so I've. I've been talking about these things for 20 something years, and it was before web. And as you know, I don't have my own podcast or platform or whatever. Well, I've gone on hundreds of podcasts and those folks have, like, repeated the message. Right, because it's an important message, but there wasn't really a good way to tie it back to any kind of, like, science reliably on social media, you just can't do that. And so the messenger has gotten disconnected from the message. And that's a problem because the people who see all these people talking about.
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A
It.
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B
Most of these people are not scientists doing any kind of research. There are influencers who believe it.
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C
Yes.
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B
And so that just makes it so easy for people who don't want to dig into it and discover the truth themselves to dismiss the whole thing as a conspiracy theory. Huh?
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A
Yeah.
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C
Well, I think it's interesting how many people still want to not see there's any link between health and food in general. That's kind of blown my mind for, like, at least 20 years now because you'll say things, people will be like, oh, that's not. And it's like, you really don't think there's a link at all between health outcomes and what you put in your body. But there really, truly is that belief. It's pretty widespread. Like, it might. It won't actually have an effect. Like, yeah, but if your genetics point this way, there's just literally nothing you can do.
- [29:19]
B
Right. And that's ignorance. Right. That is born of fascination with technology and nutrition or. I'm sorry, and something called reductionism, the scientific reductionism, like, it's not a holistic picture. It's trying to boil everything down to one simple process. And you have to do that in science to understand how the processes work. But that's not the end of the job. Then you have to look at what you just discovered in context. And that's what they skip. And that's what I did. That's what my first book, Deep Nutrition, like, that was why it took me eight years to write the book, because I had to do a lot of research to create all the context from all this reductionist science that I had learned and that I had. And then I had to create, like, fill in the blanks that just. They weren't there. And so I think it's a. I think I did a job.
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C
I'm very proud it's, it's, it is, it's, it's that message. You're bringing it out all over the place. And there is now, I believe, consumer demand for some of these products. So you are seeing some of the bigger food brands possibly responding because they will follow the money. And if so, if enough people are educated on it, it's more expensive probably to produce stuff with the higher quality oils and fats. So that's probably what led to that in the first place. But if consumers are demanding it and there's more money to be made there, are you seeing a shift and even widely. Oh, huge people are knowing about it.
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
Like, I had no hope that it would get this far because, you know, partly because of where I lived when I wrote Deep Nutrition. I lived in Kauai, Hawaii, which is one of the smallest islands that people have even heard of in Hawaii. Like literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean away from, you know, there was no Google, there was no social media, There was no way to get the word out. I had written a book, book, and, and like I was selling to people on the island and I was like, well, I guess that's it. Even those eight years. And then what happened is I heard of these things called podcasts. And luckily a podcaster who was really widely listened to at that point in time, this was like 2010, had read deep Nutrition and he said this. I had to. I read it four times. And he just like blew everybody away with how impressed he was with the book. And then he had me on, like he was talking about it before I was on his show. And then he had me on the show, okay, twice. And that really exploded. And you know, other people who went around the entire country talking about it, like, somehow I ended up selling close to like a couple quarter of a million books in different formats and with no platform.
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C
And so, yeah, the message spread.
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B
Oh yeah, because like, that was deep seated influence. Right. This was almost a gener. Half, at least half a generation ago now. And so like that book influenced the Primal Blueprint. You know who that is, Mark Sisson?
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C
I don't, but I mean, I like, like we said, there's. Yeah, that's, there's. It's definitely influence all over the place. I can tell.
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B
Yeah, it's. Well, so like, it's, it influenced, hugely influenced the Western Price foundation because they were not even talking about seed oils very much. They weren't. Yeah, like, I went to a whole bunch of their meetings. Nobody was talking about seed oils. They were talking about A whole bunch of other interesting stuff. But they weren't talking about seed oils.
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A
Right.
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B
Like, they. They had written a. Or Mary Enig and Sally Fallon, who went by Solomon Fallon at that point in time, had written an article about the oiling of America. Just like how there was. How it was kind of sneaky that these oils had replaced the hydrogenated oils, which is different than the liquid seed oils. Their health effects are different. Margarines had replaced butter and that. That trans fats were a problem. And they were mostly focusing on trans fats, and that's completely different. And now they've started focusing more on the liquid oils. Yeah. And. And I, like, one of my first articles actually was on the Weston price Foundation in 2006. That's like, the first time that they actually wrote about the oils was when I wrote about it. So, like this just to give you an idea that it took a lot of work for this change to happen. But the biggest shift was after I was on Bill Maher in 2020 during COVID because do you know who Bill Maher is? He has a very influential show that a lot of people in Hollywood watch. A lot of I've heard of him.
- [34:21]
C
But I don't know that I've ever.
- [34:22]
B
Seen was Real Time with Bill Maher. And. And when, like, a lot of intellectuals and journalists and people listen to him. So people started talking about it and thinking about it. And then I was on Megan Kelly two years later. And Megan Kelly is like, all. Like, she was from Fox News. So she brought that huge audience over, and that is how people like RFK started hearing about it. And. And the people who are around rfk, who. People had been talking about seed oils for a while, but they were not focusing on it being the worst of the worst. And they were not really getting exactly how they weren't talking about it the way that. Yeah, they need to understand. To understand that they are the worst of the worst. And. And that's kind of the key. And so finally something broke through with. Really with Maha, like when RFK put it on the. The political map. Now it's a political concern with Maha being Make America healthy again. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, it became a popular thing. Like, there were raw milk parties, and all those people knew about seed oils and plus the carnivore diet. Like, there's just been so much evolution kind of at a grassroots level, which is why it's here to stay. Even though the mainstream media and mainstream medicine and mainstream nutrition science are working so hard to try to make people believe that there's no science to shut me up. People have attacked me like they're. They're trying to shut me down. The American Heart association has reached out to me multiple times, threatening to sue me. Oh, wow. Yeah. And people have, like, lied about things like the Hateful Eight, which is my term for the bad seed oils. They've lied and said that it's. It's not. There's no science behind that. It's just an Internet term. It's an Internet meme. It's become a clever meme.
- [36:27]
A
Okay.
- [36:28]
B
No, there is science behind it because I know, because it's my science. I've created the list.
- [36:32]
A
Right.
- [36:32]
B
Right. So they're having to pretend I don't exist, which is why I'm so grateful to folks like you because I don't have a podcast to, like, put me on your platforms and help me get the word out as. As the source so that people don't hear the. The watered down message or play the telephone game. How science is kind of mutated and wrong claims get made that can be debunked. And unfortunately, a lot of that has happened. People focus on. And oleic acid and omega 6. I don't know if you've heard about any of that, where people are saying, no, you can't have olive oil. It's got too much polyunsaturates, and you can't.
- [37:14]
C
Yeah, like the balance between the Omega 6 and the Omega 3 or something. I've heard of this, but I.
- [37:20]
B
It's nonsense.
- [37:21]
C
I feel like with. What's that? Oh, it's nonsense.
- [37:23]
B
Okay, don't even bother.
- [37:24]
C
Well, tell us then, what are the. What are the Hateful Eight? Which. What oils should we avoid? Because this is maybe not too difficult to actually learn this. And then check the foods that we are purchasing. Any processed foods. Of course, in our own homes, we're probably not using them, but when you get a processed food, just nine times out of ten, unless you're specifically seeking out something, it's not going to be free of seed oils. So what are the Hateful Eight? And then we can talk about, like, what we should actually be doing.
- [37:52]
B
Yeah, sure. So the. It's. If you can memorize these eight things, it will be all you need to know as far as the worst of the worst in the food supply, things to avoid. So there. There are three Cs in this list, and that's Corn, canola, cottonseed.
- [38:10]
A
Okay.
- [38:11]
B
Then there's three S's. Soy, sunflower, safflower.
- [38:17]
A
Okay.
- [38:17]
B
And sunflower kind of surprises people. So if you have questions, we can talk about that. And then the last two are mostly in restaurants at this point. So if you don't even want to bother with the eight, you can just do the seven. Remember the first six and think of them as this, the sinister six. And. But the other two are rice bran and grapeseed oil. And those are mostly like in sit down kind of fancy restaurants, not fast food restaurants.
- [38:44]
C
Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how like with replacing oils, you're not replacing, you're not doing less calories, you aren't doing less flavorful, less tasty. You're literally taking the same food and you're just swapping the oils. You might not even notice the difference. So what are the good oils? And then you had said that there's a few secrets or hacks to help us. There's three strategies to help us to transition to this. If it's new.
- [39:13]
B
Yeah. So the good oils are all the oils, everything else, as long as they are virgin oils.
- [39:22]
A
Okay.
- [39:23]
B
And there's two ways you can tell if they're virgin. One is it will say virgin or specifically say unrefined. That's the same idea, right? Virgin olive oil hasn't been refined. Maybe it's been like filtered and particles and things have been filtered out. But that's really not, not refining. It doesn't do anything bad. And then the other way, if it doesn't say is taste, it has an intense taste. Like olive oil has an intense taste, right?
- [39:52]
C
Yes.
- [39:53]
B
And so does unrefined olive, avocado oil and coconut oil tastes very coconutty when it's unrefined.
- [40:01]
C
Yes, it does.
- [40:02]
B
And peanut oil tastes very peanutty when it's unrefined. Now corn, canola, cottonseed, those have no flavor. Or actually they have no like food flavor. They have like an acrid chemically flavor to them. If you've ever just tried to figure it out, like, it's not food. Nobody can really compares it to food. They compare it to okay, chemicals and they talk about sensations like it's astringent or stingy or slimy, stuff like that. So yeah, so, but literally all of them. So like flaxseed generally is not refined and it has a very strong flavor. Sesame seed oil, peanut oil, like all of them. Olive oil, of course. And then don't forget the fats. Right. Butter, tallow, lard.
- [40:53]
A
Right.
- [40:53]
C
Butter, ghee, lard. I like to use even lard.
- [40:58]
A
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- [42:32]
C
So are any of the oils, if they are refined, are they as bad as seed oils?
- [42:37]
B
So there's this middle category I had to create of refined oils that are not as bad as seed oil. So thank you for asking the question because that's a huge, you know, point of confusion for a lot of people. So there's refined peanut, refined coconut, refined olive oil, and refined avocado. Right now those are not seeds. I mean, peanuts technically are seeds, but they culinary wise, we call them nuts. And culinary wise usually is more wise when it comes to nutrition. You know how people talk about tomato? Well, that's not a vegetable, that's really a fruit. Well, culinary wise is, is the nutri. Is nutrition wise often like, okay, has the nutritional value more like a vegetable? Vegetable?
- [43:23]
A
Yeah.
- [43:24]
C
It tastes like a vegetable.
- [43:26]
B
Yeah. And there's a lot of nutrients per calorie because it's so low in sugar. And culinary wise, like peanuts, the word nut is in there. It's more like a nut in terms of Its nutrition too, it doesn't have quite as much polyunsaturates, which are the problematic parts of the seeds. The seed oils, okay, those are the things that during refining go from normal linoleic acid and alpha linolenic acid, which are actually nutrients and valuable to the body. But the refining makes the oil so that those deteriorate into toxins. And what it does is like those things react with oxygen and the refining removes the antioxidants that nature puts in the seed. And besides, when you're inside a seed, you are protected from oxygen. There's no oxygen inside the seed. Right. But when we make oil out of these seed oils, the hateful eight ones, not the healthy ones, the, the just the, the way the fact that they are exposed to oxygen starts the process of oxidation, which creates toxins. And then all the harsh refining and the heat and everything like that removes all of the stabilizing factors that were there in the seed and that stay there in the unrefined sesame oil and peanut oil and those kinds of. And flax oil. Right. So they stay there really powerfully protecting the oil itself from oxygen. And just because of the way it's processed, oxygen just doesn't get into it as much because it's much more gentle refining process. So a lot of people make a lot of ado about the fat, about the other details of the processing that don't honestly matter that much. And that's why again, it seems like there's no scientist behind this conversation. I didn't say anything about the hexane. Yes, there's hexane, which is a toxic ingredient in gasoline that is used at one point in the refining step of most seed oils, but it's volatile and it's removed. And so the amount that remains in the oil is like non detectable for the most part. And by the time you open it and it airs out more and then you cook with it, it's not there. There's no hexane anymore. Okay. So it's, it's not the issue. It's really not. And so that's just another kind of derailment that this whole conversation has gone, gone down because of it being mostly popularized through social media channels and not proper scientific channels where the story can retain the important parts to science.
- [46:13]
C
Yeah. Try to make it kind of confusing really, and doubt over that it's actually important. So what do you recommend for people? How do you actually avoid this? Because if we were to go to the grocery store right now, one thing I noticed, even in the organic section. Like if you get organic chips, they're not. They're just fried in organic sunflower. They're not actually any better. So I guess, is it just avoiding all processed foods? Is that pretty much what one has to do in order to do this?
- [46:45]
B
Well, that's like the simplest concept, really. Like, but. But here's the thing. What exactly is a processed food? Right. So that doesn't actually work all that well because like Trader Joe's will sell you foods that you wouldn't necessarily think are processed, like roasted nuts, but they've gonna have sunflower oil in them or some kind of junky oil in them. Right. You wouldn't necessarily. Or peanut butter. Right.
- [47:09]
C
Cranberries, like dried cranberries. I noticed I'm like, oh, those are. Yeah, coated in something. I think it was sunflower.
- [47:17]
A
I'm trying to.
- [47:18]
B
Huge problem. It is a huge problem. And I've been trying to help people cross this great divide from the skills that we generally have regarding cooking and shopping and everything to the skills that we actually need in our culture now that's infused. We're seed. Everybody's trying to shove seed oils into their products because they are dirt cheap and loads of calories and they. Right. You know, you gotta have fat in it, so it's gotta be 30. You know, most many foods have 30% of their calories as the seed oil. Like, if you look at just what is the ingredient? Like what is the makeup of something like peanut butter or any nuts or like any product, a lot of it's going to be fat. And right. Nowadays most of that fat is coming from seed oil. So if you want to avoid seed oils, you really do have to understand that they're everywhere. The world is trying to shut them, shove them into your body and that it's going to not. It's not going to be something I recommend trying to do overnight. Like, that's just step one. Don't panic about it. Just be confident that you're going to take a step today.
- [48:40]
A
Right.
- [48:41]
B
Some step. And that step could just be memorizing.
- [48:44]
C
Them or just start looking out for them.
- [48:48]
B
Yeah. Like what's in your kitchen right now? Just look and get a handle on it. And then figure, then from there, figure out what to do. And so when I work with people, I go through this process of, well, given your situation, how do we make your life easier and healthier as fast as possible with minimum effort? And this is something I've done so much now over the years that I'm actually creating a Course where I'm going to bring people through it all together all at once. And so I hope that maybe we could put, like, a link to my website so people can sign up to my newsletter, because I'm going to be releasing it.
- [49:25]
A
Yes.
- [49:25]
B
Sometime in February. So if. If you're on my newsletter, you'll hear about it. Okay. And, yeah. Yeah. And like, it. It does walk people. It gives you the life skills you need because we don't have them, but we can learn. And yeah, the. The. Like, the. One of the brain hacks is to just not even think about that. It's a big job. And start thinking about, well, how could I get started? What is something I can do? Because there's this cool thing that our brain does is once we set up a puzzle to solve in our lives, that's like an itch, and it's gonna be there, and we're gonna start scratching it. And that process of scratching an itch is how you solve a problem. Right. And just even one problem solved. Like, okay, well, what am I gonna do about potato chips? And the solution can be buy avocado oil potato chips or buy other things that are crunchy and salty that taste similar, that are not, you know, even junk food. Right. Like, you could buy nuts that are crunchy and salty that are. One of my favorite things is activated or sprouted pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds, because they are salty and crunchy, and they're every bit as addicting and potentially problematic that way as potato chips, except they're loaded with nutrition.
- [51:15]
A
Right.
- [51:16]
B
The other big difference is they cost, like, probably five times as much, so. Well, okay, that's gonna help you with that addictive part. You're not gonna overeat them.
- [51:25]
C
Yeah.
- [51:26]
A
Right.
- [51:27]
C
And avocado oil chips are fairly easy to come by these days. That's what we get for our kitchen. I was thinking, though, when you said it has to be unrefined, it doesn't. It never specifies if it's unrefined. It just says avocado oil.
- [51:41]
A
So.
- [51:42]
B
Yeah, right. That means it's. That means it's refined. And. But. Yeah, but here's the distinction. It has to be unrefined to be healthy.
- [51:51]
C
Okay?
- [51:52]
B
It can be. It can be refined as long as it's not the hateful eight and still not be toxic.
- [52:02]
C
Neutral, as one of my kids calls it.
- [52:03]
A
Yeah.
- [52:04]
C
Okay, so this is neutral.
- [52:05]
B
It's neutral, truly. I mean, empty calories, right? Like, kind of like, you know, flour is empty calories and things like.
- [52:15]
C
Right. It's not really doing anything for you. But it's also not do. Taking away from your health, maybe, but except for the fact that you're filling up on something when you could be filling up with something more nutrient dense.
- [52:28]
B
Exactly.
- [52:29]
C
So in that way.
- [52:30]
B
Exactly. Now that's a different sort of problem that more gets to like, well, how much do you want to indulge in this, that and the other thing? Right. It's like you can ask that question about any kind of a treat. So. So, yeah, but. So it's important to understand that middle category of the. The refined oils that are not the hateful eight and that are generally what has been replaced in a lot of these new products that did not exist 20 years ago. I could not go into a Costco 20 years ago and find, like, cooking sprays that are made with coconut oil or avocado oil.
- [53:04]
C
Right.
- [53:04]
B
Or, you know, things that said seed oil free, like, in the freezer section. So, like, that we are moving in a better direction. And so at least we're getting some kind of convenience foods and craving foods that are not toxic. But you can do way better than that. And that's like, my passion is helping people do do that because to me, you are a collection of incredible, intelligent, amazing cells. And I want. I'm rooting for those cells. I'm rooting for every single one of them in your body. And like, that is weird. I know that sounds a little weird. I. That is how I see people. And. And like, that, oddly, is my passion, is making cells healthy. Yeah. Yeah.
- [53:56]
C
And this. This really isn't a super difficult swap. Now, in your own kitchen, what fat do you reach for most often? Butter, I was gonna say. Yeah, that's. We go through so much butter, it's just embarrassing, actually.
- [54:11]
B
Yeah. I can't imagine how it feels.
- [54:13]
A
Yeah.
- [54:13]
B
Multiply what I get times many Factors. More than 10.
- [54:19]
C
Yes.
- [54:22]
B
So, yeah. But seriously, don't be embarrassed. Be proud. Like, and thank God, like. Like back 200 years ago, you would have had. Have been churning all that.
- [54:31]
C
Oh, yeah. Well, I always think that too. Like, we eat an unnatural amount of butter because when we had a dairy cow, we didn't. When we milked her, we did not have enough cream to make the amount of butter we went through. So I'm like, hmm, must be telling me something here. Like, you couldn't actually access this if not for modern grocery stores, but.
- [54:49]
B
Well, I mean, don't forget you also had a large number of mouths to feed. And there's the side, you know, side streams. Right. So, like, if you had, say two or three cows, then there would have been skim milk that you would have been feeding pigs, like pigs and selling. Right. Like that was your income stream in a lot of cases, like the successful farming families who had enough land to do that. This was going back like into the Tudor period, before the Victorians kind of industrialized and screwed a lot of things up. But way back into like the 1500s. That is kind of what life was like in the Tudor period. It was really kind of like homesteading is right. Right. It was like the original homesteaders, they, they, they were making everything from scratch. They were making a living off of what they made from scratch. And, and that was what society was based on. And there were some artisans who sold stuff too. And they would, you know, sell, exchange money or they would just exchange food, you know, barter. So like that, that is how it was done. So judge it that way, you know, and, and look at it through that lens and then you can decide, maybe we have enough natural or not.
- [56:09]
C
Well, and we'd probably be using more like tallow as well. And lard. We would, we would get that as well. Like that would. It wouldn'. Butter because it'd be saved for the more special baking occasions. Probably.
- [56:21]
B
But nonetheless, their main thing, I tell you, I've watched a lot of history videos about food. I love YouTube and anyone can watch this stuff, but it was the main thing up throughout all of Europe until World War II. Like, their main fat was tallow generally. And now in the Victorian era and the poverty ridden eras, yes, it was special, special occasions. But like, we have to look at that history of time, that window of time, like the 1800s and 1900s as the poverty ridden era, because that's really what it was. That, that's, that was. For most of human history, we were not living in, you know, filthy cities and living off of like nothing but stale bread, you know, for days at a time. That was horrible.
- [57:13]
C
Yes. And we, we do have access to a lot of these fats today. Some of them are pricier, I will say. But if you're like, if you're rendering tallow and lard, sometimes those are throwaway things at a butcher that we just, I think we also have in our heads still because of just whatever you want to say that caused all this. But in the last hundred years, that towel or like lard just has like a bad connotation. It seems like something that isn't good. And tallow and butter and just wrapping, you know, just like changing our minds. That Those things aren't the problem. And figuring out a way to get those into our kitchens is a shift that I think is a very important one.
- [57:55]
B
Yes. And that is why so much of my books acknowledge that and explain how that shift happened in the medical field. So it was really because of the mis. Misdirection and misuse of science and statistics within the medical field that during the past 80 years, doctors, dietitians, and like everyone who has a medical license has heard and become convinced, learned during our education that like lard is a four letter word.
- [58:27]
C
Yes.
- [58:28]
B
When it comes to your health.
- [58:30]
A
Lard.
- [58:31]
C
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have a. It doesn't have a great.
- [58:35]
B
Yeah.
- [58:35]
C
But it actually is good. And it's. Especially if you render it yourself and you do it slow. It actually has a really great flavor as well. So. Okay, well, this has been so interesting. I think that you bring up a lot of good points and also it feels doable. I mean, it does actually require us to cook from scratch at home. But I think a lot of my listeners really enjoy that and have been on that journey for a long time. So tell the listeners where they can find you and your books. And then we will also be linking down below the website to talk about your upcoming course. But you can also tell us that website as well.
- [59:11]
B
Yes. Okay, great. So my main website is just Dr. Kate.com and that's-R C A T E dot com.
- [59:18]
A
Okay.
- [59:18]
B
Kate with a C. And that's where everything happens. So you can even just go there, not remember anything and search for newsletter or, or under the search bar or books like I have. Maybe I'll give you the link for which book should I buy because they do cover different things and I help people figure out which one is the best one for them, given their interests. And. And then I want you to sign up to my newsletter because I don't actually have a website yet for my course. Sorry. This is. Maybe I just gets released.
- [59:52]
A
Right.
- [59:52]
B
It's being built right now, but. But it'll be out soon.
- [59:59]
C
Okay.
- [59:59]
A
Yeah.
- [59:59]
C
And if you go to drkate.com the newsletter is right there at the, at the top of the screen. So that's easy. And then you have your books linked and your articles and I think just a great jumping off point for more on this topic. And then also obviously people can search for the other podcast you've been on. You said you've been on so many podcasts, so if you just search, you know, if you want more right now on this conversation, that's What I would probably do is just put your name in the search bar and put podcast after it and find all of those interviews. So such a great starting point. Thank you so much. Dr. Kate well, thank you so much.
- [60:35]
B
It's been great chatting with you and I'm sure your child that's been getting this fully understands.
- [60:43]
A
Yes.
- [60:43]
B
Everything I've said.
- [60:44]
C
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
- [60:49]
A
Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast.
- [60:52]
C
My husband Luke and I and our.
- [60:54]
A
Kids work together side by side on our farm in Missouri and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and homesteaders with practical recipes in daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmhouseonboon.com and to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at Bit Ly Farmhouses.
- [61:19]
C
All one word.
- [61:20]
A
We also teach people how to ferment vegetables and mill their own grains through our courses, Fresh Ferments and Freshly Milled Grains. We will leave links for all of that down in the show notes below.
- [61:34]
B
Sam.