Vegetable oil is a kitchen staple, and a key component of home-cooked meals, salad dressings, and baked goods. But while some types of vegetable oils are healthy choices, others can be as dangerous to our health as sugar, a top nutritionist says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been told that polyunsaturated vegetable oil is good for us, but it\u2019s actually more toxic to our brain than sugar,\u201d Dr. Catherine Shanahan tells Newsmax Health<\/em>.<\/p>\n In fact, the promotion of vegetable oil \u2013 and its substitution for saturated fat \u2013 may be behind many common chronic diseases and ailments today, says Shanahan, author of the newly revised book \u201cDeep Nutrition: Why your Genes Need Traditional Food.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis one idea that saturated fat is bad for us was like releasing an atomic bomb, disrupting culinary information that had been passed down for generations,\u201d says Shanahan.<\/p>\n According to her, the natural foods Americans ate a half-century ago were actually better for our bodies than the modern-day meals that have replaced them.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 1950s, women were pulled from the traditional path and told to leave behind the foods and cooking methods that had served us well forever,\u201d says Shanahan.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were told that microwave dinners and multivitamins would take care everything, obliterating the respect that had served our bodies well.\u201d<\/p>\n But the problem is that our bodies are genetically programmed to require certain nutrients that our modern diet no longer supplies, says Shanahan, who studied biochemistry and genetics at Cornell University before earning her medical degree at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. <\/p>\n \n\u201cWe need to go back to those earlier days. The knowledge of how to eat to survive was no small thing,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Much of the blame for today\u2019s ills can be traced to processed foods, and chief among them is vegetable oil, says Shanahan.<\/p>\n \u201cVegetable oil is an industry term. Often, you will say it on the label with the words that the product \u2018may contain one of the following,\u2019 and it’s always soy or canola or one of the seed oils. But in the processing, new molecules have been created and they are toxic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount of polyunsaturated food in our diet exceeds our needs by a factor of 10. We are overdosing on them and completely overwhelming our metabolism. Overdosing on these oils causes chronic pain, colitis, obesity, fatigue, and more. There are journal articles about this. If the press would only pick them up they would be blockbusters.\u201d<\/p>\n Shanahan recommends staying away from canola, soy, sunflower, cottonseed, corn, grapeseed and safflower. Also steer clear of non-butter spreads, including margarine and the so-called trans-free spreads, she says.<\/p>\n In place of these oils, she recommends olive, peanut, macadamia nut, palm and coconut oils. Other approved choices include butter, as well as animal fats like lard and tallow.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t only vegetable oil; the food industry has led Americans astray from what Shanahan calls the \u201ctraditional diet,\u201d which is how Americans ate in the 1950s, and for generations before.<\/p>\n Shanahan was inspired to write her book from her experience practicing medicine in Hawaii.<\/p>\n \u201cI saw that the grandparents of many of my patients were healthier than their children and grandchildren, and I realized they had been raised on traditional foods,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In addition, she researched the diets from around the world proven to help people live longer, healthier lives \u2014\u00a0 including the Mediterranean, Okinawan, and so-called “Blue Zones.” She identified four common nutritional habits that to produce people who are healthier than Americans are today.<\/p>\n Here are the four strategies that Shanahan calls the pillars of \u201cThe Human Diet\u201d:<\/p>\n In order to embrace this way of thinking, you have to change your mindset, says Shanahan.<\/p>\n \u201cStart your day with eggs, yogurt \u2013or even soup. You have to learn to think outside the cereal box but if you believe nature knows better than us, you will love this way of eating,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vegetable oil is a kitchen staple, and a key component of home-cooked meals, salad dressings, and baked goods. But while some types of vegetable oils are healthy choices, others can be as dangerous to our health as sugar, a top nutritionist says. \u201cWe\u2019ve been told that polyunsaturated vegetable oil is good for us, but it\u2019s Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n