The Seed Oil Scandal: Exposing the Hidden Dangers in Your Diet | Cate Shanahan, MD

The most dangerous idea in human history is this idea that cholesterol causes heart attacks. It was never true. It was never proven, yet it was accepted as fact. And it's ridiculous when you think about it a little bit, because cholesterol is something nature puts in every single one of our cells. It is essential to life.

Well, hi everybody, Dr. David Perlmutter here, back in the studio, and we have a very interesting program today. I'm going to be talking to Dr. Cate Shanahan, and she's the author of this book called Dark Calories. What is this all about, and why should you watch this program? Well, here's why. We've been hearing an incredible host of information about the dangers of so-called ultra-processed foods, right? You know, they're related to everything from depression to Alzheimer's to heart disease and cancer, you name it. And the science is really sound, indicating this is a serious threat to us. And the real messaging has been that these ultra-processed foods contain an awful lot of sugar, as well as highly processed carbohydrates, such that our blood sugar then gets raised. But the part of the story that you're not really hearing about is the oil part of this story. The fact that these ultra-processed foods are delivering to us these really bad oils, these seed oils that are really creating havoc within our bodies. So we are going to explore the danger of seed oils, but not just the bad part. We're going to talk about what's good in the world. In other words, how we can modify our choices, our cooking, our visits to the restaurant such that we can reduce our exposure to these life-threatening oils and make better choices. Again, with Dr. Cate Shanahan, the book is called Dark Calories. Let me tell you a little bit more about her. Cate Shanahan, MD, is a New York Times bestselling author of Deep Nutrition as well as The Fat Burn Fix, and she's had a huge impact on today's food and health landscapes. Her books and other publications have taught now what is considered a full generation of health influencers what an ideal human diet looks like and the damaging effects of a collection of 8 common seed oils that you will know that she calls the Hateful 8, informing the full spectrum of nutrition leaders, including things like keto people, carnivores, functional medicine individuals, and even more. I'm very excited to jump into this interview. Let's go. Well, Dr. Cate, it sure is really nice to have you here on the program. And I'd like to start by what I just talked to you before we went live, and that is, you know, we really have our arms around now, I think, the notion that these ultra-processed foods are associated with everything bad. And the messaging on the ultra-processed foods is basically that, you know, this is a way of raising your blood sugar because of their refinement of carbohydrates and because of the actual sugar that they contain. But you made very clear in your book That about 80% of foods that carry an ingredients label have in them bad oils, dangerous oils that are incredibly threatening to our health. It's really part of the story that I think people are not getting. So again, welcome to the program.

Well, thank you so much. I'm just really delighted to be here again with you, and I always enjoy our conversations.

So how did you get into the oils?

Well, you know, I was on Hawaii, and Hawaii is an amazing place because it's an it's. Kind of a window into humanity's past, what health could be like. At least, it was when I was there, which was the early 2000s. And, the thing I was noticing is that my older patients were healthier than their children and their own grandchildren. And so, I had started looking in what were they eating and what did people used to eat. And, for me, Yeah. The first, you know, people were already talking even at that point in time about, you know, too much rice or too much carbohydrates. But I noticed that there was this collection of oils that we'd been told are supposed to be the healthy oils. And that really caught my eye because that was totally the outlier in People in Hawaii did not have those. They didn't exist on Hawaii for the most part because most people in Hawaii, the reason it was this window into what human health is supposed to look like and just how amazingly healthy people stay into their elderly years when they avoid these oils because they simply weren't on the island. And people were eating just like a traditional human diet, living off plants and animals in like a normal amount, and including rice, lots of rice. There was a lot of Asian influence there. So that's why I started looking into the fat part of the equation.

Yeah, and it's so important that you and Nina Teicholz have done this, you know, really looked at the idea of dietary fat because, you know, in our Growing up in education, fat was foe. Fat was the the enemy, and every people were on the lowest possible fat of any kind they could be. And certainly animal fats, of all fats, were the ones to be avoided at all costs. And then when you take a step back and think about it, my goodness, humans have survived an awful long time eating animal fats. So all of a sudden, you know, the powers that be tell us they're. Literally off the table, and we followed suit, thinking that these people know what they're talking about. And we were really off base. So when did when did vegetable oils you know enter the lexicon or enter the marketplace? And let's talk about the history of their development.

So the history of these oils goes back to the late 1800s when there was this industrial revolution, and chemists had really learned how to Yeah. Manipulate molecules to turn them into things that they wanted. And so, the original entry of all vegetable oils into the food supply came in the form of cottonseed oil. And, it was Procter& Gamble, a company Procter& Gamble, which was mainly a candle company that had diversified into soap because of electricity. And then, in trying to And so, in order to turn these cotton seeds into some sort of profitable income stream, they extracted the oil from cotton seeds, which were— and this is important— totally a waste product of the cotton, the textiles industry. So, it was free. So, it was free for the taking, basically. Nobody knew what to do with them. They tried feeding them to animals, but they had a toxin in them, so they couldn't do that. Yeah. So, they left it up to the chemists to come to the rescue. And, they figured out how to kind of harden these liquid oils and remove the toxic compound in this massively intense processing. They just totally chemically changed it and they turned it into something nothing like the original oil. It was kind of a semi-solid. It looked like lard. So, they sold it as a lard substitute. And, that was how Crisco entered our food supply, but it was a solid.

Is there still Crisco? I mean, there was Crisco when I was growing up.

There was when I was growing up too, but it's very different now. It's been reformulated quite a number of times. But, the difference though, there's still a difference between that nasty chemical product Crisco and the Crisco today, which is still a nasty chemical product, don't get me wrong. But the liquid vegetable oils are toxic for entirely different reasons. So these are, even though they came, they come from cotton seeds and they come from soy, when you solidify it into a margarine, which is what Nina Teicholz talks a lot about, the beginning of that, as do I, but the liquid oils are a completely different animal. And when I was looking into this, which was the early 2000s, so no one else, you know, contemporary had been looking into it. Nobody, literally nobody. So I was just kind of forced to think about the chemistry. And I found a lot of answers by studying extremely technical journals from toxicologists and hard science chemists. And that was where I found just amazing breakthrough concepts that changed everything about the way I understood human health, normal healthy aging, normal childhood, and just how amazingly healthy we all used to be before these liquid oils, which are the worst of the worst, entered the food supply.

Well, let's talk about our consumption of fat and the clear and present danger posed by these seed oils. I think you call it the awful 8 or something. 8, what is it you call 'em?

Hateful 8, with a nod to the Quentin Tarantino movie.

These are things that we see on the grocery store shelves right now, the various types of seed oils. And, you know, the understanding and what you obviously found when you review the literature is that these are associated with a dramatic threat to our health. But at the very core of how they work, these are the oils when they are consumed that your body uses as it manufactures the cell membrane. And it's so functionally critical that that cell membrane be built from the best substances that it can be in order to do the things that are required for that cell throughout any cell in your body to be healthy. So what is the threat then to the composition of the cell membrane, be it your brain cells or any other cell in your body, immune cells? What is the threat That these seed oils are posing that then leads to the obvious disease states that are becoming so prevalent?

This is the critical question. What, what exactly about these oils makes them toxic to our health? And the way you pose the question is really good because a lot of folks out there are talking about, well, there must be something mutated about the molecules that occurs during the refining, and then that must mutate our cells. But the actual reason they're a problem is different than that. It's a little bit different. And let me explain, because this is just so important. The, the, the core fatty acid molecules that something like a soybean are made out of, or canola oil, those fatty acid molecules are actually essential fatty acids, and they're— they would be good for us. Like, if we just eat soybeans, or sunflower seeds, those fatty acids are perfectly fine. But what the processing does is it turns the normal healthy fatty acids that our cell membranes are supposed to be made out of, in a good amount actually, our cell membranes need a lot of these, something around 30 to 40% of all the fatty acids in our cell membranes are supposed to come from these special kinds of fatty acids that we can only get from our diet. Mm-hmm. So we do need to eat them. So the dietitians are right about that, but where the dietitians are absolutely wrong is the toxicity of the oil as it leaves the factory. And the key, key question, the key talking point here is toxins form out of those special molecules, those special molecules we need called polyunsaturated fatty acid molecules. They form out of those. And to give you a visual, let's say you have a glass in your hand. That is a useful thing, but it's fragile. A polyunsaturated fatty acid is a useful thing, but it's fragile. And during the processing and refining, taking it out of the seed and then cleaning up the messy oil that, you know, that you get the way they process these oils is very intensive. It breaks that big molecule. So it's like shattering the piece of glass and the toxins are like the shards of glass. So they formed from the molecule. And so a lot of people don't realize, but when you have something like canola oil, right? A lot of people are confused about canola oil. So I want to I wanna talk a tiny bit about that because it drives these points home. Canola oil is often labeled as healthy because it has been expeller extracted, no hexane, and it's organic, right? So people think it's healthy.

So not extracted with hexane.

Correct.

And that allows it to be called organic, right?

Absolutely correct, because they didn't use hexane.

So we have this organic expeller, low temperature produced canola oil, That somehow or another, the uric acid has been removed, and we think this is a great choice.

Right, exactly. So they've bred out that dangerous fatty acid, um, so that's not really a threat. There's maybe a tiny bit of it sometimes, but it's— it used to be a real problem. Now it's not. That's thanks to breeding. But the problem that canola has is So, even when you cold press it and don't use hexane, those breakable polyunsaturated fatty acids have turned into toxins. And so, the crude canola oil is not an edible oil. And, that's really the key. The thing is not edible. Olive oil is edible. The minute you make olive oil, it's called extra virgin olive oil. That's the crude olive oil. We don't call it crude olive oil. We call it extra virgin. Right. But, we call canola and soy and et cetera, the other hateful 8, we call that crude oil because it tells you something important, that word. It's inedible. It needs to be refined in order to not be disgusting and to clean up a lot of the toxins. But, the thing is it can't clean up all the toxins. It's just too many. The polyunsaturated fatty acids, there's so many of them. Now,

wasn't canola originally developed as an industrial oil?

Yes, it was. And, it was actually a machine oil developed for the war effort, World War II effort in Canada. And so, after the war was over, they're like, okay, well, why don't we just make sure that this— let's clean it up just a little bit better and then See if we can sell it to people, and they they were they managed to sell it to people. They didn't die immediately. They didn't you know they they accepted it. It was never tested though. It was it was a new substance, and back at this point in time, there were not the kind of regulations on a new substance in any country. And now many countries do have regulations, and probably canola oil would not be accepted. Adopted into most of them. But in the United States, we don't have much regulation at all. We have less regulation than everywhere else really right now because we have to— the burden is on the government to prove that something is unhealthy. And so, that's the case with all the Hateful 8 though. Almost all of them were byproducts of some other industry. And, they were not originally created for people, but there were so many of these oils produced generally around World War II for the war effort in one capacity or another. And, with all this excess oil at the end of the war, now it was a total push economy. They had to find consumers for it. So there was just a glut of these oils and they were desperate to find ways to sell this.

Well, let me ask you something. I mean, you know, with your book and your vociferous outcry, well positioned, what has been or has there been a response from big food and ag related to your messaging that these oils that appear on our grocery store shelves are absolutely threatening Americans' health? How have you been received?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it's actually— there's been a lot of pushback, as you might imagine, but it's mostly pushback coming from the medical industry.

Really?

Yes. There are lots of medical doctors out there who are standing up for canola oil and standing up for, you know, the idea that These polyunsaturated oils are heart healthy, and they're from extremely prestigious institutions, you know, Tufts and Yale. They, like, one of them is the dean, or was the dean recently, until recently, his name's Dariush Mozaffarian, of the Tufts University School of Nutrition and Health Policy.

So the idea that these high, seed-based oils, high omega-6 type oils, uh, are pro-inflammatory, are building cell membranes that are less functional and all of that. Does that make its way— and I know the answer to the medical curriculum, it does not, I guess— but how does that make you feel when you see that doctors who are learning incredibly minimal amounts of nutritional information anyway are not getting the story on Really on the refined carbohydrates or the seed oils?

Yeah, so I want to answer that question, but first, this— what you brought up was a very important kind of misperception that is— it's kind of a subtlety that is critical to understanding this whole argument.

I think it's the omega-6 part, right?

Yes.

I knew you were going to get that.

Yeah, because the problem is that the toxins, like those shards of glass, they damage the cell membranes. So, it's not that we have an imbalance or too much. A lot of people are talking about too much omega-6, and that could be part of the problem. But, I think it's 95% the fact that these toxins actually multiply and they are self-multiplying toxins. And, when you buy a bottle of soy oil or canola oil, there's trace amounts of toxins in there. But they multiply and multiply and multiply, and then they attack our cell membranes. And so that's the real problem, and it matters a lot. It's not just an academic conversation that we're having, because a lot of folks are talking about linoleic acid is the problem, and almonds have like 50% linoleic acid, and oh no, now you need to avoid almonds, and golly, you should not eat any of these seeds, and you probably shouldn't eat chicken or pork, pork or bacon. And that is an out-of-control conversation that I want to put the lid on it because it's very discouraging. It's not necessary. But the key point is it's very discouraging to people because they hear that, wow, so it's not just these oils that are in everything, but now it's like half of the things I wanted to bring home and eat for dinner too. And I can tell you that I know it's not the case just from experience. My own personal experience myself, and I have had many hundreds of patients I've worked with, and then thousands and thousands of testimonials where people were not—they were eating their chicken, they were eating their nuts and their seeds, and they were just doing a traditional human diet. You know, we can talk about the animal food supply food chain—that's separate issue. But so that's why I wanted to get a lid on this conversation, and I'm so glad that you brought it up. And you know, I know it's. It's different than the way the conversation maybe has been. Maybe you've been thinking about it differently for the past 10, 15 years, whatever. But that's why I'm so glad you brought it up because it's hard to—

Yeah, I mean, I think my biggest focus has been, A, the presence and subsequent production of toxins that the way it replicates almost sounds like a prion. And B, just the risk of oxidation. I think we're gonna have to talk about this. The increased risk of oxidation in terms of the, Polyunsaturated fatty acids, or PUFAs, that because they are unsaturated— and we have to talk about what that means in comparison to saturated fat— because they're unsaturated, that they are at a higher risk for being damaged by free radical type chemicals, oxidized or burned or charred or however you want to look at it. Well, hi everyone, Dr. David Perlmutter here. We hope you're enjoying this content, and if you would do so, go ahead and hit the like button. And if you're not already a subscriber to our channel, please consider doing so. We're really grateful to have you as part of our community. So let's get right back to the presentation. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the difference between a saturated versus an unsaturated fat, mono and poly, and then talk about it in the context of risk for oxidative damage.

So the chemistry is really, you know, I think it's the fun part, but it kind of makes a lot of people's heads spin. So let's just talk about the Kind of in stick figure simple. I'll try to, you know, imagine this, right? So saturated fat is a straight line molecule, and unsaturated fat is not straight. It has a kink in it. And we know saturated fats are solid, like butter is solid at room temperature. And we know oils are liquid at room temperature. They don't have as much saturated fat. They have more of those kinky— Yeah. Fats that are bendy. And those kinks and bends, they come from what's called a double chemical bond or double bond. And those bonds are weaker and they attract oxygen. And that's where oxygen, which is everywhere in the air, when we cook our food, it's in the factory, it's in our bloodstream. So, it's very important to consider how oxygen reacts with different fatty acids. And oxygen will attack the fatty acids that are in seed oils because they have 2 double bonds or 3 double bonds. And that makes them especially dangerous in terms of toxicity because oxygen breaks the molecule. So think of oxygen like in that analogy of the glass. The polyunsaturates are the glass, the fragile glass, and oxygen is like this Sledgehammer that comes along and smashes polyunsaturates into all different chemical shards that are each one an individual toxin, and different kinds of toxins. So they're hard to measure, and then it's like an explosion because the the composition, the chemistry just keeps changing. Those toxins, once they form in an oil, they can attack other Non-broken polyunsaturates. And so that's the prion-like chain reaction, cascading reaction of— it just is an unstoppable process.

I'm glad you agree with me on the, on the prion analogy. So these oils then are much more susceptible to being oxidized. The least at-risk oils for oxidation, oxidative damage, and rendering them less appropriate for consumption and utilization by our cells are the saturated types of fats. And yet, over the past several decades, we've been told that we've got to avoid saturated fats at all costs, or our children will be born naked, or terrible things will happen. So, uh, where are we on the understanding of saturated fats and health?

So There's a huge disconnect between what doctors learn and what chemists and scientists studying these oils and studying saturated fats talk about. The disconnect is on multiple levels. So doctors are listening to one crowd of people, and the doctors are listening to dietitians, basically. Dietitians who create clinical trials, who themselves are dyed-in-the-wool believers that saturated fat is bad and that these polyunsaturates are like the answer to all of our health problems fat-wise. So the doctors are really only listening to a tiny sliver of the people producing the research, right? The other people are absolutely disconnected from the medical stream of knowledge. It's like there's a narrative in medicine, saturated fat is bad, saturated fat is bad. And they literally plug their ears and do not listen to people who are producing evidence against that narrative. And there's a long list of these people. So let me just give you some examples. It's toxicologists who study the oil themselves. It's pathologists who study the pathophysiology of diseases like Alzheimer's. Where do those plaques and tangles come come from? Oh, it's oxidative stress. Gee, that sounds familiar. That sounds like oxidation, what we've just been talking about. It's also the people who work in the edible oil industry. The people in the edible oil industry who I— and I interviewed a couple for Dark Calories. They literally say, look, if we had our way, we would tell the American Heart Association to stop Recommending saturated fat in processed foods because processed foods have to be shelf-stable. They have to be heated. They have to be cooked. So we don't like it for processed foods at all. But the American Heart Association doesn't ask us these questions because the American Heart Association pays attention to just only the narrative.

Well, as it relates to that, what about the dreaded dietary cholesterol? You know, we still see egg white omelets on menus in restaurants because The egg yolk obviously is something to be avoided because it contains cholesterol, as well as wonderful other things like choline. But why should we be avoiding dietary cholesterol, or should we?

Let me tell you that the reason I call this book Dark Calories is because the most dangerous idea in human history is this idea that cholesterol causes heart attacks. It was not true. It was never true. It was never proven, yet it was accepted as fact. And it's ridiculous when you think about it a little bit, because cholesterol is something nature puts in every single one of our cells. It is essential to life. To animal life. All animals, not just humans, every form of animal must have cholesterol in our cell membrane. And, if the cell doesn't have enough, it can die. If ovarian cells and the cells that are baby-making cells, if they don't have enough cholesterol, we won't reproduce. Men will be infertile, women will not ovulate. Cholesterol is a very important nutrient. It's important for our brain, which is 15% cholesterol by weight. And yet, the American Heart Association, who are the evil organization—they are they're they're a dark organization—they're the source of this supposed information, supposed you know idea that cholesterol is a toxin clogging our arteries. Cholesterol is in our arteries for a reason, and when people have more cholesterol. All their other biomarkers are better, and we're finding out now when people have higher cholesterol levels, they have cleaner arteries with lower calcium scores than people with lower cholesterol.

I think it's very interesting what you just said, that, you know, many important molecules in our body are actually made from cholesterol— estrogen, progesterone, even vitamin D for that matter. You know, in the presence of sunlight, it's a precursor of cholesterol that gets converted to make to manufacture vitamin D. It's not as if vitamin D is transmitted from the sun into your liver. So, and, uh, and, you know, we make cholesterol. So, uh, if— how could, how could it be bad? It's been a really interesting, uh, interesting thing to watch the shift in dietary patterns, especially in America and now the rest of the world, based upon this outdated information. And I think what's happened is our belief systems— and you talk about this in the book too— Our belief systems have been hijacked with these various narratives that do not serve us. So, you know, that's one of the— I think the goals of your book and previous books has been kind of to rewrite information such that we can change our belief systems.

Right, exactly. Like, the most important shift you can make is to shift who you believe, because there are people who've been telling us to avoid cholesterol and avoid saturated fat. And, we've actually been de facto doing that because our food supply has changed. And, these people actually never had data, and there were conflicts of interest that I'd like to get into if we have time. But, the key thing is that they had conflicts of interest that they never revealed. They never have revealed and they never have apologized.

What

else is new? And, we are still believing them. Like doctors going through training, dietitians going through training, nurses, people who mean well, people who want to heal, they are being— their good intentions are being hijacked by largely the American Heart Association, the dark evil organization. They've exported all these diseases now around the globe, and they're responsible for billions of deaths.

These Oils are very sensitive and can become oxidized in their— when they're on the shelf, the lid cap is off, when they're in our bodies, etc. But without question, cooking them or heating them advances that process quite aggressively. So what happens when we cook with an oil using one of these oils?

So the oxidation reactions that were occurring slowly in the bottle really take off. They accelerate, like, you know, by a factor of 1,000 or more. And what happens is the longer you heat it at the higher temperature, the more toxins form. The polyunsaturated fatty acids just start to disappear, right? The toxins are forming from the polyunsaturates. So you have less of those healthy molecules and more toxins. And the amount that you get, toxicologists have studied this too. And they found that when you take your just Joe Average fast food French fry, a large serving of fries has the equivalent amount of toxins you would get from smoking an entire pack of cigarettes all the way, not just a puff, smoking all of them. So that is, you know, a massive amount of toxicity. And that is stone cold fact that the dietitians and doctors in the American Heart Association, they are just repeatedly saying it's that that these oils do not do that, which is a flat out lie.

Now you even mention in your book about the. Inhaled products of these hot oils when we're frying something or deep frying something, and how threatening that can be to health.

Yeah, so these big molecules, they break into all different size shards, and some of the smaller shards of the molecules are small enough that they're basically vaporized, right? Small molecules can turn into gases when they're heated. And they vaporize and we can breathe them in. And now we have decades of research all over the world, especially in Asia though, it's where some of the best research has been done since 2006, showing that women cooking at home develop cancer, lung cancer, even though they are not smokers, when they cook with these oils. And actually, I spoke with a really great toxicologist who's doing some of this very research. Whose own mother was one of the victims. His own mother had grown up where they were from, which is Ghana in Africa. They had all grown up with coconut oil. That was their traditional oil. But then, around the '80s or '90s, that shifted and she started using— I think they used sunflower or canola. I can't remember which one he said. But, she actually 10 years later was diagnosed with lung cancer. She'd never smoked. They didn't have smokers in the family. She diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away. So this is a personal issue for this particular researcher. And, you know, it's just, it's a tragedy for people because it's not just lung cancer. This process of oxidation and toxicity formation is the root cause of all of these metabolic diseases. It causes insulin resistance, it causes diabetes, it causes genetic damage. It causes malformations in the brain that we are finding associated with autism. Certainly, it causes Alzheimer's. It heavily promotes Alzheimer's. I believe it's the main driver. And it also promotes the other brain disorders of aging, like Parkinsonism and the vascular dementias, all the forms of dementia. are related to oxidative stress. All the neurodegenerative disorders are related to oxidative stress. And these toxins, there's just so many different types of toxins that form in so many different places. But because it doesn't kill us overnight or in a weekend, you know, it's so slow.

Well, I— you bring up a very good point. You know, the, the central role of what we call oxidative stress, or for viewers, the damaging effects of the chemicals that are part of our metabolism that are called free radicals. This, you know, hearkens back to— and you mentioned it in the book— to Dr. Denham Harmon, who I think, you know, was the first to promote this principle that I think really gained a lot of traction. Not just oxidative stress to our cell membranes and the oils from which they are made, but also oxidative stress to proteins as well as even our DNA. Damaged by this process of oxidation. I had the opportunity to give the Denham Harmon lecture several years ago on this topic, again, as it relates to Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Shanahan, I want to get back to the oils and the heating of the oils, because there's a lot of talk about if you keep the oil below the so-called smoke point, then everything's going to be just dandy. But, uh, I think it was really clear from your book that Long before you reach the point where the oil is starting to smoke, it's already getting damaged and already poses a threat to health.

Yes, and that is a, like, such a, another little evil genius came up with that idea to tell people to worry about smoke point when smoke point has literally nothing to do with our health. And besides, who sits there and watches their food smoke? I mean, when you, you can cook pretty much anything you want in olive oil. If it starts to smoke, sizzle loudly, even before it starts smoking, you're going to be stirring it. So it's not going to burn. So there's only one situation where smoke point matters. And that is a deep fryer where you set it and forget it, right? Otherwise, if you didn't have a high smoke point in the deep fryer, the thing would boil over. And that would cause a fire.

Well, interestingly, I think you were saying that There was a requirement now for the deep fryer oil to be changed in restaurants once a week. I got it right, I think. You said once a week. And can you imagine the degree of change, threatening change, that's happened to that oil over the course of a week maintaining that high temperature for the French fries? I mean, that— and then we eat that? So that— I guess it plays back to your idea that, you know, your statement that— One pack of fries is equivalent to 25 cigarettes in terms of toxic exposure.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the worst thing is that they're taking these oils now that are used, and they are clarifying them, which takes out some of the solids, like the brown disgusting solids that people would obviously see as a marker of something that you probably shouldn't be cooking in. It basically clears those out chemically. And now, it looks clear again, but it has all these invisible toxins in there that are just disgusting smelling and have an absolute almost toxic odor when you go by the cooking stands. Fortunately, we don't need to do that too much in this country, but in a lot of the less wealthy nations, they do that. And so now, my husband actually was just traveling in Japan and he said that you can tell. Yeah. Because when it's a cheap food stand, there's this smell. He calls it the smell of death. It is just acrid and vile. And that's from— because we're so convinced if it looks clear, if it's not smoking anymore, we don't have anything to worry about. But the smoke point idea has terrified people away from using butter, which has a very low smoke point. It terrifies people away from using olive oil that has been used for thousands of years. Butter has been used for thousands of years. We shouldn't eat food that has been burnt. That's a good principle to live by. But, the smoke point concept, I think, was just created by evil geniuses who wanted to sell these flavorless oils to chefs who otherwise wouldn't want them. And, the promise is it'll make your life easier in the restaurant. That's all. All that's it benefits.

We're going to get to the restaurant in just a minute, but is there a safe way to cook with oils of any type?

Yes, yeah, like all like the oils need to be virgin oils. So like I have a list of what the good oils are, and the safe way to cook with them is to not you know is to be a good cook. What any cook would do: watch what you're doing, use your senses, listen to the sound of your food. Does it sound like it's too hot? It makes a certain sizzling change. Does it look like it's starting to brown or burn in a way that you don't want? Then, stir it, turn the heat down. Any oil, literally any oil you can use like that. You can even use oils that are high in polyunsaturates like that, although I wouldn't recommend doing that every single day. And, you wouldn't do it anyway because those Sesame oil is really the only one. Super expensive too. You wouldn't— you just wouldn't be able to afford it.

So here we go. We're going out to a restaurant tonight, let's say, and obviously I have no clue as to how they're, um, what they're doing in an oil department as it relates to how they're cooking my food. What do you do? How do you order? And how do you select even the cuisine or the type of restaurant to To help ensure that you're getting a better exposure?

Yeah, so in the back third of the book, I devote, um, you know, over 100 pages to practical strategies to avoiding these oils in a world where everybody selling food wants to shove them down your throat because they're dirt cheap and they make their lives easier. So the, the simplest, uh, strategy— there's different strategies for different restaurant scenarios, So, there's a different strategy for a sit-down restaurant than a fast food restaurant, right? Because in a sit-down restaurant, you can actually ask, hey, this is the key question. You just say, do you have anything back there that you can cook for me right now in butter? And because it's too hard to go through the dance of like, oh, what oil do you use? The server's not going to know. They're going to go back there. They're not going to remember. They're just going to tell you what they think that you want to hear. And so that just takes too long. So just say the words, you know, tell them what you want and be clear. And then, you know, most of the time they will have some kind of butter. If they don't, then you have to resort to, do you have anything that you can cook for me that's just steamed? Like when we're talking about a protein.

Steamed, got it. Steamed vegetables, Chinese, Japanese restaurant, Chinese restaurant.

Yeah. And so this, then there's different strategies for, you know, fast food basically. It's, you know, for like, if you were, for example, if you wanted to go to McDonald's, Well, you could actually order one of their all-beef patties that is truly all beef, supposedly, and they don't cook it on the griddle in any bad oil. They just cook it in its own fat, and you could have a couple of those, right? That'll fill you up. I have different strategies, right? How to order salads, how to order sides. And then there's special cuisines too. Like, my favorite to recommend is Indian cuisine because Many Indian dishes are made with dairy fat. Ghee. Yeah, ghee, dairy fat, which is basically kind of hard to substitute, right? Like, you can't substitute yogurt with— right now, there isn't a vegetable oil product that will fake that flavor. And the same with cream, right? So, you want to order like cream sauces or a yogurt sauce or ask them if they're using ghee. Hopefully, they'll tell you the truth.

So let's for our viewers again, ghee, G-H-E-E, is clarified butter, and that's kind of a traditional way that India use technique of cooking in India as well as tandoori, which I think would probably be that's just a really hot oven, right?

Yes, as long as like you know it wasn't marinated anything with a bad oil, which they may or may not do. But you know generally of all the cuisines that I say Indian is my favorite because. The owners are usually— it's mom and pop, and they're just very proud of their traditions, and they want to share the specific flavors. And so they're usually more upfront about what they're doing.

How popular, or in your mind, is coconut oil?

Coconut oil is also great too, right? And so a lot of other Asian cuisines will use coconut oil, um, like Thai. They use coconut in their— a lot of their soups and a lot of their— as the base for a lot of their sauces. Um, and the more— so coconut oil is extremely saturated. It is one of the most stable fats that scientists have ever found, right? You almost cannot turn this thing into a broken-down molecule because it's mostly saturated fat. And so coconut oil is just a fantastic fat for cooking with. It has a really strong flavor, and so you want to match it with the cuisine. Like, it wouldn't work with French cooking, I don't think, but you would— it could work with Indian and Southeast Asian and that sort of thing.

So when you order a salad at a restaurant and You tell them dressing on the side, or— and what is that dressing that you ask them for? Oil and vinegar?

Yeah, I ask if you have 100% pure olive oil, you definitely need to specify that you do not want an olive oil blend. And so if they have what you're asking for, then, then that'll work. But there's also a survival strategy of, um, just asking for toppings that are going to taste really— make your salad Good, like fatty toppings, especially things like bacon, cheese, avocado, you know, any kind of a topping.

Raisins, apple.

Yeah, so to just make that lettuce be less bland, right? And definitely don't forget salt. And of course, the you can still use vinegar and lemon because those things will never have seed oils.

You know, I've gotten away from asking for olive oil or oil and vinegar, knowing full well, as we have for many years now. That when you go through the dance and ask them if it's 100% olive oil, they generally say yes. And you, if you've ever asked them to say what I normally say, and you're gonna see what kind of a strange individual I am, gosh, this is really good. Can I look at the bottle? And, uh, you know, and then you read it and it's almost always half canola oil or 49%. If it's 51% olive oil, that's allowed to be called, as you know, olive oil. So Rather than being such a pain to people, I just generally bring my own. So when we go to restaurants, we're known around town for those strange individuals who bring their own olive oil because I get great olive oil. I've done you know a lot of social media about why it's important and where I get olive oil. Just bring it along and then tell them hold the dressing on the salad, and then you have your own. And you can use their vinegar, you know from the oil and vinegar cart. But I think it's really important for people to know when they are asking for the oil and vinegar, that's oftentimes, uh, not olive oil even to start with. But if you ask for olive oil, it generally is not 100%, that's for sure.

Yes. And so thank you for bringing that up, because like people don't want to be like the— feel like they're the only person that is doing this thing. And so, you know, you're a respected leader, so they're just following your example. And I would do that too if I ate out more. I don't eat out that much because—

yeah, you know what I've noticed is Many of the restaurants, or several I can think of, where we've been bringing our own olive oil for many years, have now got, they're selling really high-end olive oil and they use it in the restaurant. You know, it's good for them. They're able to sell it and it's not inexpensive. But if you ask 'em for that oil that you're selling up on the shelf, they'll bust out a bottle for you. You might even have to buy it, but what the heck? I mean, it's that important. I mean, we've been talking about this for an awful long time. It's really that important. And you know, I'm a neurologist, get to the brain. 70% fat dry weight is the brain, and it's made from your dietary fats. So you're eating the raw materials from which your body will make brain cell membranes. So gosh, it matters a lot.

Yeah, so you can think of it as you're protecting those fragile fatty acids when you're eating these healthier oils. And another thing that, um, that I talk about how to do in the back of the book Dark Calories is to rebuild your body's antioxidant enzymes, because those are truly how you fortify those fragile fatty acids that we need in our brain and we need in our cell membranes. You need to have an arsenal of antioxidant enzymes. It's not something you can eat. These are enzymes your body has to manufacture those. They have to manufacture them out of protein. And so yet another common idea out there is that, oh, we don't need that much protein. Protein and we certainly shouldn't be eating meat, right? We have to eat low on the food chain. But, that is a dangerous idea because it deprives us of the ability to create these antioxidant enzymes the amount that we need, which is a substantial amount. And, the more oils that you have been exposed to in the past 5 years because they stay in your body fat that long, the more protein you really need. Uh, the more whole food-based protein, and the best source really is animal foods.

Well, uh, I— that'll, that'll definitely raise eyebrows amongst, uh, some of our followers, and, and especially in light of the fact that I will air, you know, at times the other viewpoint that, you know, we need to be much more plant-based. And funny though, no matter what, no matter who gets on the program, I get You know, people question, why in the world did you put that on the program? Because we like to listen to all sides. That's why. Question comes to mind, and that is, if you're eating a fatty food, a fatty piece of meat or chicken, whatever it may be, fish, and you cook it, you know, we talk about salmon being good because it's one of the highest sources of DHA, for example, good for the brain and inflammation. But when we cook those foods and we're heating those fats, How does that play out? I mean, should we be eating everything raw, and is that safe?

Yeah, that's a great question. So we did used to, you know, humans really didn't cook very often, 'cause it was a hassle to, you know, we didn't have cooking implements when we were hunter-gatherers. So we ate a lot of foods raw. And so you're bringing up a really important point, which is we have to consider what happens to our food When we cook with it, we have to consider our cooking method. And I brought up steaming earlier because that is truly one of the healthiest ways to cook anything because it's never going to get above boiling point. But if you put in a frying pan, it can start to get above you know 200 and get up to 300 degrees, and you get you just get more rapid oxidation, not just of the fats, but you get oxidation of the proteins too. And so here's. I mean, I want to talk about this a little bit in terms of the plant-based because it's a strategy. If you want to eat more plants, do this, right? And you're going to be in better shape. So, the strategy is you want to consider that when you eat plant foods, we can't eat beans without cooking them, right? Whereas we can certainly eat fish without cooking it. So, if you want to be plant-strong, And have plenty of beans and lentils and legumes like that in your diet to get that kind of protein. And the same with seeds and nuts. You can actually enhance their nutritional value by soaking and sprouting them rather than having like canned beans or just like roasted nuts, right? So, there'll be a lot more nutrition preserved and more bioavailability when you soak Soak your beans overnight, and then you allow them to sprout for a short period of time. You are releasing a lot of the minerals and making everything more bioavailable and easy easy to digest. Basically, that's what bioavailable means: easy to break down in your digestive system, easier on your digestive system, better for your microbiome, and then they get into your. Bloodstream faster. So I just want people to choose whatever eating style they like, but want them to be aware of the difficulties and limitations and optimize the nutrition no matter what eating style you choose. If you want to be carnivore, I'll tell you what not to do. If you want to be middle of the road, which is where I am, I love vegetables, I love beans, I love nuts and seeds, and I love me my hamburger. So I just want people to know that there's a way to optimize their nutrition and make it delicious at the same time. Like, that's the best part of it.

And you made that so clear at the back of your book that it, it's not that hard. I mean, that was what was really nice is the, you know, the action points, because we're all wondering, gee, what do I do? How do I cook? What do I do in the restaurant? And that's been— it's very helpful that you added that in because You know, the first part, you make the thesis that the oils that we eat and avoid, that's a big decision. And it's a very important decision as it relates to our health for the reasons that we've talked about. But the actionable parts, that's the levers to pull, which makes it very helpful.

Well, thank you. Yes. So, and in the end, you know, it does come down to spending more time thinking about what you're going to eat instead of just like last minute, oh, I'm just gonna drive through the golden arches, right? That time that you spend, you will build new habits. And once you build a habit, then it's just as easy as your old habit. And it's as easy in terms of difficulty. It may take more time, but you'll work it in like people do. I've talked to people who are living in all kinds of crazy situations. I had a patient who was homeless, living out of her car. I've had people who make bone broth on a hot plate in their one-room And they're not complaining. They are feeling empowered.

There's a quote from Gandhi that begins by saying, beliefs become thoughts, thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become values, and values become destiny. So, the shorter version would be beliefs become our destiny. And in this case, you know, I think that there's been a significant hacking of belief systems to believe that, A, the foods that are being purveyed for us may be good for us because labeling and these ideas about high smoke point, organic, etc. You know, organic is good, but I think we can see bastardization of that term because the manipulation of these oils still might allow them to be called organic, and yet they're threatening to health. There's nothing you know, safety ensuring about the term organic because of what you just talked about today. So I think, you know, our mission is to really work on people's beliefs, and we could do that by showing them the truth, showing them the science, and that's what you did in this book. So I'm gonna speak for everybody watching and tell you that I'm grateful, and we are grateful. This is terrific information, and I'm hoping people will read this book because it's really an eye-opener. Thank you. I was going to say it's a page-turner, but people all use that term, that's for sure. What did I write on the top here? With practical advice to reclaim health through real food, Doc Calorie is a true beacon for those seeking to navigate misinformation, offering a clear path toward wellness and disease prevention. And I think that's what was made clear today in our time together. So thank you so much for joining us.

And thank you so much for having me on and for the marvelous headliner blurb.

You bet, happy to do it. Well, we will talk soon. Hopefully you got another book, uh, coming out at some point, and I'd be delighted to reconnect with you.

Thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.

Okay, bye for now. Well, I hope you learned a lot today about seed oils. I know I did. It's a terrific book, again, Dark Calories by Dr. Cate Shanahan. I am convinced she She'll be back on our program soon because she is a very prolific contributor to the whole world of health-related books that are really science-based, number one, and number two, are very actionable, giving us tools that we can implement day in and day out to achieve better health and longevity. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter here on The Empowering Neurologist. Thanks for joining us, and we will be back soon. Bye-bye.