GMO corn and soy found a healthful basis for optimal diet—this according to agribusiness giants Dow, Monsanto, and others.
And by the looks of it, with yesterday’s rejection of CA Ballot Initiative 37 (requiring GMO labeling), that nutritional message now has even more momentum to be spread far and wide.
What’s all the fuss about CA 37 failing? Corn and Soy are Heart Healthy—practically your body’s best friends—According to Harvard, so what’s a little Genetic Modification between friends?
For those who still believe that Harvard (et al) promotes only the most defensible nutrition information—even when powerful monied interests try to shut that message down—take a close look at this real-world example and you might find yourself revising your views.
This article is continued below...(scroll down)
It helped. I feel great.
"It’s helped. I feel great."
Kobe Bryant
NBA baskeball player
This has been life changing
"Let me tell you this has been life-changing. I have all of her books, in audible and ebooks! I have gotten rid of all the hateful 8 oils. I have trained my body to eat its own previously toxic body fat. Download that pod it's a game changer!"
Megyn Kelly
Life changing
Deep Nutrition changed my life.
Jesse Watters
Fox News Primetime host
Saved my life
I would like to thank you for literally saving my life. Back in February, I had to be hospitalized while on vacation in Phoenix with an A1C of 11% and had to start taking 2 types of insulin and 2 other meds. I read the Fatburn Fix in April, and followed the program to a tee, and I’m down by 15 pounds, 6.8 A1C, and only one once weekly diabetes medicine. Prior to reading the book, it was almost impossible for me to lose weight as a diabetic.
Leontyne Tompkins
I feel free
For the last month, I have really been reading all labels on everything. I have completely remove those 8 oils you talk about. I must tell you, I feel great! I have more energy and I am now 197 lbs (have always been around 205 to 210lbs). I eat potatoes with real butter, grass fed steak, pasta with the right toppings. I eat everything! I seem to crave less sugar. I love it!
Robert Kirkendall
I feel so much better
I had terrible aches and pains everywhere in my body, my hands, shoulders and knees. I feel so much better and the way I feel is motivating me every day! Thank you
Mike Deb Wootan Burcin
Better than ever
I am an anesthesiologist in Orlando and a huge fan of both of your books! I have been incorporating your principles for the last 10 months and feel that my health is better than ever.
Marnie Robinson, MD
My allergies disappeared
The biggest difference for me (and a surprising one) is that my allergies have almost completely disappeared! This is a big deal for me, because I’ve had allergies most of my life and they have often affected what I do which is a teaching music in [a public school district]. In general, I feel much better and have more consistent energy throughout the day.
Erica Turrell
Heart Palpitations have Stopped
I’ve lost 20+ pounds (also fasting 16-24 hours daily) and haven’t had palpitations except for one occasion — I had a mini bag of Fritos for the first time in July. And, I feel better now on a daily basis than I ever did all through college.
Mike Wright
Deep Nutrition and Fatburn Fix reader
I’ve lost over 50 pounds
I’ve lost over 50 pounds. I’m 56 years old. Cutting processed food and unhealthy fats from my diet was one of the first things I did on my health recovery journey...I went cold turkey off the bad oils. Emptied my pantry into the trash and just started eating real food
Mitzi Wilkinson Champion
Knowledge I didn’t know I needed
Your Fatburn Fix book is amazing, my friend. Thank you! I’m an Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and I know my stuff. This is the extra layer of knowledge I didn’t know I needed. Well done!
Jennifer Dillman
Fatburn Fix reader
Lost a solid 20 lbs and my bloodwork is great
I have lost a solid 20 lbs and my bloodwork (after 3 months of eating your way) was even better! I was metabolically healthy (per your book) before I read your book, but barely. Lowering my weight, sealed the deal! I have been talking about you and your book to anyone who will listen...Thank you for all you’ve done and what you continue to do! You are changing lives for the better!
Missy Cramer
FatBurn Fix reader
Lost 20 lbs I could never shed
I love your Fatburn Fix! Has helped me so so much! I have had the dreaded weight all my life - 20 or so pounds I could never shed. I have lost that now. I only eat 2 meals a day lunch and dinner with a glass of milk or cappuccino around 4 to hold me over. No snacking and not bad oils. It has been the key to unlocking my fatburn. I work out in the am and believe I am burning fat for energy not from food!
Lauren Smith
I feel great
My waist is four inches smaller. I feel great and many of the minor aches and pains that I had (knees and lower back) are gone. Also, my muscle tone is amazing, even though I have not increased my workout routine.
Richard Janelle
Completed Dr Cate's online course
The go-to for strength and conditioning coaches
Whenever I advise my clients about eating to perform I go straight to what I have learned from Dr. Cate. Her book Deep Nutrition has become the go-to for strength and conditioning coaches across the country.
Kent Matthes
Major League Baseball Agent with WME Sports
Dismantles the lie
Dr. Cate dismantles the lie that seed oils are healthy, which may the biggest lie about nutrition and health because it’s so insidious.
Ken D Berry, MD
Author of Lies My Doctor Told Me
She knows the chemistry
Dr. Cate alerts us to the harms of seed oils and she’s convincing because she knows the chemistry better than anyone.
Dr. Drew Pinskey, MD
Globally recognized internal medicine and addiction medicine specialist, media personality, LoveLine Host, and New York Times bestselling author
No one is better at communicating nutritional truth
Dr. Cate has had the single greatest impact on how we talk to people about fueling for both performance or durability. While we all are a little unique, the foundational principles of human nutrition are immutable. If you are looking to create a more durable, resilient body, no one is better at communicating nutritional truth than Dr. Cate.
Dr. Kelly Starrett
Physiotherapist coach and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author
Highly recommend The Fatburn Fix
Dr. Shanahan has had a significant impact on my practice of medicine. I am known as a Low Carb Doctor, but I never really appreciated the negative effects of processed seed oils on the health of my patients. I highly recommend The Fatburn Fix to my patients and have a loaner copy in my waiting room. It is amazing how quickly blood sugars and overall health improves with cutting seed oils. It is not just about the carbs!
Dr. Brian Lenkzes, MD
CEO of LowCarbMD San Diego, co-host of Low Carb MD Podcast and host of Life's Best Medicine Podcast
Respected in the sports world
Dr. Cate reordered my diet when I was with the L.A. Lakers, and the benefits, for me personally, were felt immediately and have served me to this day. I’ve come to take real food so seriously I started a small family farm. I know of no M.D./nutritionist more respected in the sports world than Dr. Cate Shanahan.
Chris Kaman
NBA Player
Brought seed oil issue front and center
Cate brought the seed oil issue front and center. Healthy fats matter. So much so that I created an entire product line to swap out bad fats with good.
Mark Sisson
Founding Father of the Primal/Paleo Movement
Optimal health starts with food
If you want to understand how optimal health starts with food, start with Dr. Cate. Her book Deep Nutrition leaves you with an appreciation of the profound relationship between our genes and the planet, inspiring us to be good shepherds of both.
Dallas Hartwig
Attribution author of The Whole 30
Helped me with endurance
Deep Nutrition really helped me with endurance. I started to feel better as a player. I was able to run more, I was able to be more active …and I just decided to keep going with it to this day.
Dwight Howard
NBA Player
Silver bullet for me
Dr Cate’s teachings helped me lose 60 pounds like it was nothing. It was like a silver bullet for me.
Paul Grewal, MD
Dr Grewal Internal Medicine, MD, author of Genius Foods
Radically improve your health…
Dr. Shanahan has provided a solid reference that deserves a place in the library of anyone who is seriously interested in nutrition. Her perspective on the vital role that healthy fat has in our diet is novel and, if implemented, can radically improve your health.
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Author of Fat for Fuel and Founder of Mercola.com
Pull up a chair…
I have based my work on the idea that getting the right kinds of healthy fats into your body and avoiding the worst fats is essential to optimal health. I've interviewed dozens of the world's top experts about this, and I know of no one who speaks more eloquently on this topic than Dr Cate. If she’s talking fats, pull up a chair. Take notes.
Dave Asprey
Author of the Bulletproof Diet
The key to unlocking my fatburn
I love your Fatburn Fix! Has helped me so so much! I have had the dreaded weight all my life - 20 or so pounds I could never shed. I have lost that now. I only eat 2 meals a day lunch and dinner with a glass of milk or cappuccino around 4 to hold me over. No snacking and not bad oils. It has been the key to unlocking my fatburn.
Lauren Smith
Saved my life
I would like to thank you for literally saving my life. Back in February, I had to be hospitalized while on vacation in Phoenix with an A1C of 11% and had to start taking 2 types of insulin and 2 other meds. I read the Fatburn Fix in April, and followed the program to a tee, and I’m down by 15 pounds, 6.8 A1C, and only one once weekly diabetes medicine.
Leontyne Tompkins
> Tears of joy
I'm crying tears of joy and appreciation for all you've done for me and my health! Without Deep Nutrition and Fatburn Fix, I would literally still be in the vicious cycle I'd been fighting all my life! In a nutshell - I am no longer a compulsive overeating addict suffering under the crushing 'thumb' of all food and alcohol.
Penni Wicks
You’ve heard the expression follow the money, right? With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to do a little research on who exactly was funding the two sides of the CA 37 GMO Initiative. It did not take me long to find out.
A CA proposition “cheat sheet” listed the key players on both sides.
Here’s the top five folks who wanted you to have more information about what you feed your family: Mercola.com, Organic Consumers Fund, Kent Whealy (Seed Saver’s Exchange), Nature’s Path Foods USA, The Stillonger Trust.
Here’s a few of those who thought you’d be better served kept in the dark: Monsanto, Dupont, Pepsico, BASF, Byer, Dow, Syngenta, Kraft, Coca-cola, Nestle.
The top contributor on the pro-information side, Dr Mercola, rings in at 1.115 million. Leading the charge against consumer information is Monsanto, at 7.1005 million.
Guess who won?
Take a good look at that list of agrichemipharm companies. If you want to know where dangerous “health” information is coming from, look no further than the good folks whose multinational conglomerate companies create pesticides in one factory, industrial chemicals in another, pharmaceuticals in yet another, and, p.s., produce the food you feed your family.
Let’s do a quick thought experiment:
Imagine you’re a high level executive at Monsanto. You want American consumers to buy more of your high-starch, low-nutrient GMO products. Your financial and political resources are practically unlimited. Do you think you might be able to come up with a creative way to persuade your friends in influential positions at Harvard and the Mayo Clinic that your view of nutrition is the correct one?
You hear that Harvard is studying the benefits of, say, a low-fat diet. Or doing a study to make the connection between calorie restriction and longevity. You’ve just spent 7 million on a single labeling initiative in CA. Will you now sit on your hands and hope for the best?
Or will you reach out, say, to the Harvard Nutrition Sciences department? Or, if you prefer a less visible contribution, then how about rebuilding a hospital wing, or creating a Monsanto scholarship aimed at encouraging inner-city youth to steer their educational careers toward the hard science of math and chemistry? Keep in mind, Harvard is apparently under no enforceable obligation to report their donor sources.
I say “apparently” because I have contacted the Nutrition Sciences Department several times asking them for this information. So far, no reply.
So if you are one of those people who have researched for yourself and stepped outside the bubble of Monsanto’s sphere of influence, then you are now charged with the challenging task of deprogramming cooks and chefs and self-appointed nutritionists of every stripe from everything those massive companies have spent decades and billions of dollars convincing people to believe.
The opponents of CA prop 37 represent the fountainhead of information that keeps spilling from everyone we come up against.
Chef so-and-so opens his mouth and out comes the voice of Monsanto, BASF, DOW and the rest, a voice parroting the shopworn litany that “starches are for ‘energy!'” In fact, say these human Bots (taken over by the advertisement viruses of agrichemipharm), the less nutrition per calorie the better!—at least to a point. It’s actually good to eat green leafy veggies from time to time, they admit; the programming assumes the reality that folks can eat only so much kale and mustard greens. Not nearly enough to satisfy, which brings them right back to Monsanto’s horizon to horizon-wide trough of empty carbs, where consumers belong.
And so it goes. From Dow Chemical, to Harvard, to government recommendations, to the AMA, to doctors and nutritionists and dietitians, to patients/consumers, to the kitchen table and the high profit-margin food going into their mouths, to the child sitting in my office stricken with unrelenting allergies, mood disorders and early onset diabetes.
The bad guys won a small victory yesterday. Let’s take back some ground and match the bad guys Bot for Bot.
This week, every time you hear someone telling you about the benefits of low-fat, empty calorie diets, tell ten people that everything Dow, Monsanto and BASF have told them (through their mouthpieces at Harvard) is flat-out wrong and a direct threat to their family’s health.
p.p.s. Dr. Mercola: You got the GMO giants wobbling. Let’s take them down!
Your place is valueble for me. Thanks!…
[…] GMO Corn and Soy (Dr. Cate) […]
Yep, I’m one of them!
Carie – be ready for the first ever GMO animal. The FDA will probably approve the genetically engineered salmon this year. AND since it’s unlabeled you won’t know if you’re eating real, farmed or GMO salmon. Prop 37 would have labeled this salmon. If you care, then tell the FDA to not approve GMO salmon. But I doubt if the FDA cares about our health.
After initially being pro-prop 37, my enthusiasm dissipated. I found myself thinking labeling would go the way of carcinogenic labeling: every building I’ve entered in California has a big sign stating carcinogenic chemicals are present. They’re meaningless and everyone ignores them. Think how un-effective labeling GMOs would be if every package you pick up in a grocery store states there are or may be GMO ingredients contained within. It would mean nothing.
I think it’d be more effective if a manufacturer would prominently advertise that his product contains no GMO ingredients. I’m sure there would be a fight over that like the effort against dairy farmers who labeled their products free of growth hormones, but I think that would be a more constructive fight.
Plus, why wasn’t the labeling of GMO supposed to be applicable to all products? Why were some exempt? Even people who liked the idea of Prop 37 in California voted against it.
Food manufacturers already labeled their products through Non-GMO Project. But you won’t find many of these non-GMO foods at Lucky, Safeway and even Trader Joe’s. Non-GMO Project verified food products are usually sold at Whole Foods and other Health Food Grocers. Michael Pollan says it best on Democracy Now! that by not labeling GMOs you are creating a two tier food system. One for those who could afford organic and one who can’t buy organic. By labeling GMOs you give those who can’t afford organic valuable information so that they can demand non-GMO products at their stores. Of course, not every one reads food labels but that’s not a valid reason to deny the rest of us who want labeling. Prop 37, a simple and clear law, was intentionally written to focus mainly on PROCESSED food, the main staple, for babies, children, teenagers and pregnant women. Why include alcohol? Most people know consuming alcohol can be harmful. But mothers are unknowingly feeding their babies infant formulas with GM soy and corn thinking that the infant formula is SAFE. Food served at restaurants are excluded for practical reasons. Many small & medium restaurants owners are just like consumers – they want GM foods labeled too. Restaurants do NOT produce food. They prepare dishes. It’s the food manufacturers (Pepsi, General Mills, Kraft, Kellogg’s…) who are SOURCING the ingredients that need to label their products. They are the ones who communicates to the farmers whether they want to purchase GM corn or non-GMO corn. For those people who wanted GMOs labeled but thought Prop 37 should have included 100% of food – well, you now got ZERO labeling when you could have gotten 70% of the food labeled if you had voted yes for Prop 37.
I had a conversation with a colleague a couple of weeks prior to the vote and she insisted to me that there has been no published peer-reviewed studies of GMO foods causing harm to humans (which might be the case due to topics you’ve brought up in your book and this article).
She stated that she supported the labeling of GMO foods, but just not the way that proposition 37 intended to label them (direct, clear labeling on the front of the package), but rather that food companies should be required to place the label on the back of the package because if it was on the front it would scare consumers not to purchase ‘safe’ GMO food.
Anyway, I just expatriated to Australia and i’ve noticed the food is much better than the U.S. It’s shocking what we can allow ourselves to get used to.
Check out http://geneticroulettemovie.com if you get a chance.
Cheers- love the blog. Deep Nutrition changed my life.
Justus – GMOs have never been tested by the FDA. All so-called tests were done by Monsanto without any independent, peer-reviewed input. Your friend and people like her helped defeat Prop 37. The vote right now is 48.3% in favor. (Yes, CA is still counting votes.) That’s up from 47% on election day. Even though Prop 37 lost I’m amazed that 48.3% still voted Yes despite over $46 million spent on deceptive advertising against 37. Your friend should have seen through the deceptive advertising too. Tell her to be her own lab rat by eliminating GMOs from her diet for 21 days. After all, she is still eating the same food without the FOREIGN GENES. Proof is in the pudding they say.
Thank you!
The more I follow you the more I feel informed, educated and confident in what I believe in and can follow for a healthy lifestyle!
Yes, Prop 37 lost but it won too. Did you ever think it would be on a ballot? Nope. Almost 47% voted for it despite $$45,000,000 spent by Monsanto and their minions on deceptive ads. A lot of people including many celebrities (even Charlie Sheen tweeted to vote yes on 37) jumped on board. But it was a little too late. Let’s keep the conversation going about GMOs by talking to your friends and families about GMOs. Demand non-GMO food at the stores. Vote with your $. Get on GMO Free USA facebook and become an activist. I did. At 60 years old I helped collected 850 signatures to get labeling GMOs IProp 37) on the ballot. Walk the Talk. http://www.carighttoknow.org.
Thanks Dr. Cate. Great summary of what went down with Prop 37. Hope as many people as possible can read this. If they didn’t know about it before, hopefully the campaign educated many folks about the dangers of GMOs and enlightened them that you are what you eat.
After the defeat my friend remarked it was all such a shame. I told her that it wasn’t a total loss because even though prop 37 didn’t pass, it still was a victory because now, more than ever, people are beginning to understand the dangers of GMOs. I can’t tell you how many people I educated over the last several months. Most folks simply had no idea.
So while the Monasanto big whigs all pat themselves on the back, we can carry on the fight knowing that more and more people are on to them. And now we will vote with the best voice of all: Our dollars!
great article, Dr. C! linking to fb….
The failure of prop-37 is another good example of how well negative advertising works. As a resident of the Midwest who is only aware of the prop 37 vote and didn’t have a vote in the election, I feel that the NO champaign helped me form the opinion that I need to completely stop eating corn and soy products. Furthermore, the YES campaign has made me aware that by being careful about looking for organic products I can avoid GMO’s totally. So, win or lose, all those big factory food companies have opened my eyes to the danger of eating franken foods. I choose to protect my family in the face of unrelenting greed. Many thanks to Dr Mercola and the others who led the fight and have made this a well known issue.