On Deep Nutrition and Being There for the Next Generation

Yesterday morning when my husband was hugging me I had my arms around him inside the jacket he was wearing. He told me, “This reminds me of when I was a little boy and my mom would button me up inside her warm robe.”

He talked wistfully about how he eventually got too big to get buttoned up so close to her. Then he murmured, “I miss my mama.”

His dear mama died 6 months ago from metastatic breast cancer that no one knew she had until it was too late. His dad died just two months later from a series of strokes. We cared for both of them during their last days on hospice.

These last months have shaken us. Though we have full confidence in their love for the Lord and where they are now, it has been so hard to say goodbye. And I weep for my husband who lost his beloved parents, for my children who lost their treasured grandparents, for my 18-month-old who is too young to remember how they loved and held him, for myself and how fully they accepted me as their son’s bride.

And to be honest, I feel anger… Frustration. Since they passed away I’ve become even more obsessed with health and nutrition. I’ve been reading book after book, and the more I read, the more I’m convinced they could still be with us if it weren’t for our completely broken food system.

My in-laws weren’t eaters of junk food. The average person looking at their diet would say they were eating right. They tried to be healthy.

But because of how broken our system is, that means they were filling themselves with inflammatory seed oils and sugar in their low-fat “healthy” foods. It makes me angry that the food industry has us so duped and that doctors know no better.

I cannot let myself doubt providence. I know it was the Lord’s timing for them or they would still be here. But I guess I’m also angry at myself because I knew some of the “healthy” things they were eating weren’t actually that healthy. I mentioned it a few times. My husband said things to them.

But we felt like it wasn’t our place to push more, and I also didn’t realize just how unhealthy and damaging some of those foods were until now, when it’s too late.

For example, I knew seed/vegetable oils were bad. I knew they had negative health effects. But it still felt kind of mysterious like a black box–to the degree that I felt like they were only a little bit bad, kind of like eating too much one night might be bad for you in the short term.

Then in the past month I read Catherine Shanahan’s Deep Nutrition. The chapters on vegetable oil removed some serious blinders from my eyes and shook me to the core. Her use of analogies and specific research studies (and following the money!) drove the point home for me in new, powerful ways.

This book feels like she’s opening the box so you can see inside and actually understand it, and she makes a powerful case for the long-term negative health effects of consuming vegetable oil even “in moderation” and their link to the rise of modern diseases. Like cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

If you read only one book on nutrition, let it be this one. Using her background in genetics and as a medical doctor, Dr. Shanahan masterfully supports her argument for a traditional “human” diet rich in naturally occurring fats, fresh and fermented foods, meat cooked on the bone, and organ meats.

This book builds on Weston A. Price’s research, which I was already familiar with before reading this book. But Shanahan’s addition of newer research studies has made me even more convinced of the necessity of living this way. I appreciated the scientific support and deep dives into the mechanism behind why certain foods are good or bad for you.

Shanahan’s writing is very approachable, and even in its depth the information is easy to understand. I don’t 100% agree with all of her recommendations, but she gets enough right that I can highly recommend this book for everyone who eats food… So, you know, for everyone.

I can’t bring my in-laws back. I can’t change what they ate. But what I can do now is to do better for myself, my husband, and our children, maybe even our grandchildren. To actually cut the harmful things out of our diets. And to tell other people when I can.

It won’t be easy. But I truly believe it will be worth it.

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