Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Deep Nutrition

My dive into the world of health and nutrition continues as I recently read Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan, MD. The book covers a lot of topics about nutrition, ranging broadly from our evolutionary history to the nitty gritty of how to make a healthy salad dressing.

The book formally introduced me to two new areas I need to learn more about. The first is that seed oils are bad for you, even uncooked. These oils have already been intensely heated (that's how they are extracted for maximum value by their manufacturers) and therefore changed into molecules our bodies have not been conditioned to handle well, leading to some long-term problems. Sometimes I'll come out of a restaurant thinking I did a good job avoiding sugar, and yet find that my weight still rose more than expected. The restaurant's liberal use of seed oils may be the reason.

The second is the field of epigenetics. While our genes already exist and get passed down to our descendants, what turns those genes on and off are influenced by our environment, and those "epigenes" are indeed passed down to future generations. As a student of the whole Darwin random-mutation/natural-selection process, some of the author's discussions sounded unbelievable to me, but I look forward to learning more.

I recommend the book to anyone looking to eat healthier.

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