|| 4.5 ⭐️ ||

I wouldn’t be where I am in my health journey today without Shanahan’s work (specifically, her book Deep Nutrition on ancestral nourishment, which I read a couple years ago). She takes Weston A. Price’s research on ancestral diets from the 1930’s and puts a modern spin on his findings, taking into consideration the research that has since been able to explain the intricacies of why chronic disease has so suddenly skyrocketed in the past century. This book, Dark Calories, is similar to Deep Nutrition, but zooms in on the primary factor that is contributing to most modern disease: seed/vegetable oils. 

This would be a great book to start with if someone has taken one glance at the world of nutrition and has been completely overwhelmed by all the different opinions out there, and potential changes to make, as I was at the beginning. Getting seed oils out and replacing them with animal fats is a fantastic first step, and sometimes it even ends up being the only thing one might need to improve their health. It’s also hard for any other health efforts to make a dent in chronic disease if seed oils are still present in massive amounts. So it’s a wonderful place to start, and Shanahan makes the elimination of seed oils very approachable and doable.

This is minor, but I will never not be confused by proponents of ancestral nutrition who advocate for nuts and seeds. I found it particularly strange that Shanahan didn’t really discourage them, considering this whole book is about how PUFAs are harming our health… and most nuts and seeds are quite high in oxidized PUFAs (unless eaten straight out of the shell and in moderation). Nuts are not an ancestral food. Especially not in the quantities people eat them today. But since there’s so much nuance in nutrition, to each his own.