The ’Hateful 8’ Vegetable Oils Destroying Your Health | Dr. Cate Shanahan

Hey everyone, welcome to Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week on this show, we dive deep into the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. On today's episode, I'll be interviewing Dr. Cate Shanahan, and this is going to be a great episode. Uh, Dr. Cate is a Cornell-trained physician scientist. She's been sounding the alarm on vegetable oils for over 20 years, and we're going to discuss how something that was initially created to be soap Became part of our daily diet. We'll talk about the harmful effects of vegetable oils, also where they're hidden because they are everywhere, and healthy alternatives and swaps, and some other surprising information. Hey, Dr. Cate, welcome to the show.

Hi, Josh, thank you so much for inviting me to your show.

Well, such an honor to have you on. I always love talking to people that are, uh, on the front lines, that are out there trying to expose lies or do something that's really good for humanity. And I your messaging is so good. I think that, uh, we are constantly lied to in society today when it comes to, uh, whether it be certain pharmaceuticals or things happening in the environment or even the food we eat. I, I, you know, there's a lot of things that are hidden that need to be revealed, and you're one of those people that have done such a great job of doing the research, being incredibly, uh, uh, you know, well-educated and evidence-based in what you're bringing forth. And I think help in really exposing a these side effects that we're seeing pop up related to seed oils today. But talk to me a little bit about— I mean, you've been doing this and exposing these lies for about 20 years. How did you first stumble upon this realization that, you know, these vegetable oils are very harmful to our health?

Well, I was open to, like, learning more because I wanted to— always had wanted to get to the root cause of people's problems. You know, before I went to medical school, I wanted selfishly just to understand why I kept getting recurring athletic injuries. I was getting like hip problems and, you know, bursitis here and ischial problems and tendinitis and ligament strains and every kind of soft tissue problem. And why me? I just wanted to understand, was there something missing from my diet? Was there something genetic? What was the problem? But after I graduated from school, I was no, the what, none the wiser really on any of that. You know, so I, I knew the standard protocols for treatment and physical therapy, but it really wasn't the root cause I'd been looking for. And without the being armed with the root cause information, I was a little depressed at times in my practice. You know, I mean, there was a lot of great stuff that I felt where I was making a difference, helping people understand what was going on in their bodies when they had, say, like a migraine or, you know, say like asthma, what was going on, what is lung inflammation, that kind of thing. It was helping them understand what was going on, helping them reassure them that, you know, the headaches aren't cancer, you know, going through the usual protocols to make sure that we knew what was, what the, at least to secure a diagnosis. But when it came down to, okay, now what do I do about it? That's where the answer was drugs, drugs, drugs, or physical therapy, or just wait, right? Maybe it'll get better, like pray. Basically. And so that was where I was getting dissatisfied. And it really, really was dissatisfying to just have people— like the days where I had people marching through with hypertension needing refills or cholesterol medicines needing refills or depression medications. Is the medication helping you for your moods? Well, I can't really tell. You know, I see maybe I'm a little better. I'm kind of afraid to get off the drug now. Right. And I just— this building hollow feeling of, am I making a difference here? What am I really doing? Something was definitely missing. I had no idea where to go, what was missing, until I really got sick myself. I got, um, I had a very bizarre condition. To this day, it's mostly a medical mystery. And, but the issue was, um, mostly in my knee. I couldn't walk. I would get fevers. It was bizarre. Um, and, you know, there was nothing. I did the rounds of diagnostics. I had all kinds of blood tests done, MRIs, every kind of scan, things injected into my knee, surgery, blah blah. Nothing worked. It just got worse. And so I had no choice ultimately but to consider that my husband might have been right for all the years he was telling me that I was eating too much sugar. So I was like, okay, fine, maybe I'll, maybe I'll take a look into this nutrition thing. And he plopped a book in my lap by Andrew Weil, who was like the guru of Alternative Medicine. And in there, he just mentioned about like essential fats and eicosanoids and inflammation. And I was like, wow, you know, that sounds familiar. But those— what are those fats? I thought, you know, because I really came away from medical school, I learned all those details. I learned about, you know, how certain fats could cause inflammation. But then again, I also learned that saturated fat was unhealthy and all fats really were the same. They were equally bad. We really needed to avoid all of them. They were all fattening, equal number of calories. So I felt that's where I was like, okay, well, maybe there's definitely something more about nutrition than what I was taught. And so with that, I dove into the biochemistry of the essential fatty acids, which are the polyunsaturated fatty acids. Then I quickly realized that vegetable oil that had been promoted as heart-healthy was full of polyunsaturated polyunsaturated fatty acids. And because they were— because I had gone to Cornell for specifically biochemistry, and I had a whole series of weeks where we studied polyunsaturated fatty acids and how they reacted with oxygen. So I knew that there was a lot here that I hadn't learned. There was a lot more to learn. Vegetable oils being full of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Me, doctor, all the doctors I knew having learned nothing about that oxidation issue. That in the back of my mind was like, there's something there. Because oxidation is an out-of-control reaction. And oxidation, actually, when we injure ourselves or we get an infection, it's oxidation that, that sparks an inflammatory response, a defense mechanism for an infection and to help the repair and recovery, that we have inflammation for a good reason, basically. And so it was really, I was like, wow, there's a lot here. There's pro-inflammatory, there's anti-inflammatory. Meanwhile, there's oxidation No, no book had ever made sense of those different, like, 3 layers of facts. And I just kept digging into the science and going deeper and deeper. And it took me a bunch of years before I came to the point where I was like, I'd been lied to about vegetable oils being heart healthy. And saturated fats actually resist oxidation. They actually probably prevent heart attacks. And that's when I started writing Deep Nutrition. Wow.

My first book. Well, one of the things I've heard you refer to as a lot of these calories from seed oils and vegetable oils is dark calories. You know, I think I know, but to share with me, you know, what is that? What is that term? And, uh, yeah, share with me what you mean by that.

Yeah, so dark meaning hidden, evil, all of the meanings of dark. I, I— these calories have the ability to make us fat beyond their numerical calorie content. Um, they have been promoted vegetable oils specifically, have been promoted as heart-healthy by the American Heart Association based on a completely corrupt relationship that I wasn't taught about. Doctors don't know about. Top cardiologists in leading institutions don't know about this corruption that launched the American Heart Association, that launched— that enabled them to make these wild and unfounded claims about vegetable oil preventing heart attacks and saturated fat and cholesterol causing heart attacks. So that is evil. That's the evil part where the American Heart Association— I'm just flat out calling them an evil and corrupt organization because they still exist to this day and they're running the whole— yeah, they're running the whole conversation about nutrition.

You know, Dr. K, I can remember, so my dad, old military guy, just, you know, big, big, uh, Uh, well, he, you know, I tried to give him sushi once and he, he was like, you know, he, he wouldn't do it. Like he's meat and potatoes. And I can remember when this is the late '80s, early '90s, I was probably 8, 9, 10 years old. And I remember my grandmother and my mom who we'd always use butter. I remember them coming home and talking about bringing home vegetable oil and margarine. And my dad, he just refused. He's like, no, he's like, no, I'm just doing butter. I don't like the taste of this. I remember this whole thing with my dad and looking back, it's so funny. I'm like, he was right in terms of sticking to his, you know, meat, potatoes, vegetables, and butter. But, um, you know, like, like how did this come about? Because I'd love to know a little bit about the history about— because we went from butter and then it was villainized of everybody saying it's evil and everybody started switching to, you know, to margarine and all these vegetable oils. How did this happen in the first place?

Well, it happened truly because the American Heart Association, uh, decided that— of course, you know, their mission. So this was the American— let's talk about the American Heart Association. So they are today actually the biggest and most important, um, medical organization when it comes to leading global thought around diet, specifically fat. Guidelines. So they matter. They matter. Like, you might think, oh, I don't go to the American Heart Association for any kind of advice, but your doctor does. All nurses, dietitians, everyone is trained based on their ideology. And, you know, most of our food supply has been altered because of this ideology. So it matters, right? So the history, let's talk about the history real quick. So at first, when it was founded in the 19-teens, early 1920s, somewhere around there, It was just a small collection of doctors really interested in diseases of the heart. And at that point in time, the dominant diseases of the heart were infectious diseases from strep throat, which can, you know, infect the heart valves and deficiency diseases and stuff like that. And heart attacks were actually pretty darn rare when it was first founded. And so, however, by the 1940s, heart attacks had really dramatically skyrocketed. And nobody knew quite why, like even the heart specialists, but the heart attacks were killing people. They were especially killing men in what they called the prime of their life. That was the way they talked back then, always somewhat poetic. And, you know, in their 40s and 50s, people were just keeling over dead. From heart attacks. And, you know, nobody knew what they were. Nobody knew what happened. There was very little known about how to treat them properly. Finally, um, President Eisenhower had a heart attack. Now, um, he was a beloved president, and suddenly— this was after World War II— um, suddenly this, this man who, uh, you know, was, was leading America through its post-war celebratory boom, was noncommunicado for 6 weeks. This was the treatment back in the day. Lie down in bed, don't move, don't get up out of bed. It's a great, um, a great way to get a blood clot, but we didn't know that then. Um, he couldn't even have like people from his cabinet come in, you know, because they were worried about raising his blood pressure, getting him upset. So, um, so the whole— like, the word heart attack actually wasn't around yet. They called it a coronary because that's the medical word for the arteries that feed heart. And so the, the coronary, the idea of this coronary was just terrifying. And the American Heart Association, you know, they took it upon themselves to, to try to get— do some research on this. Now then, something happened. Like, so all was well and good, right? And then, and then something happened. Something had happened just a few years earlier. Um, the American Heart Association, just before President Eisenhower's heart attack, had voted to start accepting money from industry. And it was a big fight. It was a vicious fight among these group of doctors specializing in heart disease. There was one group that was like, "Bigger is better. We just want more, more, more, more money. We can educate people. It'll be great." And then there was this other group that was conservative and smartly thinking, "Well, you know, I mean, if we accept money from industry, we might start making unfounded claims. We might be, you know, pressed to make unfounded claims about the cause of heart attack." Those words are in their minutes. And of course, the good guys lost, the greedy guys won. Money talks. It always has, it always will. And so they ended up making that, you know, winning and didn't take long before they accepted money from Procter Gamble who made canola, I'm sorry, not canola, cottonseed oil and corn oil at the time. What do you know, just a few years after that, they had this book ready, a cookbook, a diet book that became a blockbuster, you know, million-copy bestseller. And what did they recommend in that book? Cut back on butter, just choose lean meat, have whole grains, plenty of vegetables and vegetable oil. Don't use, you know, don't use any of those animal fats because they're saturated fats and saturated fats are a problem, we say. And the vegetable oils are gonna prevent heart attacks because they're polyunsaturated, and that makes them liquid. Like, the, the whole thought process and supposed science here was just based on the simple observation that butter is solid on the counter and oil is not. And literally, this is how dumb the thinking was at the time. And Ancel Keys was the leader in this dumb idea. He championed it like nobody's business. Yeah, um, butter and solid animal fats will literally, he said, clog your arteries like grease, hot grease in a cold pipe under the sink, the kitchen sink. That is a complete lie. And he only said it because I think he really didn't know anything about how our bodies actually transport fat, which is in lipoproteins. And, and so shortly after that, he changed his tune. He started to say, oh wait, what? No, that doesn't— I never— like, he kind Like, never said that again. And then he started saying something else: saturated fat raises cholesterol. And then cholesterol— now that's the problem. And they keep shifting that. Like, the American Heart Association keeps shifting what is the problem. So here we are, 70 years later, they're still saying cholesterol, but now they're not just saying total cholesterol, which is what they used to say. For a while they said bad cholesterol, the LDL cholesterol. As bad cholesterol. Now they still use that term, but now they're focusing on small dense LDL. They keep changing the story. The American Heart Association—

yeah, it is constantly changing. I mean, it's fascinating, Dr. K. I mean, this is absolutely fascinating. I, you know, one of the things I think when I think about the American Heart Association and the people that I think about, the physicians I know who are leading the charge over there over the last 20 years, I, I think when I, when I look at those men in particular that I'm thinking about, they all look— they have this sort of pale look and they look weak and feeble to me. I, I'm not trying to say anything or be mean. I'm just saying there's something, you know, there's a principle in the Bible that Jesus says, and it's by their fruit you will recognize them. And I think this principle is really true with a lot of things. Like, how do you know who to listen to in health? How do you know who to listen to? Is, you know, well, who are the healthiest people? What are they doing? Well, let's try and do what they do. And as we study civilizations and cultures and everything else, and so I, I don't, you know, the American Heart Association and the people leading it, I think that they're, as you've said, they've constantly had to change their tune over and over again because I think the people that I see that are— have the greatest level of wisdom, they combine science today with common sense or principles that have been around since the beginning of time and relying on some of that information versus I think some people in the medical field almost have a godlike complex of, well, I'm coming up with something new, I'm coming up with this all on my own. And so anyways, but would you walk us through, because we were talking about vegetable oils and seed oils, can you walk us through how these are created? Because obviously we think vegetables tend to be pretty healthy, certain nuts and seeds tend to be pretty healthy. How do we take these things that were maybe good and turn them into something that can be so bad?

Right, like that's exactly the key point. Like, so because when you, when you said, you know, what people have been doing, well, people have been eating vegetables So how could vegetable oil be bad? Well, these oils have nothing to do with vegetables. Also, like the other term people have used, and maybe you've used, Josh, I don't know, or had people talking about vegetable seed oils.

Yeah.

Because those are really the problems, right? It's not, you know, the oils that I'm talking about are soy, corn, canola. Actually, I'll do them in the order I usually do them. There's 8. I call them the hateful 8. So it's corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower, rice bran, and grapeseed. So those are seeds mostly. And soybeans have been used for thousands of years, but not soy oil, right? Sunflower has been used for thousands of years, but not the industrial process of creating sunflower oil. And so it's really the detail that is the difference is these seeds are treated in an industrial, they're treated like badly. They're treated like, you know, they're mined really literally. Like they're mined, their chemicals are mined, right? I mean, M-I-N, like what you do mining in the ground, right? And so like soy is mined for both its protein content, which is often fed to humans and animals in animal feed, but also, you know, the fake protein, I'm sorry, the fake meat kind of products that's sold to vegans and vegetarians who don't know any better. That this is not healthy soy protein. So they mine it for that. But the original reason we started eating soy oil came from America. Soy oil was never really produced in Asia where soybeans came from. It came from America again after World War II. A lot of things changed after World War II when the farmers had to fatten their cows real quick to get them to satisfy the American hunger for beef that had been, you know, we hadn't had beef for World War II. We were told, you know, all the good stuff had to go to the soldiers for the war effort, you know. So Americans wanted beef. And before that, there was the Great Depression where a lot of people were just plain old starving and beef was really expensive. So people just had this pent-up need for it. And to make it all happen faster, again, somewhat good intentions here, but we are deviating from nature and what people did for thousands of years. Instead of having instead of letting the cows just fatten themselves up normally on grass, which takes a lot longer, they sped up the process by feeding them corn and soy meal. So they mined that protein out of the soybean and they mined the starch out of the corn and combined the two to create cow feed. And on the other end of the spectrum, what they do with the oil, well, they fed that to humans.

And walk me through the process because I want, I want people to understand this. So when we talk about vegetable oil, there are, or I guess these are more fruits or one-seeded drupes, but you know, we think about olives, we think about avocado, we think about coconut, and those are oils that are something that I recommend frequently. You might as well. So especially extra virgin olive oil and, and organic coconut oil. But compare how those are processed today versus how the seed oils today, you're talking about the soybean oil, the cottonseed oil, how are those processed today?

Very differently. So, um, you know, the healthy oils are virgin oils. They're called— like olive oil, I mean, is called virgin oil. And you can make it— they don't call peanut oil virgin, but peanuts are so oily that you can use simple, gentle techniques to squeeze out an oil that is akin to olive oil. And, you know, the, the first press is very healthy, full of vitamins, full— even has minerals, got lots of antioxidants there. And those antioxidants are key. And we're gonna be returning to the theme of antioxidants in an oil and antioxidants being stripped out and oxidation. But so like, that's what healthy oil is made. It's just gentle pressing from a, usually from a food or a fruit that has been cultivated specifically for the purpose of oil for a long time. Even sesame, right? Sesame oil, little tiny seed. Seeds. Sesame oil is really for the wealthy because it was so delicious and so minute little seeds took a lot of money and a lot of time to get the oil out of that. But that has thousands of years of cultivation too. So that you can produce a healthy virgin oil. So it's the oils that, that have been bred for a long time to specifically produce oil, or even like nuts that are just very oily, or like avocado. It's a very oily fruit. Fruit. So with pretty gentle processes these days, you get a kind of a virgin equivalent oil there that's full of good stuff, has not been treated badly. On the other hand, the hatephalate— no gentle, sweet, kind treatment here. They are abused, you know, from the minute that they're taken from the field because they don't have to treat even the seeds gently. They can store them for a little too long, they can let mold start to grow, they can use some off-seed because they know that the factory process is really, we're not looking for nature-created oil. We're mining it here. We're using high technology in a factory to extract out, you know, something that's sort of like oil and then with intensive refining, make it edible. So let me break that down because that factory stuff is really disgusting. So what happens is, let's say we're talking about you know, any of the Hateful 8 soy oil. When you, in order to get the, in order to produce enough oil at scale, they use extreme heat and pressure. Often they use a solvent. If they want to call it organic, they can't use a solvent. But getting organic soy oil does not solve the problem here. So whether they use a solvent or not, what they call the crude oil initially extracted from soybeans with the heat, pressure, and so on in this industrial process, that crude oil contains all kinds of what the industry calls impurities. But when I asked, so for the book, I interviewed people. I asked, what's in these impurities exactly? And why do you call it inedible? Because the crude oil is considered inedible. And they told me there's toxins in there. That's why it's inedible. There's all kinds of toxins. A brew of them, plus things that make it taste disgusting. Some of the toxins are acrid, you know, meaning like they'll irritate your eyes. If you were to swallow the crude oil, those irritants will burn on the way down. And when it, the crude oil hits your stomach, you'll throw it back up. So it's literally inedible. Like you couldn't eat it if you tried. That's crude oil. Now, that's not what ends up in the bottles. What ends up in the bottles is not inedible. It's edible, but it still has toxins in it, right? So the top, the refining makes it less toxic. The, it's what, so the problem is the extraction step because it's just pounding it with pressure and heat and often solvents and, you know, extreme temperatures and It just creates a mess. Basically, just imagine throwing a bunch of soybeans into the oven, baking them for, you know, an hour at 600 degrees, and then squeezing them under like some sort of a vice. And what would drip out of there would just be goopy, gluey, disgusting, foul-smelling. And that's the crude oil. That's the problem. The refining the factory where the guys, uh, the chemists, the food chemists that you need to consult with many food chemists to know all the steps to run the factory refining properly. It's a very intensive process that actually makes it less toxic. That's the thing that makes it edible, but it can't make it fully non-toxic. That's the problem. There's nothing else in the food supply that enters the food chain containing significant amounts of serious toxins. Nothing else in the food supply like that. Even stuff I'm talking about, even, you know, contaminated with glyphosate. Okay, those toxins are less— glyphosate is less toxic than some of the stuff contaminated in your average Joe, you know, seed oil bottle. And it doesn't end there, Josh. It keeps getting worse. Wow.

So, so, yeah, so, you know, what you're saying is, and the thing, you know, if anyone has ever seen this, you've— we've seen this in movies, most of you have, you know, pressing olive oil is very simple. You take olives, you press it, boom, you've got oil. It's that easy. Just a little bit of pressure that humans have done via using stones and metal for thousands of years. Pretty simple. Yeah. The explanation you gave there at the end, I think, was very good of how we're doing these seed oils. And what, what, once these oils that are basically heated and using solvents and using chemicals to the point to where they're this goop, and then, and then they're extracting and filtering it essentially to where you do have some oil come out, though it's been damaged and changed. What does that oil then do to our bodies? I think most people are familiar. I have a very educated group of people that follow this show and they might be thinking, okay, well I've heard of with, uh, the issues regarding the omega-6 to the omega-3 ratio. Okay, so when we're talking about certain oils, you know, maybe that's part of the problem. Obviously, you know, canola, that's not the problem, or the ones that are more monounsaturated. But these polyunsaturated you're talking about, of course some people know that sunflower, safflower, those are going to be much higher on those omega-3s, or omega-6s lower the omega-3s. So I think people are aware of that. I don't think are fully aware of how does the oil change or what, what is that oil? And then what are the effects that actually happen once, you know, we consume those? What happens within the human body? What are some of the reactions that take place?

So the toxicity in the bottle is just the beginning of the toxins that form and the reactions that are damaging and deleterious. So they— before we talk about what happens in the body, we have to talk about what happens in the food when you make food with these oils. If there's any kind of cooking or heating that goes on, then the, the toxins in the bottle that you poured onto your food, just in trace amounts, they act like catalysts that go ahead and attack the polyunsaturates that hadn't been damaged, that are in the, in the oil as well as in your food, right? And they don't just attack the polyunsaturates, they attack the proteins. They make— it's very complex, is it's a mess. Yes, of out-of-control, undesirable polymerization reactions that sort of plasticize your food as it's cooking. And so by the time you've cooked, say, something like a French fry or fried chicken on the— if you cook that on the stovetop for half an hour or so, you have extraordinary concentrations of serious toxins that are similarly cell-killing and carcinogenic to toxins in cigarette smoke. It's a category. There's categories of toxins, Josh. It's not just one toxin. There's multiple categories that they're called alpha-beta unsaturated aldehydes. And those are like the second order type of toxins. There's first order toxins that are peroxides. And then there's third order toxins that are smaller. I mean, it's just insane. The global name for these various toxins that form in our food are lipid oxidation products. And I introduced some of the correct terms in the book so that we can just start speaking the language correctly. 'Cause it really truly is a language that has, you know, that we need to learn in order to understand what the heck we're even eating. And there's just a few terms. It's oxidation, lipid oxidation products, a few others. But so it's not like, it's not like learning French. But, but so that's even before they get into our body. And then once we eat them, well, every single tissue that comes in contact with the oils and the new toxins that formed from the food within the oil, they will damage your oral mucosa, your esophagus, your gastric mucosa, your stomach, your entire intestinal tract. They will cause bloating. They will cause misery. They will cause people to think that they have all kinds of food intolerance because eating itself becomes painful because they cause inflammation that doesn't go away 100% between meals. So your intestinal tract is dysfunctional because of these. And now we've just talked about one tissue type. I could go on. I mean, I could have written more, a double-sized book if I was gonna talk just about the effects on, as they go into your body, what do they do in your Well, liver? of course they cause fatty liver. They cause insulin resistance. They cause— they make it difficult for your liver to detoxify other toxins in your food supply. They can cause gallstones. And then it gets into your bloodstream as, as lipoproteins. The lipoproteins become oxidized. They become particles that will damage your arteries instead of nourishing your cells. The lipoproteins like LDL and HDL will be oxidized toxin-delivering particles that scar your arteries, build up the plaque, promote heart attacks and strokes. And it just keeps going. I mean, like, so then once it gets, say, to your— let's pick an organ, any organ, pick an organ.

The liver.

Go ahead, your favorite, the liver. Okay, well, in the liver, like, the liver is the hardest hit, so that's a good one to pick. So the liver gets hit here many times because directly from the intestinal tract Um, the, the, the food that gets ingested through your small intestinal wall gets absorbed into the lymphatic system, which is a channel that goes straight up to your liver. So all those fats that you ate end up straight in your, you know, head up straight to your liver. Those toxins will cause oxidative stress in your liver. They will cause liver enzyme dysfunction. They will because, you know, people's, like, liver enzymes are elevated because of these oils. When you do blood tests and you find, you know, let's test the health of your liver with liver enzymes, they're elevated. They might be just slightly elevated and still technically normal, but everyone's eating so many of these oils that the average number, which is how— that's the only way they, you know, they set normals based on averages, not based on healthy. They don't know what health is, they just know what averages are. So, you know, when everyone's eating these oils, the average number of liver— the LFTs, your liver enzymes is on average high because everybody's liver who's eating these things is somewhat inflamed. And the more you eat, the more fried food— fried food from restaurants is some of the worst of the worst, like french fries. Um, like 25, uh, french fries, 20 to 25 french fries have the toxicity of a pack of cigarettes according to one of the most well-respected toxicologists in the world named Martin Grutfeld, who I quote in the book. So it's like you smoke one cigarette, well, okay, uh, you just delivered the toxicity of a french fry, and you think you're okay feeding your children french fries, but you don't know. No one tells you this.

You basically just handed them a cigarette and said, "Whiff it all down." You know, it, it's one of the things I think I've always been aware of, uh, because my mom had breast cancer back many years ago and then had it a second time. First time she went through a conventional treatment, the second time more natural treatment, it, was able to beat it both times. And I've always been very aware of things that are carcinogenic, you know, in, in terms of what I'm reading. I remember years ago reading up on one of, one form of a more of a holistic cancer diet by Johanna Budwig called the Budwig Protocol. And, you know, she spent some time studying and looking at how consuming a type of more animal-based fats from dairy, like doing something called quark, which is very similar to something like a cottage cheese, mixing that with flax seeds or flax oil you know, she, she believed that that was— could be very rejuvenating to cellular health. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on— it could be about Budwig or it couldn't be, but in terms of the importance for our cellular health and in fighting cancer, what we're talking about here in terms of, you know, you know, these sort of fats versus some of these more, um, you know, fats that are unprocessed.

Well, I'm smiling because I have really good news. You know, we have solid research, and I cite it in Our Calories, that cancer starts in the mitochondria, and it starts with this state of cellular imbalance called oxidative stress in the mitochondria. Vegetable oils powerfully promote oxidative stress, and they powerfully damage the mitochondria. Just about every disease actually is known to be associated with oxidative stress. So cancer included, right? We hear, we often hear that cancer is a disease of genetic mutation first. I don't know if you have heard of the metabolic theory of cancer. Now that was originally proposed in like 1920, but it's being revived in a huge way huge way now by a doctor who I interviewed for the book. His name is Thomas Seyfried. He's brilliant, and he has pretty much proved— in as much as you can prove anything in science— he's pretty much proved that no, the genetic damage comes after the mitochondria start suffering from oxidative stress and shooting out free radicals, which are high-energy radiation-like particles that splice, they can splice DNA, they can damage your DNA and cause DNA fragmentation and mutation. And that's all secondary to after, happens after the mitochondria are damaged. So what that means is, you know, I accept his science, I accept his premise 100%. It makes so much sense. I looked at, you know, he's done a lot of writing about it and I looked at all of it before I decided to back it. I mean, not all of it. He's done thousands of pages, a lifetime of work. I, a solid amount. And I spoke to him, he makes perfect sense. He's had people follow— he's put people on a keto diet and kept them, you know, helped them, follow them along for years after they were supposed to be dead, right? So pretty powerful testimony, pretty powerful scientific work that he's done. It's an incredible amount of work. I'm 100% on board with the idea that cancer starts in mitochondria as mitochondrial stress. And since vegetable oils are the thing in the food supply that promotes more oxidative stress than anything else, getting them out of your diet is the most important thing that you can do to make yourself almost cancer-proof. I mean, if it's— I mean, like, to say cancer-proof might seem extreme, right? But I'm not— if you— but this is true. I believe this is true. I'm not sure— it's not all down to vegetable oils. There's other things that can harm our mitochondria. But this statement is true: if we keep our mitochondria healthy, we will not get cancer.

Right?

Even the genetic cancers, they have to do with defects in the mitochondria. Isn't that fascinating? Wow. The BRCA1 gene for, you know, it's a very common— one of the most common breast cancer genes. Um, for breast, ovarian, uterine, and, uh, I think colon also cancer. Those all modify— they all change and mutate a gene that has to do with mitochondrial energy production. So, you know, people with that gene are less able to have healthy mitochondria, but it makes it all the more important for them to, to keep their mitochondria healthy and avoid vegetable oils and avoid oxidative stress, which is the next thing that, like, um, it's a big concept. I want to talk about it with you, Josh, because it's like the root— if you can control oxidative stress, you will make yourself disease-proof.

Let's talk about it. Yeah, oxidative stress, you know, I— yeah, and I would love for you to use any sort of metaphors or analogies that you think are useful here in terms of what, what oxidative stress is, how does it age us, how does it increase our cancers, what, what is— what, what does it do to body?

Yeah, so, well, let's start by talking about what does this have to do with vegetable oil, just so we know we're, we're talking about something that you can control. Um, vegetable oil is basically oxidative stress in a bottle because of the way it affects our body. Um, but so oxidative stress, what is that? Um, well, it's, as I mentioned earlier, what scientists find as a root cause of every single type of disease anyone's ever looked at, including cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, obesity, asthma, on down the list, even acne, like bad acne, um, oxidative stress. So it's a very important driver of disease. And so what is going on when you're— when I'm talking about oxidative stress? Well, it's at the cellular level. It's at the level of the individual cell. And it is another true fact that if you can keep your cells healthy, you will be healthy. But if your cells become unhealthy, you can't be 100% healthy, and you open yourself up to disease. So oxidative stress basically makes your cells unhealthy. It gives your cells, uh, it creates a state of imbalance inside your cells, uh, where free radicals and high-energy particles start flying around. Membranes start to polymerize instead of being fluid. It's like glue solidifying. So it's like your membranes become kind of— parts of them become solid like glue. Enzymes become oxidized and burnt, like denatured and damaged. They won't function. Nothing in your cell can work right when there's a lot of oxidative stress going on. And vegetable oil is the most powerful promoter of oxidative stress, right? So oxidative stress polimerizes your membranes. It damages your DNA directly because of the free radicals and the, the, um, you know, the high-energy particles that can cause DNA mutations. And it damages your enzymes. All the enzymes inside your cells can be damaged by oxidative stress. It's kind of— if you want an analogy here, I think we have to think about it in terms of like, your cell is very much like a small village, a city with walls, and, uh, you know, like a walled village of the Middle Ages or something like that. Um, and in the Middle Ages, like, the center of the city very often was a church, and, um, like, that's where the rules came from, right? So in your cell, the rules kind of come from the center. There is the nucleus where the DNA is, right? Um, and then there's the worker bees that, that are pounding steel into horseshoes. There's the farmers that are getting the nutrition. Well, so there's analogies to all of this inside the cell. Like, the cell takes— the cell wall, like the city wall, has to know who to let in, and it has to know when they need more products. So the nucleus will order, okay, we need more— I'll say wheat, right? In the cell, We need more sodium. So at the cell wall, you get more sodium transporters put on. All of those intricate biological machines function based on their structure. So if you change the structure with free radicals, and oxidative stress promotes that, you damage all those machines. So if there was an analogy, it would be like setting fires inside a medieval city.

Wow. Yeah, I, I think that, um, but you know, most people don't think about— I think you think when they're eating a french fry, when they're eating fast food, when they're using the vegetable oil at home, they're not necessarily thinking about, you know, there's essentially— you're creating a fire within your body, you know. And I think going— now, one of the things I want to move into now is a little bit about how do we start to rebuild, you know. One of the things I'm sure you discuss a little bit in your book, or of course you know this, is that, that our cells are made up of a lot of fat. I mean, you know, it's a big part of ourselves. You talk about the outside wall, I mean, that's, that, that, that's a big part of the cell, and a good part of it saturated fats, right? So I think when you actually look at the biochemistry, as you're the expert in that, it's, it's really to— for, for the American Heart Association specifically to say, uh, you shouldn't have animal fats in your diet, you should do no saturated fat it's, it's a little bit crazy. It's just, it's a, it's a little bit, it's a little bit crazy. Walk me through what are the fats that you most recommend and why, and how do we start fixing this issue? Uh, because I think this, the stats are, the stats are crazy, right? In terms of how many billions of dollars worth of vegetable oils we produce every year. I mean, today, I mean, we've really created a bit of a problem because how much of farming today are people growing soybeans and corn and cotton. And that's, I mean, so, so, so there's a lot of shifts that have to take place.

Yes. And it can start to feel overwhelming when you think about like, okay, what do, what do I have to do? So start like, put on your own oxygen mask first. All right. Yes. Um, so what I, uh, want to remind people of is we were talking about, speaking of oxygen, oxidative stress. So the diet that you want to follow is a diet that helps your body gain control, regain control of oxygen in your body, and stop that oxidative stress in its tracks. And that's a diet that I recommend. I do like walk people through exactly what to buy, what to shop for, how to create like a 2-week— like a 1-week, I'm sorry, shopping list and and food plan for yourself. Everything you need to know, it's in the back third of the book. So I devote a lot of the book to this practical part of it. But what we're doing is, um, something that, uh, you know, I don't think any other book out there talks about controlling oxidative stress. They talk about antioxidants and antioxidant compounds, but taking antioxidant compounds isn't the, the big panacea solution because because the vast majority of our body's cellular technology that controls oxidative stress is homegrown. It's homemade enzymes that regulate high-energy oxygen molecules. And, and we can't supplement with those enzymes. They have to be made by the cells themselves. So that means we have to eat a diet that enables our cells cells to fortify itself with these, um, these all-important enzymes. And, you know, we're talking about cells that are partly damaged, partly destroyed. So we have to— we have to accomplish a lot here. So it's very, very important to, as much as you possibly can, stop eating the vegetable oils, even when you're dining out. And maybe that means dining out a little bit less, which is why I devote a lot of the practical part of the book to fast, easy, simple meals that the American Heart Association would tell you not to eat. But you are— it's so easy to make, just like a simple sandwich or like cheese and some almonds for, for a fast, easy lunch, right? It's very satisfying, very nutritious. So you don't have to cook every meal. Um, it's just that you have to open your mind up to the foods that the American Heart Association says not to eat, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners don't listen— aren't worried about that anymore. Thanks to everything you've been talking about. So, um, yeah, so we're, we're refortifying our body's antioxidant enzymes. And to do that, we need to have plenty of protein. And I tell you how to do that from animal products. And of course, some plant products are relatively high in protein, like the beans and the seeds. Um, we need to have lots of minerals because every mineral that we need, whether it's copper, magnesium, zinc, iron, you name name it, is also employed by some enzyme or other, some antioxidant enzyme or other, to fight oxidation. So we need all the minerals to help our bodies make these things.

I want to give you an example of this, and, and you've probably heard that there's a— a trend isn't the right word. I think there's an awareness now about methylation, okay? And even something like the, the methylfolate cycle, right? Have you heard of taking methylated B vitamins and in terms of supporting folate. When you look at that cycle in the body— so everybody who has heard of, whether it's Dr. Ben Lynch or Gary Brecker, somebody talking about methylation and this being important for hypothyroidism, depression, a number of things— they're correct. And what most people do, they, they supplement with methylated B vitamins like a form of riboflavin, methylfolate, methylcobalamin, some of these nutrients in that cycle. But the reason I want to bring this is the thing that everybody ignores though is there are enzymes that are part of this cycle as well that your own body has to create. And when I was doing research, I did a whole episode on methylation. The thing is though is you can't supplement with those, and oxidative stress is the number one thing that damages those enzymes that support methylation in the body. I just wanted to bring that up because it's a recent episode we did and we got into methylation here. But to your point, most people think, well, I can just get this in my diet, I can eat crap as long as I'm taking my multivitamin. And the reality is, no, that's not true. I mean, if you have too much oxidative stress, your body cannot create it.

That is absolutely right. And you said that so clearly and eloquently, like, um, that I'm really, frankly, really impressed. Because I've talked to a lot of doctors and they didn't quite get it, that what we're doing here here when we're talking about, um, oxidative stress and vegetables is we're creating— we're reframing the entire conversation about disease in the setting, like, with a mindset of, oh, I see, how does oxidative stress play a role in it, and how does this or that toxin or unhealthy behavior increase oxidative stress and play a role, so that we can go, like, down a hierarchy. Okay, the most potent root cause of all disease is oxidative stress, right? There's oxidative stress also causes another potent root cause of disease called glycation, which you may have talked about, which sugar does. Sugar's sticky, it sticks to our, um, our biological machines, the same damage as them too. But oxidative stress drives glycation, right? So of the two, oxidative stress is the more potent. So when we wanna talk about like, what should we do? We always have to think about it is in terms of is this going to be reducing oxidative stress? As you know, is this the most— have I already done the most important thing, which is avoiding vegetable oils, reducing oxidative stress? What's the next most important thing? Well, that is getting more nutrition into your diet. And the best way to do that is by eliminating any empty calories that you might be getting in, in the form of sugar, which has its own toxicity, albeit slightly less, um, and the refined carbohydrates, you know, like the refined flours and sugars, refined flour I mean, those are empty calories. They take the space of nutrition, right? These, you need protein, amino acids, you need antioxidant vitamins, and you know, all the vitamins you need, and you need all the minerals, right? So taking out those empty calories and filling it up with more nutritious proteins or nuts or vegetables or eggs or, you know, other sorts of any kind of animal product product, organ meats, like getting the full panoply of nutrition that humans need and have needed for thousands of years. That didn't change once we discovered the words like saturated fat and calories. Um, we just— to meet those needs, and that supports our amazing cellular technology, our amazing cells and biology and DNA and all the complexity of it, just to support it and allow it to recover, because our bodies will recover when they're supported. You know, even until you're dead, you can improve your health.

That's good. That's good. Well, I just have a couple more questions here for you, um, Doc. And I, I want to— first off, this has been a fantastic conversation. I've loved hearing your perspective and really getting in the science behind why these seed oils, vegetable oils, are just so toxic to the body. There are— they are so much worse than I think most people imagine. And going back, and I just want to hit on this again, you had mentioned, uh, I mean, pulling out a french fry is like pulling out a cigarette. I mean, I mean, it is, you know, we should view these in a very, very similar light. And I think we should really use this with kids, right? There's a, there's a quote by Confucius that I love, and it says, if you want to feed people for a year, plant wheat. If you want to feed them for 10 years, plant fruit trees. If you want to, uh, change the world, educate children. And so it's a, you know, and I think today this is so important that we're educated, our kids are educated on this. And obviously there's a whole force of evil. You talked about the American Heart Association, a lot of doctors who are ingrained in outdated information. And really not— it's outdated, but it's this information that unaltruistic. It was taking advantage of people monetarily and pushing something that wasn't good for them in the first place, and people knew it, which is really unfortunate. All that being said, what are some of the solutions to our entire healthcare model? You know, today we don't— one of the things I constantly talk about on the show is getting to the root cause. I mean, that's kind of the theme, a big part of, of the show. So, um, talk to me about how we change the model today in healthcare, moving it more towards what you're talking about— preventative, root cause-oriented. And my last question— well, or at least one of the last I want to get into— is what are the solutions for, you know, helping kids get healthy and feeding them this way?

Well, I mean, The last one I think is the most important, really, and this is maybe the most challenging. It's we don't have healthy food. You brought this up earlier, um, and the way to get healthy food is to change our mindset. I think, you know, I love mindset changes because they don't cost anything. Yeah. Um, to change our mindset about what it means to be a successful parent. Um, does it mean that your child went to Stanford and graduated in marketing, or does it mean that your child knows how to support a healthy ecosystem and help create a flourishing ecosystem that can create food for his community, his or her community and her family? I don't have kids, so by some rights, I don't have any right to speak about this at all. But in my mind, I I think that mind shift would save us. It really would. Like, because most people, it's just like assumed that if you want to be respected as a parent, um, you know, this doesn't speak for everybody, but I think it's a majority of people who, um, the majority of people, they truly believe that if their child gets into college and they've been successful as a parent, and if their child doesn't, they've And that's not good. College education isn't what's missing here. We have more college-educated people than ever in this country, and we are less healthy than ever. So like, that's one root cause, the disrespect of just like farmers.

You shared something that I think is really, um, wise and really important, and it reminds me of a Mother Teresa quote. And she said something to this degree. She says, we cannot do— she, she said, we can know— we, we cannot do great things, only small things with great love. And I think the idea there behind this is this, is that everybody wants to do great things, but unless it's towards the good, it's not, it's not good. I mean, it's, it's, it's harming everyone. I mean, you know, there's this thing where it's like, okay, this is why character is so important and why even science has to be founded on a bed of ethics, because if not not. The research is biased, and we end up where we are today. So all that being said is, whatever you're doing, as, you know, whether it's a parent or, or a business leader or, or whatever it is, it needs to be towards the good. And so teaching your kids, this is what's good, here's how to do good in the world. And farming and food is such a big part of this. I mean, it used to be— this is crazy— but 50% of jobs used to something to do with agriculture. And today it's around 2%. And so it's, it's, it's, it's much, much lower. But, but again, we are, you know, we become the food we eat. And this is, this is a— it's an incredibly important topic. And I do want to mention for everybody that, um, Dr. Kate here, uh, and, and just for everybody, if, if you jumped in a little bit, you know, maybe, you know, jumped in a little bit,, further into the program. But I want to encourage you to check out— Dr. Cate has a new book out. It's called Dark Calories, and I love the title, and there's so much symbolism in there and truth in terms of the darkness of the, uh, of the American Heart Association, some of the other groups out there that are trying to take advantage of you and your kids and your family, whether it be putting sugar or seed oils in these things and kids' cereals. I'm not going to get off topic here. My point is, check out Dr. Cate's book. It's. It's called Dark Calories. It's in bookstores nationwide. Dr. Cate has been featured everywhere— major podcasts, TV networks— and she's one of the world's leading experts here in vegetable oil, seed oils, and reducing oxidative stress. And you can go to Amazon and get the book if you just search Dark Calories. It'll pop right up. You can read the reviews. I mean, people are leaving rave reviews on this book and just You know, really, again, just saying this is a fantastic book. And the thing that's great about the book is there's great stories, there's great science, and there's great recipes. There's some great food ideas. And so this is great for kids and for families. If you're saying here, hey, I want to hear some of these simple, easy, great foods we can consume, you can— again, Dark Calories is the book. You can check it out there on Amazon.com. Dr. Kate, share with me Annie, last question. Um, what are some small things people can start doing today? You talked about putting on the face mask, right? Okay, first step is not going and starting a campaign with millions of people. First step is with you and your family. So, so what are some of the practical things a parent can do, or somebody listening, whether they're parent or not, and they're single, but that somebody can do and put on their own face mask in order to start healing and making difference?

Well, I like to say if you can, you know, when you're shopping, if you can get in the habit of turning the container around to read the label, you can turn your metabolism around. Wow. And what you're looking for, just please memorize, um, I call them the Sinister Six because there's only 6 of the 8 that really end up on labels, and that's the 3 C's and the 3 S's: corn, canola, cottonseed, soy, sunflower, safflower. Now, if you're in the UK, you don't have quinoa, you call it rapeseed. So, but yeah, so just memorizing that and just looking at what you have in your kitchen, just knowing what you're eating and what you've been eating and what you're buying. And then I have a shopping list on my website, which is free, just like to get some idea of where are the, like, let's say you don't wanna give up crackers totally, right? Well, there are companies companies who make crackers and potato chips and other kinds of chips, corn chips, you know, if you got to have some of that stuff in your house, um, then there are companies who make them with better fats. So the shopping list on my website, which is drkate.com, will help you to put on that oxygen mask.

Put on the oxygen mask, everybody. Well, I have loved talking to you today, Dr. K. It's been, uh, so refreshing, and I love what you're doing and leading this movement, exposing the dark darkness and helping bring people to the light. So thank you so much, everybody who's listening. Uh, remember, check out Dr. Cate's book, Dark Calories. Just a simple thing here too, when you're buying oils, buy extra virgin olive oil in a dark bottle, buy coconut oil. Those are two that are just super, super easy to use that have been used for thousands of years in replacement of all these other oils. And, um, and so again, uh, just really grateful, Dr. Kate, for you coming on. Everybody, hey, thanks so much for tuning in to another episode here of the Dr. Josh Axe Show. Remember, every week we're going to dive deep into how to heal your body, your mind, and your spirit and take your health and life the next level. Hey, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe here to the show and like the show. By the way, every time you like, subscribe, and share, you allow me to bring on more incredible guests like Dr. Kate Shanahan, who on today. And also, thank you, all of you who are sharing this episode. Listen, more people need to know the truth, and we are so grateful for you sharing it, whether it be on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. And also, if you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. What was one of your biggest takeaways of some of the wisdom that Dr. Kate shared with us today? So please comment there on YouTube. And again, grateful for everybody being on mission with us to help change the health of this world. Thanks again here to Dr. Kate Shanahan. We'll see you on the next episode.