Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food - Deep Nutrition

This book is full of valuable and uptodate information. I've since bought her other book "Food Rules" which I feel is also an excellent book to guide you on health and nutrition. I've since bought the book for all of my children

I've read a lot on nutrition, food, and health and this book is one of the best. Great explanations and some new and unique views into what we should eat and why. I would highly recommend it - in fact I do recommend this book to family and friends.

I must book for those who truly care about having optimum health. A back to basics book before the processed food revolution. The bone soup recipe will take years off your face given all of the collagen you will be benefiting from.

This is a must read for everyone! This is a must for anyone thinking of having a baby!
If you are interested in what is wrong with our health, read this book!
I wish this were required reading for all of America!

EXCELLENT INFORMATION; ESPECIALLY THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FORM AND FUNCTION, VEGETABLE OILS AND THE TRANSGENERATIONAL EFFECTS OF JUNK FOOD. WE ARE NOT ONLY DESTROYING THE ECOLOGY, WE'RE KILLING THE INFORMATION TO CREATE OUR FUTURE. IT WOULD BE GOOD THAT MANY HEALTH PROFESSIONALS WILL HAVE MORE TIME TO READ AND LEARN MORE LOGICAL WAYS TO TREAT THEIR PATIENTS.
THANK CATE FOR SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE.
GABRIEL FROM BUENOS AIRES

I sure hope Dr Cate is right (conflicting nutritional advice abounds) because I'm following her philosophies. So far I'm convinced of her assessments of the facts and am doing great following her advice as close as i can. I have beef broth on the stove right now. To

I have read too many books on Nutrition and health, starting two decades ago with the Mcdugal diet information. This is by far the best book ever written on the subject. I have come to many of same conclusions after two decades of self experimentation to treat my SLE symptoms (I have had it for 36 years.). I gained new insights which I employed immediately and already am seeing rapid healing from injuries sustained in a car wreck a few years ago. What Dr. Shanahan and Mr. Shanahan prescribe in Deep Nutririon does work. I now have a book to point people to when they ask my advice on how to deal with their own chronic condition symptoms. Buy the book, follow the advice, feel strong, be active.

I sure hope Dr Cate is right (conflicting nutritional advice abounds) because I'm following her philosophies. So far I'm convinced of her assessments of the facts and am doing great following her advice as close as i can. I have beef broth on the stove right now. To

I have read too many books on Nutrition and health, starting two decades ago with the Mcdugal diet information. This is by far the best book ever written on the subject. I have come to many of same conclusions after two decades of self experimentation to treat my SLE symptoms (I have had it for 36 years.). I gained new insights which I employed immediately and already am seeing rapid healing from injuries sustained in a car wreck a few years ago. What Dr. Shanahan and Mr. Shanahan prescribe in Deep Nutririon does work. I now have a book to point people to when they ask my advice on how to deal with their own chronic condition symptoms. Buy the book, follow the advice, feel strong, be active.

Quite repetitive. Am not quite sure what I think about her theory re physical attractiveness and good nutrition - I'm dubious of her use of Halle Berry to demonstrate this as I'm pretty sure she is diabetic and therefore not a particularly good example of someone who's health is optimal.
The key core messages: eat bone broths, organ meats, dairy - sourced from healthy animals, and avoid sugar and vegetable oils.

great book, questionnable ways to describe the science behind her findings. her less-than-professional wording for the processes behind the reason to cut extra sugar hurts the book somewhat. still an excellent read, and spot on with how we should be eating.

Everyone should know the nutritional information presented in this book!It is so important to our lives, and so little understood. This is not the end all nutrition book. There doesn't seem to be a book that gives a totally complete picture. But this one fills in some gaps in our understanding, particularly about fats, and their metabolism. Ever wonder why all the guys are getting ED?

I expected a discussion of studies backing traditional foods. Instead there was a lot of talk about beautiful faces and their symmetry. I guess the argument being that beauty is objective and mathematical and not subjective. Maybe she is right, but she talked about it a lot. For many chapters..... If your parents weren't eating traditional foods, well you just may have a face that isn't proportioned right. I probably could of got that point in a single chapter.

She may of made many other excellent points, but for me, they were lost in all the talk about good looks and your parent's diet, both of which you have no control over. Maybe it is worth reading if you are planning to start a family soon.

Dr. Cate paints vegetable oil as a major villain based on some early work by Spiteller. But in later work Spiteller takes a different view[1]: "In contrast to mammalian-derived food, consumption of plant oils was found to be much less atherogenic." Likewise current work shows the major polyunsaturated fat in vegetable oils, linoleic acid, is helpful [2][3]
[1]Is Atherosclerosis a Multifactorial Disease or Is It Induced by a Sequence of Lipid Peroxidation Reactions? GERHARD SPITELLER
[2] SUBSTITUTION OF MONOUNSATURATED FATTY ACID FOR LINOLEIC ACID AND THE RISK OF ISCHEMIC STROKE Stine Krogh Venø
[3 ]Linoleic Acid in Adipose Tissue and Development of Ischemic Stroke: A Danish Case‐Cohort Study Stine Krogh Venø,

First of all, this is THE best book on nutrition out there. Get this book. I own three copies: one for my own reference, and two to lend out. It's that good.

Deep Nutrition is an easy read, witty and engaging. It reads more like a novel than a nutritional text. You will find yourself turning the pages and wishing for more. It will change the way you look at food forever. It has for us.

The main premise is that you can change your life and the lives of your children by following the principles of traditional eating. In a society riddled by adult and childhood health problems, this is good news indeed! For the couple looking to conceive, it means having tools to have a healthy and beautiful child. For both children and adults with current health problems, it means hope for recovery. By eating a traditional diet, we can change how our genes work and how our children's genes work.

We can also change the way our children look. Using principles from Stephen Marquardt and from modern scientific research, Catherine Shanahan shows us how beauty is objective, transcending all cultures and races. There is a certain dynamic symmetry that the human brain looks for and recognizes as beautiful. I know this sounds abstract, but the book provides some very convincing pictures. Especially interesting are pictures of siblings showing that the later born siblings have less dynamic symmetry, presumably the result of less optimal maternal nutrition. The latest born siblings have features similar to fetal alcohol syndrome. Could second sibling syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome both be related to maternal malnutrition? See for yourself, but you will not be able to look at facial features the same way again.

So what is Deep Nutrition? What is traditional food? It's the food our grandparents and great grandparents grew up eating. It's soups and sauces made from bone stocks and broths, pasture raised meats and organ meats, fish, fresh vegetables, fermented vegetables, raw milk, nature made fats and fruits. Compare this with the modern American diet of frozen dinners, Pop Tarts, Cap'n Crunch, Doritos, Oreos, Gatorade, soy milk, "vegetable" oil, and Coke Zero. Our ancestors would not have recognized these products because they didn't exist until recently. So, how do traditional foods help us? OK. I'm in my 30's and I grew up thinking that soup had to come out of a can or a little envelope full of powder. My husband's mother made homemade chicken soup out of a real chicken, bones and all, for her children as they grew up. My 92 year old father-in-law tells us over and over about how, as a child, his mother made them real homemade chicken soup every Sunday and how they would eat the leftovers all week. He still walks without a cane. People cannot believe that he is 92. My husband is in his 40's and is as strong as he's ever been. He looks to be following in his father's footsteps. I grew up being overweight and plagued by soft tissue injuries, including injuries to the tendons in my arms, a ligament in my knee, and problems with my lower back. I was given an honorary t-shirt at the local physical therapy practice and told I had been there so long that I was considered to be part of the family. After learning that the Deep Nutrition in broths and stocks made from bones contain substances that help the body heal tendons, ligaments and joints, you'd better believe I learned how to make these stocks and broths myself. It's easy, by the way. I now use homemade stock in everything I can. It makes an ordinary meal taste extraordinary, makes delectable sauces and gravies, yummy soups, and my soft tissue injuries are finally healing! Talk about a win, win scenario! Oh yes, that's the other thing. Deeply Nutritious food tastes GREAT! Those little envelopes full of flavored powder that promise to become tasty if you will only add water and heat them up taste nothing like the real food that is Deep Nutrition. Expect to be inspired to spend more time in the kitchen crafting the foods that will craft and heal you and will deeply satisfy you and your family.

Deep Nutrition is not a cookbook. It's a unique guidebook to traditional foods - what they are and why we should eat them. Whether you are already experienced in cooking these foods, or like me believed that soup came out of a can or a little packet, Deep Nutrition has something for you. I have not seen such clear explanations in any other book. Much research went into this book, and while scholarly, it is amazingly accessible. Also included are lists of good foods to include in your diet which have the power to transform your health, foods to avoid and why, a list of baby steps to help you change your diet to healthier traditional foods, and even tips on using nutritional know-how to lose weight and stay young. You need this book! While you are at it, just order two. You're going to want to share this with all the important people in your life. Seriously. Happy reading!

The author does a good job of supporting her thesis. I read the entire book anxiously waiting to get fundamentals of what I should and shouldn't be eating. It was summed up nicely in a couple pages at the very end.

Well, I'm only 1/3 of the way through this book and it reminds me of a history lesson. I think Catherine went way too far on nutrition and looks! Are you trying to make me feel bad? Is there something I can do about my Scoliosis now, at 52? Can I go back and tell my mother to make sure she eats right so I can be tall (I'm short), good looking, and smart? I sure hope this book gets better and offers some practical advice on nutrition, now, not before I was born! (I will update this review, either way)

I already have a MS degree in Health and Exercise Physiology, so i was disappointed that there really wasn't any new information for me. If the topics of epigenetics and nutrigenomics are new to you then this book is a very readable, very approachable introduction.

I really, really thought I would love this book. I had been wanting to buy it for a year or so and finally when I found out I was pregnant (with #3) I had the justification I needed to go ahead :)

I was unsure of whether to give this book 4 or 3 stars...I still would recommend it, just with some reservations.

Shanahan does a good job of explaining why and how sugar/HFCS is so terrible for us. Good knowledge to keep in mind whenever the cravings hit. the biochemical chaos that ensues from eating very much of these foods is down right scary.

She also does a good job of explaining why and how transfat and industrial seed oils (canola, soy, corn, etc) are the real big kahuna of unhealthy foods; she follows up with why traditional fats like butter, coconut oil, EVOO are beneficial. this is something I already took to heart (no pun intended!) and I think she did a pretty good job of illustrating this point.

She has a very good chapter on collagen formation, which I learned a lot from.

Shanahan's writing style flows off the pen like honey- it sounds sweet and enticing and is easy to swallow. Unfortunately, I also found this to be a pitfall. Sometimes the words come too easy, and I think she gets ahead of herself and doesn't back herself up enough.

The field of epigenetics is revolutionary and has important implications for our lifestyle choices. But it will not "change your genes" as she often blurts out- it will change how your genes express. Of course a traditional diet is not going to turn you into claudia schiffer or michael jordan unless you started out with that genetic blueprint. Though Shanahan implies this throughout the book, I think she gets a bit overexcited and overstates herself. She also promises that by following a traditional diet, you can overcome genetic shortcomings and have a perfect baby- one who turns heads and engenders envy in the sports arena. Well, maybe- big maybe. Lets say your parents ate a typical standard american diet, and you bore the brunt of that with less than ideal physical proportions- slightly crowded teeth, underdeveloped cheekbones, thin upper lip, and you didn't get much taller than them. But lets say that your grandparents and ancestors before all followed a very rich traditional diet- so you are only one generation away from what that inferred. Get yourself and your partner back on track months or years before conception, you may very well have a baby that is more well developed, very beautiful and athletic, vigorous. But as Francis Pottenger discovered (whom Shanahan refers to, but misses the point), one generation of dietary shortcomings can (unfortunately) take multiple generations of correct diet to recover. Now lets say not only your parents but your grandparents as well ate a typical modern diet, lacking in those essential fat soluble vitamins needed for proper development and genotype. You may or may not be able to overcome that with a few months of extremely careful diet and supplementation and produce as Shanahan promises a perfect baby. I don't mean to sound like Debbie Downer- I face these facts myself, especially as a parent. I am trying my hardest, but I don't get bogged down in how perfect my children look or otherwise turn out. Of course, like any parent, I just want my children to be healthy and happy. But I do have some qualms that Shanahan gets ahead of herself and makes false promises and exagerrated claims about a traditional diet. Of course it is critical to follow a diet like this during childbearing years- just don't think it will guarantee you a supermodel or professional athlete for a child. Of course I don't think many of us do, but Shanahan leads us to believe we could.

Another problem I have is that Shanahan really misses the boat on what Weston A Price established in his research, which is that the fat soluble vitamins (A,D,E,K) found in animal foods are essential for carrying on the proper genetic material. Shanahan rightly points out how proper diet ensures the ideal proportions and symmetry to give your child a beautiful face, but does not even mention that it is vitamin A (true vitamin A, not beta carotene) that makes this possible. I am really scratching my head as to how she could leave this crucial information out. Instead she falls back on recommending a synthetic prenatal to most of her patients, but does not seem to understand that the real importance to pregnant women, esp before conception, is these fat soluble vitamins. She recommends cod liver oil, because of the omega 3's- traditional (fermented) cod liver oil is rich in fat soluble vitamins which is what makes is a super food, not the omega 3's. Vitamins A, D, K found in pastured animal products or wild seafood, are absolutely essential to proper cellular division in the beginning of pregnancy (otherwise you will have a miscarriage because the cells did not differentiate)and also to the organs and other body parts forming, to bone structure which includes not only facial symmetry but stature and pelvic opening- so important for women to bear children, brain and nervous system development, on and on. I am just really dumbfounded how someone who studied Weston A Price could not include this info. Its like she got so caught up in facial symmetry and the plastic surgeon Dr. Marqhardt, that she stopped short of comprehending the actual cause of facial symmetry, good health and ideal genetic expression which has a very specific nutritional foundation: fat soluble vitamins and their co-factors found in animal foods.

Which brings me to another problem I had with this book. Shanahan seems so enamored of the plastic surgeon and his work, the beauty mask that describes perfect facial symmetry; this obsession overshadows the real pioneering work of Dr. Weston A Price. In the first chapter, she talks at length about the plastic surgeon, then briefy alludes to Weston A Price, and not even by name! This plastic surgeon's work has to do with how you can come to him so he will "fix" your face, what a contribution to society. Dr. Weston A Price's research has far reaching implications for ourselves and our future generations, for restoring our health and genetic potential through proper diet. Dr. Price's work is invaluable to us, it came at a critical time in history when he could study both traditional diets and those who switched to a modern diet. Nobody else has accomplished what he did. His work has true merit to all of civilization, not just Hollywood types who get plastic surgery. Why Shanahan relies so heavily upon photos of celebrities and their siblings, when she could have turned to Price's photos of families on traditional vs. modern diets also leaves me scratching my head. Price's photos give us a much clearer illustration of the destruction of modern diets, yet she would rather include pictures of Prince Harry and Prince William or Matt Dillon and his younger brother Kevin, with their minor "imperfections". She is stretching so far to prove her point, I feel she undoes some of it, unfortunately. Instead she should have relied on Weston A Price and his irrefutable, well researched work- which also would have led her to share the importance of fat soluble vitamins.

The dietary suggestions at the end of the book are incomprehensible. There are only 3 scant pages of suggestions, and many of them are not very good or downright contradict her previous advice. She extols the virtues of raw milk, but then at the end says it is okay to drink organic store bought milk. This milk is not only usually ultra-pastuerized (the worst kind), it is generally confinement fed holsteins eating organic corn/soy. A far cry from raw, grass fed, traditional breed dairy cow's milk. She also heartily recommends store bought organic butter (same issues) She tells us not to eat frozen food but readily recommends Ezekiel bread- which is sprouted but contains soy (she actually says whole soy can be part of a healthy diet). She tells us not to eat sugar, but then recommends yogurt with JAM for breakfast, oh yes, washed down with coffee. After her hard hammer on sugar, she recommends coffee, which can be just as damaging to the adrenals. Not to say I don't enjoy a nip of coffee here or there, but I don't recommend it as part of a healthy eating plan. Going on, even though she just told us sugar will surely kill us, you can have some homemade cookies and dark chocolate later in the day, even some wine. And even though her sugar chapter came down equally hard on starches, her diet plan is far from "low carb" or even moderately low carb, it is rife with suggestions to have homemade pizza, crepes, toast, toast, and more toast. Again, I am not saying I don't indulge in these things myself, but the fact that she includes them in her slim-to-none dietary recommendations is contradictory to say the least. How are those traditional? We all already eat things like that from time to time, so we don't need it to be recommended to us. What would actually be helpful is real traditional type food suggestions and maybe a handful of recipes (she gives 2 recipes, one for broth and one for liver). She also recommends lots of nut butter, including peanut butter, which I mostly avoid because of aflatoxin. Of course there is not mention if it is soaked (properly prepared) nut butters, she is recommending run of the mill "natural" nut butters. Oh! but not the ones with palm oil (she says they taste bad...?), which she previously assures us is a healthy fat, which only leaves nut butters made with CANOLA or SAFFLOWER OIL, the very industrial seed oils she tells us to eat under no circumstances. So at this point she has lost a lot of credibility with me. Or, it makes her more human, like me, she knows a lot about healthy eating but sometimes doesn't make the most ideal choices. But I did not write a book, and then at the end include my dietary compromises as if they are perfectly healthy. Overall, her "four pillars" and meal suggestions at the end of the book leave a lot to the imagination, which in this case is not a good thing! I can imagine a diet that might fall into her four pillars and her suggestions, but still be woefully inadequate in the fat soluble vitamins, proteins, and other co-factors necessary for the body to utilize those nutrients properly.

Either way, I can only recommend this book with reservations. I think Shanahan started out with great intentions, but did not follow through in all of her chapters. Some are very good and some are okay, but some left me scratching my head. I do think with a little more work and revision, this could be a 5 star book. But it has a ways to go.

If you are pretty new to traditional diets, this book is easy to read, even fun to read, and will probably give you lots of helpful information so you can take steps towards a traditional diet. If you are already into the traditional or primal type diet/lifestyle, this book will please you in some ways but probably let you down in others. Overall, I am glad I bought it because now I want to pick up a more thorough book on epigenetics. I also learned a few things, though many of the bases I already had covered. For the price, I am not sorry I bought it. Sometimes reading a book you can pick apart a bit helps establish where you do stand and what you do know. I really hope she comes out with a revised edition, or that her other book is much more solid, because I think Shanahan could be an important voice in the traditional foods movement. As good, not great, as this was, it just left a lot to be desired.

Very disappointing since this was a top pick on the store. Close to zero discussion of biochemistry and macro or micronutrients, but plenty of sweeping generalizations and presumptions.

As I read I started trusted I trusted the author less and less. Early on,she gives a reasonable, if not scientific overview of epigenetics, before diving more into her 'philosophy' of nutrition than any science. She begins to sound untrustworthy when she describes watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and realizing how much better other country's diets are than America's, describing American food as 'Hot dogs, apple pies, ... and variations on the concept of salad'. One would expect a little more nuance from an M.D. concentrating on nutrition. As the book progresses this pattern gets worse. 'Great men' and 'high school heart-throbs' are all postulated to be the result of someone's grandfather having known the secrets of good nutrition. Rather than genetic patterns or thousands of years of sexual choice and evolution. She closes with 4 pillars of deep nutrition, but again doesn't bother to give any scientific evidence for how they work, or why they are the pillar and other dimensions aren't.

I'll leave you with this quote that marks the point in the book I started losing hope it would truly educate me on nutrition:

The author describes watching Hally's Berry's academy awards acceptance speech:
"I couldn't avoid the nagging feeling that there was something familiar about the woman in her stunning gown, something about her face that reminded me of every other woman who had...clutched the little golden statue. What was the link between Ms. Berry...Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman,...then it occured to me: They are all breathtakingly gorgeous!"

Well...yes. People don't get to be actors or actresses eligible for an Academy awards unless they're extremely attractive. It's not evidence, as the author infers, that people with good looks must also be intelligent and thus talented at acting, and this must also be because they have strong nutritional roots.

If you want a serious look at how the foods you eat affect your body, this isn't it.

Seriously? That's how women

I know it is the worst cliché, but it really fits here and nothing else quite does. This book, Deep Nutrition, by Cate and Luke Shanahan, is a life-changing book.
It’s a lot of other things, too. For instance, it is a fascinating and informative review of the work of Weston Price, an American dentist who became convinced that the modern American diet was, as the Surgeon General used to say about cigarettes, hazardous to your health.
Price’s travels are rather exotic and interesting, just as travelogues, and make a great case for the notion that the modern western way of eating seriously undermines human health. Shanahan’s experience mirrored Price’s. Shanahan, an MD, practiced for years in Hawaii and observed that the health of each succeeding generation that she treated declined. Grandma, who had grown up and lived on the traditional Polynesian diet, generally had good health. Mom, who had switched to Rice Crispies, Crisco and Coca-Cola in her lifetime, not quite so healthy. Daughter, who was raised on processed foods, had all sorts of health problems – facial deformities, crooked teeth and the like – that the preceding generations had not known.
Shanahan concluded the obvious from her own observation and looked to the research of Weston Price for validation. It was there.
The book is also educational on a scientific level. There is a great deal of exposition about the science of epigenetics – the idea that you and I, through our diets, lifestyle and mode of thought, can actually affect the structure of our genes. In other words, we are not simply stuck with the hand we’ve been dealt, but can turn on our gene expression to give ourselves better odds against those diseases we are told are simply dependent on what we’ve inherited. Diseases like cancer and heart disease and dementia.
Shanahan makes a compelling case for the notion that biological health and physical beauty are related. That idea is pretty intuitive to me, but it is very interesting to see it fully discussed and expounded in this book.
The book is also a wealth of information about traditional diets in long-living cultures throughout the world. Cultures based on thousands of years of collected wisdom about many things, food included.
Finally, and most importantly, this book is a self-help book. It tells you the basics, the fundamentals of healthy eating, as proven in the vigor of traditional cultures. I won’t recount the elements here, I don’t want to steal Shanahan’s thunder. But I will say that we have more or less adopted this kind of eating/cooking in our household and the results have been amazing. Lost weight in the places we wanted to lose it. Better sleep. Triglyceride counts are way, way down. Cholesterol ratios now are outstanding. No more headaches. It goes on and on.
Another aspect of this book is this – it explains that everything we’ve been told (fed) about diet by the advertisers and the government is just dead wrong. The “experts” are not telling the truth, they are marketing for the interests who are paying them. Sound familiar?
If you are suffering from the effects of a modern diet – and if you are eating a modern diet, you are suffering, believe me – you should read this very satisfying and informative book.

The book is very enlightening and interesting as to how what we eat now can affect our future children. The author was doing a great job until she suggested going to a TANNING SALON to get a base tan before you go on vacation. WHAT?!?!? This is from a PHYSICIAN? Worst piece of advice ever given!!!

Not a horrible book, but the author is basically summarizing Dr. Price's studies (Nutrition and Physical Degeneration) and completely oversimplifying them. Her concept of beauty being the product of health, for example...she lists several supermodels (i.e. stick thin, six feet tall) and movie stars to support her hypothesis, and seems to forget that today's standards of beauty don't at all reflect the kind of beauty that comes from good nutrition (i.e. rounded face, good dental arch, etc). Most of her examples didn't fit the mold. Between that and other inconsistencies (and some self-contradiction), I got fed up about a hundred pages in and moved on to a different book. I think I'll just stick with Price's original studies instead of reading someone else's poorly digested version of them.

I returned the book after reading a few chapters. The author makes a few good points, but so many of her suppositions aren't backed up by clinical research. They seemed like personal philosophy to me and that is not what I was looking for.

As a science and evolution enthusiast and a big Paleo diet buff, I was eager to dig into this book to discover how nutrition influences epigenetic modifications and the implications for human reproduction and disease. While I was initially impressed with the author's main premise, I thought her near obsession with plastic surgeons, hollywood icons and models was a bit trite. The comparison of Prince William and Prince Harry's photos to make the point of the developmental inferiority of second children was ridiculous. Seriously, do we even know for sure if they have the same father? Vague diagrams superimposed on Rita Hayworth's face did nothing to bolster the author's scientific credentials. A re-write minus celebrity photos and with a more evolution focused, science based approach would be a best seller.

Bought it from library story, looked like a good informational read.
Soooo much fluff to it, so many little anecdotes I don’t care for. I am at the of chap.6 and I’m having a hard time keep reading this book. Can we just stick to valuable, proven information and not anecdotal stories that make one yawn?

Update.
I managed to read pass the the first 6 chapters which were terribly boring and fluffy, focused (obsessively) on looks.
Starting at chapter 7 I actually got very into it.
Informative, detailed, made me understand so many processes out bodies go trough.
I am at chapter 11 and avidly reading.

It's easy to mock fitness/wellness enthusiasts because they're an easy source of cheap humor. But seriously, sugar inflames your insides and causes your body to react in various harmful ways. To look at the world as a big conspiracy to control population is one way to look at things. But a more rational way to look at it is people just inherently love money, and processed vegetable oil is a cheap and profitable way to shovel s*** into digestive system that was never good for our health in the first place. Deep Nutrition is a vital read to understand why you should avoid 95% of the items on grocery shelves. Knowledge is a curse.

Definitely kudos to the author. The arguments are backed up in the Notes section; many from professional journals. Not that academia is always right, but at least it indicates more than a personal opinion. However, first-hand, experience-related anecdotes, as a physician, also adds credibility, particularly if the physician is on the right track. Being on the right track is what this book is about.
There are some inconsistencies in the book, but perfect proof reading probably doesn't exist.
The Carb Counting Tool on page 431 doesn't say what it applies to. Is one slice of bread weighing 1 ounce equivalent to 10 ounces of milk or what? A little explanation on how this is to be used would help, along with more carb units (grams) per day, per meal or per something.
The Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, basic menus starting on page 340 are more useful.
Overall, I thought the book was very readable and with authority.

I just finished reading Deep Nutrition, Twice.

As a cardiologist, the first time I read it was to see what was in there. I found it to be very interesting. She gets down to the facts quite well. At the same time, I found a fascinating presentation of nutrition, genetics, anthropology, history, medicine, metabolism, and cooking. It is a book that I can refer to my patients as a resource, and to colleagues as a reference.

The second time I read it was right after the first. I realized that there was so much information in there,so "nutrient dense", that I had to read it again to really "consume and digest" (parden the puns, but no other way to say it) the wealth of information.

I recommend this book highly to anyone who is interested in food, nutrition, or metabolism, and in fact I recommend it to anyone who consumes food and nutrition, that is, anyone who can read and has a life. You will be thankful that you invested the time to read it.

Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan, M.D. with Luke Shanahan is one of the best science based nutrition books I’ve read to date. Showcasing the four pillars of the human diet, unbiasedly looking at what the body is designed to consume and use, you’ll leave this book with a clear understanding of how what you eat is either a recipe for health or disease. You’ll understand lipids and how they are used by the brain, and how detrimental vegetable oils truly are. The epilogue is particularly telling and the notes invaluable. With a heavily tainted food supply in the United States, these are the types of books that need to be required reading. Nutrition education, not the bought and paid for kind, is the key to ending the health care crisis. Your diet changes how your genes work. Read the book and find out how to make yours optimally express themselves!

If I could get the whole world to read one nutrition book from cover to cover it would be Deep Nutrition. If everyone were informed on this and just followed her simple advice, I sincerely believe that the giant medical and pharmaceutical industries would crumble from lack of use and right behind them - the health insurance companies.

It's not "just another diet book". It's a get-back-to-our- roots book. It's a book that offers solid proof of where we have gone wrong and a clear solution with a message of hope. It's brilliant.

And it's so simple really, under all the facts and all the research is a simple and undeniable truth. We need to eat what we were designed to eat. Real food. The foods our great great grandparents ate. It's a beautiful, nuturing solution to the host of ever increasing diseases that plague the modern world.

We need to take the time to cook and pay attention to food sources. So easy. So intuitive and yet so difficult... No calorie counting or Macro tracking needed. Food needs to be about spices and herbs and good ingredients - not a conversation about chemistry. We will benefit greatly if we can shift our thinking away from calories and toward quality and variety and good sources.

The food manufacturers are lying and covering up the extreme harm the modern, processed diet is doing to us. Our regulating agencies (that we nievely trust) are are in bed with the companies they are supposed to be regulating. Perhaps most alarming is that we are starting to believe the lie that heart disease, obesity, diabetes, liver disease, tooth crowding, cancer and all the others are just part of the human experience.

Well, whatever you do, whether you read this book or not, PLEASE stop eating vegetable/canola oil and sugar. You can't afford them. They are cheap now... but will cost so much tomorrow.

“When you have finished reading this book, you will have completely revised the way you think about food. We’re going to do away with calorie counting and struggling to find the perfect ratio of carbs to protein to fat. These terms aren’t useful because they say nothing about what really matters about your food. Food is like a language, an unbroken information stream that connects every cell in your body to an aspect of the natural world. The better the source and the more undamaged the message when it arrives to your cells, the better your health will be.”

So this extends

“In effect, DNA seems capable of collecting information—through the language of food—about changing conditions in the outside world, enacting alteration based on that information, and documenting both the collected data and its response for the benefit of subsequent generations.”

Harm the interest of evil thing's we put into are self's.

(From the blog of newdawnfitness.com)
The last book I got through in a few days was the Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. Since then, I have yet to string enough time together to finish any of the books that I am chomping at the bit to read. This changed when I started reading the book Deep Nutrition Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine Shanahan, MD and Luke Shanahan. I read it every waking moment and finished it in a week. This is a huge feat for me! If anyone knows how much Will talks, you will know that this was a next to impossible task since he is with me the majority of the day:) I say that with love. It was hard for me to put this book down. The information she provided made so much sense to me and it felt like I had finally found the missing link I so yearned for in my journey to regaining my health. The field of epigenetics(the study of gene expression) is new to me, but I find it fascinating and I think many of you will too! In her book, Dr. Shanahan discusses how good genes can lay dormant if we are not providing our body with the proper nutrients and at the same time, we can mutate our genes and turn them against us. Sugar, vegetable oils, and processed foods are the biggest culprits in the destruction of our good cells and lead to so many diseases. The following passage from Dr. Shanahan's book really hit home with me regarding sugar consumption.

You may have heard that, on average, we gain ten pounds a decade after the ago of 35; women in particular, start reporting that they can't eat like they used to. This phenomenon may be directly related to the biochemical effects of sugar binding to hormone receptors, jamming them, and rendering us insensitive to the hormone insulin. Once you are insulin resistant, blood sugar levels rise higher still, leading to diabetes and all its related disorders, including weight gain, circulatory and sexual dysfunction. For the the same reasons sugar jams hormone signals, it also clogs nutrient channels, weakening bone and muscle and slowing neural communication, which can impair mood and memory and lead to dementia. While all this is going on, sugar stiffens the collagen in your tendons, joints, and skin, causing arthritis and premature wrinkling, while interfering with the production of new collagen throughout your entire body. And because sugar changes the surface markers your white blood cells need to distinguish between indigenous cells from invaders, it opens the door to cancer and infection.

I get very emotional when it comes to sugar. Even when my mom was diagnosed with diabetes, there was no mention of eliminating sugar or the fact that the heart healthy cereal, bread, and pastas she was told to eat were actually converted to sugar in her body faster than drinking a soda. Diabetes causes a cascade of other immune problems when not treated properly. I already knew the dangers of sugar and have seen it first hand, but reading this passage confirmed my decision to drastically reduce/eliminate my sugar consumption.

My jaw dropped while I was reading the paragraphs about the dangers of vegetable oils. I was even more floored when I saw how many products we feed ourselves and our children contain vegetable oils because they are cheap and readily available!!! In fact, many of the products have "healthy"sugars and vegetable oils as their main ingredients which leads me to another excerpt from Dr. Shanahan's book.

Whereas in previous centuries part of a parent's responsibility was to work hard to prevent their children from getting sick, today so many of us are sick ourselves that we have grown to accept disease as one of life's inevitables-even for our children. Today's kids aren't healthy. But rather then make such a seeping and terrifying declaration, we avert our eyes from the growing mound of evidence, fill the next set of prescriptions, and expand our definition of normal childhood health to encompass all manner of medical interventions. This generation of children has accumulated the epigenetic damage of at least the three previous generations due to lack of adequate nutrition along with the over-consumption of sugar and new, artificial fats found in vegetable oils.

Wow, that paragraph gets me every time I read it. It is so powerful and so true. After reading this book, I asked Paul's nana and my grandma what they ate when they were younger. Just a side note: both Paul's Nana and my grandma are strong, healthy, beautiful women in their 90's. I wasn't surprised to find that they ate grassfed meat and dairy, bone and chicken broths, oxtail soup, liver, sauerkraut, fish, and free range chicken and eggs which are foods that Dr. Shanahan promotes in her book. Just a coincidence? I think not.

This book has impacted my view of health in such a dramatic fashion. Dr. Shanahan shares a wealth of knowledge and information that is priceless and I highly recommend this book. There is more information I want to discuss and share with you about her book, but have decided to break this post in to two parts. Just some food for thought that I will let you digest until next time. Happy Reading!

This book is filled with jumps in logic that are ridiculous. The author assumes that because people used to feed babies x for y condition, that they knew there was a link. She ignores the huge amount of superstition and false belief that people used to have as well, latching on to one out of 100 superstitions that was correct and extrapolating that they had "lost knowledge" that we need to regain. She also has the absolutely ridiculous claim that traditional cultures were more beautiful than modern ones because their nutrition made them prettier. And then she wants us to eat what they ate and what they fed their babies for that reason. Total garbage. Returned it.

Nutrition-minded physician Dr. Catherine Shanahan and her husband Luke look at diet changes as a more preferred medical treatment option rather than pharmaceutical drugs. They authored the book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food which I believe is the future of medicine where a more holistic nutritional approach to treating chronic diseases will be the norm rather than the exception. "Dr. Cate" is one of the leading voices championing this way for her colleagues to follow and I HIGHLY recommend you get this book.

Read what they have to share about what a healthy nutritional plan looks like:

- Why people get sick because they don't eat right (and think they are)
- Why people know what to do but don't do it
- When people stop losing weight, they need low-carb more than ever
- Her low-carb, anti-inflammation diet plan she uses with patients
- The unique properties of omental fat that causes stalls to happen
- What a trans fat is and why it is not a natural fat that the body recognizes
- The role exercise plays at the cellular level
- Why your cells want to remain "fat and happy" when you're obese
- Why carbohydrate calories are really "empty calories" that get stored
- How low-carb puts the focus on the satiating properties of fat and protein
- Why carbs lead to worse than weight gain-autism?
- The value of feeding babies quality food (not carbs) for development
- Whether there is such a thing as a "one-size-fits-all" diet
- Why the Food Pyramid/Dietary Guidelines are not ideal for anyone
- Why it is so important for us to return to traditional diets
- The connection between overweight kids, sleep apnea, and brain health
- Why she says dairy is a part of our nutritional heritage ("herding and gathering")
- How she convinces her patients that all carbs turn to glucose (sugar) in the body
- The primary purpose of the hormones in our body (and keep blood sugar under 90)
- The "stickiness" that happens with glycation inside the body
- Why metabolic typing doesn't help people with insulin resistance

Dr. Cate’s book is a fabulous presentation of how to eat healthy in the modern world, and how to avoid the specific negative health consequences caused by eating bad foods. After you read this book, there will be no turning back to making food choices based on cultural momentum or being oblivious to the direct damage things like sugar and refined vegetable oils cause in the diet. What’s also interesting is how even the most health conscious readers might learn a new trick or two when reading this book. I know that was the case for me, thinking I was eating an incredibly healthy strict primal/paleo diet but falling woefully short on two of the four fundamentals of the Human Diet: fresh food, meat cooked on the bone, organ meats, and fermented foods. These are pretty novel categories by any standards, and Dr. Cate does an outstanding job explaining in detail the cultural significance of these foods among healthy and native populations across the globe. You can read a ton of healthy diet books and even niche books on low-carb, primal/paleo, and you will get a lot of the same story. Dr. Cate breaks from the back with cutting-edge ideas and also some very entertaining side topics such as the commentary on the genetics of beauty.

Finally, a disclaimer: I have had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Cate as a guest on the Primal Blueprint podcast and having her as a presenter at PrimalCon retreats that I organized, and extended opportunities to discuss matters of health and diet directly. If you just listen to a bit of her commentary on podcast channels or this great show on YouTube about the dangers of refined vegetable oils (with her husband and this book’s co-author Luke Shanahan), it becomes readily apparent that she is one of the leading minds in the progressive health movement. She is one of the few people to successfully straddle the ancestral health community as well as make a contribution in the mainstream medical community.

I'm a big believer in eating traditional foods but a lot of the "science" in this book is anything but and in cases such as claiming eating traditional foods prevents sun damage to the skin, it is just plain dangerous.

This book is such a refreshingly novel approach to the field of nutrition. The authors clearly make a compelling case for how the foods we eat directly affect our gene pool and impact future generations. They skillfully weave together scientific research, historical evidence and colorful modern day analogies into an artful narrative. The diagrams and photos are so well done and make complex concepts crystal clear. I guarantee no matter how much you think you know about nutrition, you will learn a ton and for people who are already motivated to lead healthy lives (like myself), this will make you dig even deeper. Be sure to also pick up Dr.Shanahan's Food Rules which helps you put the precious principles from Deep Nutrition into immediate practice.

Having read many books on this topic, I found Dr. Shanahan's book, Deep Nutrition, one of the best books I have read, making my top book list at Michael Wood Fitness blog. Reading this book was a true educational experience. I would highly recommend her book. We know many things can have an ill effect on our body but vegetable oil and added sugars should be high on that list and on everyones radar to avoid.

I loved this book. After reading hundreds of such books in my studies, this one goes to the heart of the matter and says it all. Usually I want to get to the end of health and nutrition books so as I can get the full picture and start putting it into practice...or dismiss it as just another poorly written one...but this one was so well written I didn't want it to end...like a good story book.

The message is hard for many to swallow as it is counter to prevailing opinion and thus counter-intuitive, but as a practicing nutritionist I can say this kind of teaching is what always brings home the results.

A comment on some of the negative reviews regarding the book being focused on 'looks' as a marker for health. Social conditioning has created a paradoxical situation in society such that we focus so much effort, time and money on image and looks that we have degraded the true essence of it by reducing it to a retail commodity because we have bought the illusion that it makes us feel good...and it does temporarily.
Deep Nutrition places the real value of beauty in its proper context...the real (evoultionary) reason we value true beauty is because it equates to form and function of the body...we value form and function, and we then assign it the label 'Beauty'. The author simply takes the brave step of saying this out loud and explains why it happens, and how we can influence it, and how wise ancient peoples instinctively knew this, valued it, and figured out how to maintain it by eating the most nutritious foods.

That is not to say that when I looked on the face of my stroke crippled bed ridden grandfather, with his 86 years of wisdom carved into his wrinkled face, his atrophied legs, crumbling teeth and knobbly knuckles, that I didn't recognise true beauty. I saw a beautiful and caring soul, a warm and friendly personality, and I still miss him, but that doesn't mean I wouldnt have been happier to see him strong and in good physical form with full physical function...and more physically beautiful!

They are two different kinds of beauty...don't mix them up!

I'm not going to try and re-write this book into a few paragraphs. I just want you to understand that if there is only one book that you are able to purchase or read this year for your health (or a loved one's) this is the one that I'd hope you read.

Once you get into the 'meat' of the message, you will understand what our forefathers and grandparent ate wasn't by mistake. It will resonate, and make perfect sense to you...you will understand the profound benefits of eating the proper food/nutrition needed to take control of your health. It's not a difficult concept. We just need to be un-brainwashed and think logically again.

I won't kid you, the book can and will get a bit scientific in parts, but as a whole, it's an easy, interesting read that will change your perception of health and nutrition. THAT alone should be incredibly interesting.

Take charge of your life, health and nutrition. Read the book.

As a first time parent, ready to plan the second, this book has changed my world.
My family has flourished this winter thanks to the recommendations that I've been following suggested in the pages of this brilliant book. My daughter has avoided every single bug that's passed around our baby groups and my husband, a middle school teacher, has not so much as sniffled in the months that we have changed our nutritional regime. I am extremely athletic and can feel the very real changes in my body as I eat more high quality, nutrient dense fat (what a wild, crazy idea!) and stop grabbing for the sugar and the host of other chemical and toxic foods that I used to believe were "healthy." I can see that reading this book as well as others that draw upon the wisdom of Weston A Price will not just pass through me like so many other fads; these educational building blocks are emerging out of that instinctive place in me that shouts out "YES!" and for the first time in my life I can see that I'll probably never eat with blind apathy again. The body is truly a miracle and I have learned to feed it with the dignity and honor it deserves. The other reviews are far better at "reviewing," but I wanted to write out somewhere my gratitude for this book in my life.
My friends and family will all be getting the same birthday present this year...

This is a great book but has lots of text that has been inserted as images. This means you can't resize the text and can barely read it. Seems like the publishers can't be bothered to make the book suitable for Kindle. This is just totally ridiculous. It spoils what is a great book. Pay the hardcopy instead.

Nobody wants to believe that "a carb is a carb", but it is true. I have been eating farro, quinoa, whole grain breads and all healthy carbs because they are "good for you". Alas, I read this book and decided to give the Paleo diet a try. I didn't actually completely swear off carbs, but reduced them SUBSTANTIALLY. Low and behold, I lost 20 pounds in a matter of less than three months and am still shedding them. My fasting glucose improved and I haven't been hungry. The premise that Dr. Cate put's forth in this book spurred me to read more about diet and view some documentaries about nutrition (i.e.; FORKS OVER KNIVES). I do exercise and I also used a great free iPhone app (My Fitness Pal) to help me track my calories as well. I only wish I had stumbled across this book earlier! I feel great and I owe a great big thanks to Dr. Cate!

I've been reading a stack of nutrition and health books lately, and while I think some outdo this one (e.g. Nora Gedgaudas' Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life), I have to say this one has been the most enjoyable. The Shanahans are great writers and I found myself just eating this one up (pardon the pun). The book has what I see as two main lines of force: epigenetics and traditional foods. Simply put, our genes are designed for certain foods, and when the signals from those foods are either absent or corrupted, or genes do some funky things. Our bodies just weren't designed for the pale substitutes we call 'food' - squeezed of all nutrition, chemically reconstituted, and packaged with a goodly portion of sugar and vegetable oils to make a finished product that will outlast the cockroaches (with less nutrition than one, to boot).

The sections on sugar and vegetable oils are very clear and make me wonder how anyone can knowingly and willingly ingest these substances. In that sense, this book does a great service to those who are becoming more conscious of what and how they eat. We aren't plagued with the "diseases of civilization" for no reason, after all... and the Shanahans show why this is the case. And the sections on beauty and facial symmetry were both fascinating and fun to read (I like how celebrity culture becomes a tool of teaching here!).

I do have a few reservations about the book, however. The Shanahans, while promoting traditional foods (on the bone, organ meats, fermented, and fresh) they seem unaware of a lot of the latest research on the problems with gluten (which affect enough of the population for me to think no one should be eating it) and plant foods in general (see Gedgaudas). And while they do mention some of the benefits of a low-carb diet, I think their presentation would've been a lot better with the insights to be gleaned from authors like Allan and Lutz (Life Without Bread: How a Low-Carbohydrate Diet Can Save Your Life) and Phinney and Volek (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable). But if they're all read together, I think these four books make a great set on what to eat and what not, and WHY. It certainly makes sense what they write, and to use another gastronomical pun, offers much food for thought!

As someone who has tried to follow Paleo for a few years, I am always looking for more inspiration and information on healthy eating. I have seen the author referenced on Mark Sisson's website, so I thought his endorsement might suggest this was a more serious writer than she turned out to be.

I read about a quarter of it before I had to give up. The author has an obsession with physical perfection that resembles the worst of the progressive eugenics movement of a century ago. At one point, she actually has to add in that she is not recommending that unattractive people stop reproducing. Whew, good to know.

I think she wrote the book not really knowing what she wanted it to be. There's several times as much commentary about celebrities and plastic surgery as actual nutrition advice. Maybe if Kim Kardashian went Paleo, she would write this book.

The benefit of Paleo is that it offers every person the opportunity to make the best use of their health and family history and environment for a productive life. Not that we might achieve some kind of master human race.

This book will do more than merely change your health, diet, and body. It will change your understanding of the dynamic relationship between what we eat and the basic structures of life. Written with intelligence, humor, and urgency, Cate and Luke Shanahan are poised to become supernovas in the dietary world. Well done.

I learned a lot about how bad vegetable oil is for us because she talks about that a LOT! Maybe a little too repetitive. I think this would be a better read for a doctor or research scientist, it was difficult to follow for an everyday person like me.

For foodies, as a wedding gift, as a convalescing gift, as a gift to yourself and your children's children: a must-read. Well-researched, wide-ranging, conversational and full of "WHAAAT!?" and "aHA!" moments, this book pulled together stuff I'd read on WAPF, paleo, and GAPS and made me gleeful with new information and - better yet - ways of applying it. And it contains pictures ;)
There are some typos - and who picked the green for the cover text? Ick! - but this book is unquestionably more than meets the eye.
If you get nothing else from this, you will have a reasonable understanding of epigenetics (so you sound quite clever) and a wild anecdote about piglets and retinol. And everyone knows that a good retinol story is the LBD of cocktail party conversation, right?

In the 45years I've been studying nutrition I don't recall using the word 'WOW' as many times as I did while reading this book - and with as many highlights.

The descriptions of cellular processes/interactions with substances was clearer and in greater depth than most other authors.

There was so much information in this book that it is hard to know where to start.

People totally misunderstand things like MILK, half the people I know don't drink it because they think they are allergic to it: Catherine and Luke explain so much! We now drink raw milk; I'm shocked that we do compared to what I used to believe.

We eat so much better now that we know HOW to eat. Let Catherine and Luke tell you things that will totally surprise you and keep you well for the rest of your life... amazing things... so much insight and connectivity to the whole global situation... we are all linked... and what we eat makes a difference not only to ourselves but to the globe.

This book offers some significant and yet accessible insights on the nutrition-health correlation. It is by no means a bible of health advice but it's a worthwhile read for people new to this subject and covers some pretty straight forward suggestions such as cutting sugars, vegetable oils, and trans-fats from your diet in favor of the 4-Pillar approach of animal fats, fermented and raw foods. It should be read in combination with other books on nutrition, epigenetics, tradition-oriented cookbooks, and other articles/works on food history and politics. Having just read Cooked by Michael Pollan and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver I found this book added a bit more hard science to my readings on food and diet. Be sure to get yourself a copy of Nourishing Traditions as it is commonly cited in modern literature on diet and health. Better to just read it yourself than let every other food/nutrition writer synthesize it for you.

This book will do more than merely change your health, diet, and body. It will change your understanding of the dynamic relationship between what we eat and the basic structures of life. Written with intelligence, humor, and urgency, Cate and Luke Shanahan are poised to become supernovas in the dietary world. Well done.

I learned a lot about how bad vegetable oil is for us because she talks about that a LOT! Maybe a little too repetitive. I think this would be a better read for a doctor or research scientist, it was difficult to follow for an everyday person like me.

For foodies, as a wedding gift, as a convalescing gift, as a gift to yourself and your children's children: a must-read. Well-researched, wide-ranging, conversational and full of "WHAAAT!?" and "aHA!" moments, this book pulled together stuff I'd read on WAPF, paleo, and GAPS and made me gleeful with new information and - better yet - ways of applying it. And it contains pictures ;)
There are some typos - and who picked the green for the cover text? Ick! - but this book is unquestionably more than meets the eye.
If you get nothing else from this, you will have a reasonable understanding of epigenetics (so you sound quite clever) and a wild anecdote about piglets and retinol. And everyone knows that a good retinol story is the LBD of cocktail party conversation, right?

In the 45years I've been studying nutrition I don't recall using the word 'WOW' as many times as I did while reading this book - and with as many highlights.

The descriptions of cellular processes/interactions with substances was clearer and in greater depth than most other authors.

There was so much information in this book that it is hard to know where to start.

People totally misunderstand things like MILK, half the people I know don't drink it because they think they are allergic to it: Catherine and Luke explain so much! We now drink raw milk; I'm shocked that we do compared to what I used to believe.

We eat so much better now that we know HOW to eat. Let Catherine and Luke tell you things that will totally surprise you and keep you well for the rest of your life... amazing things... so much insight and connectivity to the whole global situation... we are all linked... and what we eat makes a difference not only to ourselves but to the globe.

This book offers some significant and yet accessible insights on the nutrition-health correlation. It is by no means a bible of health advice but it's a worthwhile read for people new to this subject and covers some pretty straight forward suggestions such as cutting sugars, vegetable oils, and trans-fats from your diet in favor of the 4-Pillar approach of animal fats, fermented and raw foods. It should be read in combination with other books on nutrition, epigenetics, tradition-oriented cookbooks, and other articles/works on food history and politics. Having just read Cooked by Michael Pollan and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver I found this book added a bit more hard science to my readings on food and diet. Be sure to get yourself a copy of Nourishing Traditions as it is commonly cited in modern literature on diet and health. Better to just read it yourself than let every other food/nutrition writer synthesize it for you.

Hello everyone,

I am so anxious to right a review of this wonderful book. Where do I begin? First, a little family background. My wife and I have been researching for a few years up to this point, looking for the best diet for ourselves and for our little, now 10 months fresh Divine Baby Boy. We were raw food vegans when we met and fell in love. Since then, our diet and outlook on life has transformed dramatically in many ways. We have read a few books that are similar to Dr. Cate's such as Weston Price's "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", and since then prayed for an up-to-date version of his work. Then, as holy synchronicity would have it, we stumbled across Dr. Cate's book in the bookstore. Willa picked it up and read the back cover and said, "Honey, I think we should read this". So we took it home with us.

Now, about two weeks later (I am a slow reader) I am just about finished with it and already it is the number one book I will recommend to friends and family concerning truly balanced, wholesome and optimal nutrition. What Dr. Cate says resonates with us. It is that simple. She writes with a very approachable and readable style, and this makes all the information, even the technical medical jargon, make sense to a laymen like myself. I don't want to give the books secrets away, but I can say that the main points are powerful enough to change your life for good. I am actually going through my own little detox as I right this, putting her advice to work.

What can I say to truly express how much I recommend reading this book? I am so grateful that Dr. Cate has written this truly inspiring contemporary work on ancient wisdom. She has unveiled the universal fundamentals of natural biological optimum health, The Pillars as she calls them, and united them to our current cutting-edge knowledge. Thanks Dr. Cate!

May Everyone's Health Shine and May All Beings Be Happy!

Sincerely,

Pista and the Prema Family

An amazing read. Explains why what you eat changes your gene expression and that most diseases are caused by faulty gene expression, NOT permanent genetic changes and that what you eat can affect your family's genes for generations. The basic food advice is the same as on the Weston. A Price webiste mostly, for anyone that can't afford the book.

In short, eat real old-fashioned food. Eat good quality meats and don't take the fat off, eat good fats like olive oil and coconut oil, eat the usual meats but also organ meats, eat bone broths (chicken stock etc.), eat fermented and sprouted foods, eat lots of fresh vegetables and go easy on the fruit. Avoid at all costs sugar in all its forms as well as unnatural fats; trans fats.

This book is so much more than just another Paleo diet book.

This book is so important for everyone to read, but especially those that are thinking of becoming pregnant (or have children already, to a slightly lesser extent). It explains how positive or negative genetic changes can happen over generations based on the food we eat!

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E. (HFME) and Health, Healing & Hummingbirds (HHH)

I am an internist with a focus on integrative/functional medicine practices, and believe strongly in the power of food as medicine. Cate and Luke Shanahan's book is a provocative discussion of epigenetics, clearly portraying how food communicates with our genes and regulates their expression. It helps us realize we are not merely doomed if we inherited a less robust set of genes. Its strength lies also in its comprehensiveness-- it discusses the fundamentals of traditional foods from around the world and how they promoted health and well-being, and also gives practical tips on how best to prepare foods to maximize nutrient bioavailability and decrease potential harmful chemicals. I gained personal and professional knowledge from reading Deep Nutrition. It also opened up my perspective to what beauty and physique represent. A really enjoyable read! --Cynthia Li, MD, Berkeley, CA

Do you want to be as healthy as you possibly can be? Yes? Then read this book. Do you need help navigating what to eat and what not to eat? Interested in the science behind being healthy and beautiful? Do you want the best health, beauty, intelligence, athleticism possible for your child? Then read this book and follow the nutrition of the Four pillars.

I would recommend this book to anyone with questions about their health and what direction to go with. My chiropractor told about this book and I can't thank him enough. I am in the process of eliminating all the bad foods. Wish me luck!!

I've read a number of books on this subject that lean to a 'paleo' diet or some hybrid. This book knocks the modern day diet on its butt. Some of the suggestions may turn people off but it comes down to eating organ meats, meat on the bone, broth made from these bones, whole dairy, and fermented foods(naturally). There were some very interesting looks at bone and facial structure as well as who in the family got the best genes. Some celebrities and family members were used to highlight these points which was illuminating but no more than comparing two 60-year old men whose difference was mainly diet-Dean Ornish (vegetarian,extremely low fat diet)and a tribal man (traditional diet). The book had quite a bit of scientific facts but it was entirely understandable to the layperson. Well written and highly recommended..

I love beauty and feeling good. Who doesn't? Dr. Care fascinated me, already extremely knowledgable about health and wellness, with this book aimed at creating more beauty and well-being. Just in time for me to get pregnant!

I bought this book because I heard Dr Shanahan interviewed by a health expert I admire. I was disappointed that I spent the money on this book Although the recommendations she makes are good, she supplies no strong evidence to back it up. This makes it very difficult to believe in the basis of her book: the 4 Pillars of health from traditional societies. In addition, although she talks about meat on the bone as one of her 4 pillars, the recipes she uses for this are most often NOT meat on the bone. So, altogether a bit confusing, although I think her heart is in the right place.

If you want to feel your best and understand the relationship between food and you body, this is the book for you. It goes into detailed science but is easy to understand. We need to get back to traditional food. Our life depends on it.

Thoughtful, thought-provoking and approachable, Deep Nutrition presents a universe of ideas that possess the rarest of qualities: obvious and eye-opening at the same time. Cate and Luke delve into concepts of food as information for our genes, the relationship between the health and beauty of our bodies and the health and beauty of the environment in which they function, disease and nutrition, and the collective wisdom (which they term the Four Pillars) contained in traditional cuisines to deliver a compelling read. I came away from this book motivated in a way I never have before to change my diet. And by "change" I don't mean merely to think about changing it, but to actually change it. They shine a sorely-needed spotlight on vegetable oils and sugars, and explain in accessible terms why these twin poisons are so harmful and so ubiquitous. For a long time, my reaction to books proposing eating in a slower, wiser and healthier way was "yeah, that's a great idea, but it takes time I don't have." I have come to realize that that's the whole point -- things that are important should take time. Moreover, as with any change in habits, a new way of thinking becomes automatic over time. This book makes sense. It resonates. After reading this book, you'll never view a trip to the supermarket the same again...

I purchased three additional books to give to my two daughters and son who has a young family to feed. I wish I had discovered this book sooner. This is, in my opinion, required reading for people of all ages but especially for young people planning on starting a family and parents with young children who need the knowledge provided in this book to raise healthy children. I will be purchasing additional copies to give to other family members and friends. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who wants to live a long healthy and active life. Thank you Dr. Cate and Luke.

If you want a great book to convince you of the many reasons eating real traditional food is so important, this is it! I have been a believer in real traditional food for many years, but there was a lot of great information in this book that I had not read before, and I liked the author's voice. Sections on blood sugar, headaches, and exercise were esp helpful for me. If you want to learn how to maintain your health and beauty while aging, you will like this book, or if you are interested in how to grow a beautiful healthy baby.

Deep Nutrition is an eye opening read unlike any "diet" book I have ever seen Dr. Cate's's message is something that has always ached at my awareness. Our relationship with food is actually a relationship with nature itself! Whether good or bad-this relationship communicates directly with our cells. Its so simple yet not what you would expect from an MD. Deep Nutrition also sheds light on the dirty little secrets of big business and how the pursuit of profits is literally poisoning our children . It empowers the reader to become more conscious of there relationship with food and the eventual consequences if we don't. I love it and have actually lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks and feel better then ever! It was well written with excellent scientific data, as well as a sweet, honest and approachable demeanor. 5 stars without a doubt!

I really liked this book! It reads like a text book - full of information in every line. I also reads like a novel - riveting and hard to put down. I love that Cate is a physician and a molecular biologist with all the explanations and Luke is a chef and writer with a comfortable easy way of keeping the book from getting heavy. The information is fantastic, will change my life and my health. I plan to read this book again and perhaps again after that:) Next stop - perhaps a cookbook!?

I am a nutrition book junkie (it all started back with Good Calories, Bad Calories). This book went in line with the underlying biochemical principles I've found in all books (aside from the fad and low-calorie fictional novels). However, this book went so far beyond by giving practical advice and ways to work the science into everyday life. My husband and I want children soon, and I am so thankful for the peace of mind I will have following these nutritional guidelines.

As a personal trainer, I've experience a lot of subliminal marketing in the health and fitness industry and that is what this books screams. While It does a good job of trying to explain the science behind why eating the processed food of today is bad for you, its not like we didn't know this before. Also, with a section of why calories aren't the most important thing, it then explains in a summary of the basic outline of the diet recommendation that you should be around 1800-2200 calories a day... so let me get this strait, your saying if I quit eating a half pound of sugar a day, cut back my caloric intake to a measly 2200 calories, exercise, and eat lots of meat and health fats ill loose weight and get healthy?!!? NOOOOO WAYYY!!! (face palm)

This is an important ground-breaking book which deals with the subject of the effects of food on our genes.

The science of genetics reveals that our DNA has untapped genetic potential waiting to be released. Our genes respond to our nutrition. The DNA in our genes that codes for the production of proteins comprises only approx. 2%; the rest was called "junk DNA", and has been shown in the last two decades, to have important regulatory properties. This "junk DNA" is modifiable; it is designed to change in response to environmental signals, both over the short term, and over several generations. This book focuses on the facts that our nutrition impacts our DNA, and builds the case for the importance of traditional food diets for which humans have been designed and sustained before the introduction of GMOs and trans-fats in our food.

The authors present data that attempts to correlate optimal body functioning to balanced physical proportions that are achieved through optimal nutrition for our bodies. The main premise of this book is that our genes were designed for traditional foods, but this remains to be fully substantiated.

New discoveries in the field of Paleoanthropology (First of our Kind,Scientific American, April 2012),are compelling us to revise the origins of our hominid ancestors. DNA analysis is providing us with new important clues to understand the food diet of our early ancestors. These findings could inform the main thesis of this book.

A must-read, cutting-edge book on nutrition that has filled in the uknowns of why and how to eat for optimal health. Shanahans' comprehensive understanding of epigenetics, along with documented research and personally living their recommendations, gives insight and clarity as to why eating traditional foods and avoiding unhealthy foods should help avoid diseases that are destroying people's lives today. Following their recommendations should also increase the quality of our lives and provide healthier DNA to our future generations. "Deep Nutrition" is already a valuable reference book for us.

As a young woman with an eventual family on my mind, this book is invaluable to me. Misconceptions I have held about dairy and its place in the human diet have been shattered, and not because of one person's opinion, but because of the factual and scientific nature of the book. So many 'health' books nowadays are based solely on opinion and misinterpreted data. Deep Nutrition is a breath of fresh air because it teaches, on the basis of science, why certain foods (like raw dairy) are truly invaluable aspects of a healthy diet.

I would urge everyone, especially young couples thinking about starting a family, to read this book. Not only will it help you to change your health today, but the health of your future children and even grandchildren. Dr. Shanahan does an amazing job of getting to the root of true health and sharing it with the reader, and she's right: Your body NEEDS the traditional foods of generations past. Read this book and see!

Over the years, I have been exposed to various different types of diets, and was often flummoxed by the contradictory information presented in short-cut diet books. This book's holistic approach not only provides a wealth of information, but also presents it in a context that makes it enjoyable to read, and intuitively understandable.

I am glad I found this book!

I can't say enough about this book. I am constantly recommending it to friends and family. I've read a lot of books with a similar message, but this was the easiest to read, for sure, so its great for everyone in my opinion. I found the observations about the human face structure to be absolutely brilliant. Kudos to the author for choosing to expose science/knowledge over the potential to offend the rare reader who may be too emotional to consider the truth that is maternal and lifelong nutrition dictates facial symmetry.

Excellent read I enjoyed reading every single page of this book. This book is such an easy read and it is loaded with so much good information and health in-sight. Love, love, love it! Every person that cares about their health and well being should read this book. I have shared this book with my family and friends. Thank you for writing this much needed book.

I wish this book were as widely read as THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA. It is a very clearly-written and well-supported explanation for why and how successful human development boils down to chemistry between our food and our genes. The narrative strikes the perfect balance between Shanahan's experience in research and medicine, and her own changes in diet. Great writing that is rare for a science-y work.

This book has some serious misinformation in it. In many instances the author fails to explain or even correctly describe even the simple biological concepts which are the crucial foundation for the many claims that are made. For example: in one section she says, "The genetic alphabet only has four 'letters'. Change a letter and you change the pattern, and with it the meaning. Change the meaning and you very well may change the organism's growth." There are so many problems with the way she presents this information it leads me to believe that she doesn't even understand how genetics work.

1. Single point mutations can have absolutely no effect at all since they can be spliced out as introns. These are known as silent mutations.
-Silent mutations can also occur in exons (expressed DNA) too.
-Even if the mutation changes the sequence of amino acids it still might not even ultimately effect the phenotype because some amino acids have identical function so that no effect is observed at all.
2. Not all mutations affect growth specifically, since genes code for proteins and proteins have a wide variety of responsibilities that concern all sorts of cellular functions.

These are just two glaring problems with just one statement but the errors are countless. The topics she is discussing are more complicated than she demonstrates and yet she breezes through such explanations with little detail as to how the mechanisms of the cell/DNA actually work. The claims that are made about having healthier and better children through altering your own DNA is Lamarckism and was proven wrong long ago. Only the genetic information contained in gametes (sex cell DNA) NOT autosomes (body cell DNA) affect the child. Yet none of these key terms are even mentioned, explained, or discussed. It's all about eating "traditional diets" and having healthier, smarter, and more beautiful children. Epigenetics is a legitimate field of study and has given lots of incredible insights as to how DNA is affected. The way that it is used in this book, however is poor at best. Perhaps the author knows what she is talking about and perhaps some of her claims are legitimate. If they are, then she is doing an injustice to them by oversimplifying.

I admit I haven't read the book yet, but just wanted to point out something I saw in the 'look inside' review. The author showed a picture of Frederick Douglass and said he looked 'tough' because he was raised on 'ancestral food.' I read Frederick Douglass' biography...he was raised in slavery and severely malnourished! So, the author's point is lost here.

This doesn't mean it might not be a great book...I have no idea. I just wanted to point out that little error. Choosing someone who was malnourished as an example of physical strength because of diet maybe isn't such a good idea.

If you're looking for a book that gives you information based on everyday nutrition than DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. If you're looking for a book that talks about how you eat and it affects your genes then buy this book. It offers no more depth into nutrition than Google definitions do. It is a book telling you that what you eat turns on and off genes. That is it. Not worth the money for me.

One of the most important books I have read regarding how specific foods affect my body organs and body chemistry. A fresh new approach to staying healthy and energetic. We truly are what we eat and our food is our medicine and our medicine is our food. Thanks to
research by a terrific easy to read author. Bought a copy girl my children.

Human nutrition is a vast subject. In the 1960's we thought we understood nutrition. Sadly, most nutrition thinking has been mis guided by corporate interest. I had hoped that this book would bring medical insight to the topic. Instead I found this book to be poorly written and, at best, misleading, if not down right incorrect.

This book is written like a collection of short unorganized essays. It is confusing and hard to follow.
The overall statement is that if you eat real food that that's all is required to be healthy. And the author just assumes that things like butter are 'real'. This book cannot be considered science-based. The references are not science either.

I deeply regret wasting my time and money on this book.

I really tried. I probably don't disagree with the author on many subjects, such as the superiority of saturated fats to vegetable oils, fermentation, etc.--but I got as far as "DNA is an ancient, powerful molecule" and realized I'd been subjected to a steaming pile of balderdash in the first chapter or two. The book is written in a huckster style that undermines whatever value it may have. If the author is telling the truth about her rigorous training in microbiology at Cornell, she's not doing herself or her message any favors by adopting the style of a charlatan.

Try "The Big Fat Surprise" instead.

I appreciate how passionate the authors are regarding their eating habits choices. This "detailed" review of nutrition is very interesting and certainly from a SAD (standard American diet) perspective. We could get the pundits together and watch them debate, paleo, vegan, vegetarian, all meat and fat, fish, and the list goes on. My experience on the planet for 68 years has basically taught me to always keep searching and researching because as more science is produced, you will be able to make an educated choice of what works for you. We know that not smoking, exercise, and "eating healthy" are critical to living a healthful life. The issue is what is "eating healthy"? This book does not resolve that and it's claims for the most part are unsubstantiated. The journey to solve that question is a lifelong commitment and this book needs serious "critical reevaluation". I have tried every "diet" on the planet and as I have gotten older and matured, found that eating whole foods such as unprocessed fruit, vegetables, grains and drinking pure water works best for me. Good luck in your quest to discover what works best for you!

I think the author's focus on beauty in the beginning of the book was not well thought out. With each generation the standards of beauty change. Look at pictures of turn of the century "great beauties", in our eyes today they have nothing on the women we find attractive. Her example of "full" lips being a standard of beauty has been recent. Especially since Angelina has become a standard for beauty. My grandmother who is caucasian was made fun of for having "n-word lips" when she was young as I am sure Scarlet Johansson or any of the thick lipped beauties now days would have to contend with. The first Miss America of 1922, Margaret Gorman is by no means a great beauty now days. What about the traditional tribes like the Massai, Inuit, Ayoreo-Totobiegosode and the tribes of New Guinea I am sure the women from these tribes would not be asked to model for any fashion magazines though they have been eating a traditional diet for a millenia. I also really don't agree that thin lips will become thick with the right foods and small eyes large. Just look at Neve Campbell, James Franco and Leo DiCaprio all beautiful people with smaller eyes.

There are so many examples of people with good or bad backgrounds when it comes to health. I think it is easy to illustrate a point with some pictures hand picked by the author to go with her theory.

I am amazed no one has brought this up before.

Although the information provided in this book is thought provoking and interesting, I found that the complete lack of editing was incredibly frustrating. Maybe once a revised copy of this book hits the shelves, then it would be worth reading. I just have a very tough time trusting the validity of someone's comments when the writing is filled with so many grammatical errors, and when the thoughts are so scattered.

The book seems interesting at first - the role of diet in genetic evolution, but the author gets into very weird assumptions. First, French people (who eat a diet she claims is very healthy)have high instances of cancer and heart disease. Maybe not as much as in North America, but indeed, they are part of the countries where diseases of affluence are common. Not as much junk food probably accounts for the difference.

Second, the idea that we would eat "traditional" foods in 2012 is absurd. Food is produced very differently than it was in even the recent past. Much of our environment abounds with toxins that bind readily with animal lipids, making animal products a choice vehicle for contaminants. Meat is mass-produced from unhealthy animals that are injected with medications... Yes, if you are very wealthy, you can probably afford the top organic grass-fed beef (that will also have contaminants), free range chicken and calf liver. But even those animals are not produced the same way they were in the past because our environment is vastly different.

Third, she states that poor people ate a very rich traditional diet .... and we should, too, by making sure we eat meat every day. Poor people from anywhere in the world certainly never ate meat every day. This is so absurd! Also, have you heard of the 5000 year old hunter gatherer found in the alps from whom scientists have discovered a series of ailments from heart disease to cancer?... He probably was on a very pristine traditional diet (no fast food there, and probably not vegan).

Finally, the whole section about celebrities is absurd and weird. So we are supposed to assume that these celebrities' ancestors had great diets because of their good looks? I grew up in a very traditional, meat & vegetable based community and I don't think any of us had the celebrity good looks. We must have missed out on something like maybe... the California sunshine!

Anyway, judging from the reviews, she wrote some material that will sell and make her very wealthy. She should be able to eat all the organic tripe and chicken feet she needs!

This is the most worthless piece of drivel EVER! To reduce nutrition to nothing more than physical appearance is beyond irresponsible. It is reprehensible. I can't believe this was ever published. There is zero basis for Shanahan's claims.

This book resonates with the unfortunate position of Aryan supremacy, eugenics and now eu-epigenetics. This cookie-cutter approach to a single acceptable standard of beauty, which the author equates with health is junk science in my opinion. Contrary to the author's non-sequiturs, people are designed to be vegetarian - teeth are designed to consume vegetarian fare; long instestinal tract is not suited for animal-based protein.

Have any of the reviewers the slightest knowledge about science, have you looked this women up.

Her comment "I started med school knowing that malnutrition could change human DNA"....... IT CANNOT that is 'Lamarksim' and was disproved when Darwin found Natural selection. If we could then we could pass that onto our children...we cant.

Another comment "Dr. Shanahan's lecture's have revolutionized how fellow health professionals think about nutrition and health". Who are the fellow health professionals...I must look through the science journal to see if they have heard of the revolution!!!!

oh well another diet book another group of deluded fools searching for the holy grail of weight loss...good luck if you use this book I am sure you will lose weight but not because of what she espouses.