How Metabolic Health Expert Dr. Cate Shanahan Stocks a Healthy, Seed Oil-Free Kitchen

Dr. Cate Shanahan, a nutrition pioneer who sounded the alarm about seed oils, gives us a peek into her pantry and fridge.

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As a family doctor in Hawaii in the early 2000s, Dr. Cate Shanahan felt a growing disconnect between public health messaging and the problems she was actually seeing in her patients. Amid widespread cheers for the merits of a low-saturated-fat, low-cholesterol diet—what she’d been taught was right—she noticed that with each generation, people were becoming less healthy. She saw grandmothers who were far healthier than their grandchildren.

“This struck me as really bizarre,” said Dr. Shanahan, a biochemist turned physician. “So I started looking into nutrition. I started making connections about what was really going on.” Her research honed in on seed oils, which she’s come to see as “the worst of the worst” when it comes to harming our health. These highly processed oils, which can make up as much as 30 percent of a person’s daily calories, originated as industrial by-products, she explained: “They were never originally designed to be consumed by humans. There’s nothing else in the food supply like them.”

Courtesy of Dr. Cate Shanahan

She identified eight harmful oils to avoid, which she calls “the hateful eight”: cottonseed, canola, corn, soy, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran. They damage metabolic health and have been linked to myriad health problems, including obesity, mental health issues, autoimmune disorders, infertility, life-threatening allergies, heart failure, and cancer.

“When people stop using these oils, their lives are changed,” Dr. Shanahan said.

She published her first book, “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food,” in 2008. Her newest book, published in 2024, is “Dark Calories: How Vegetable Oils Destroy Our Health and How We Can Get It Back.”

Dr. Shanahan’s philosophy of nutrition is simple: “Nature knows best,” she said. She gave us a glimpse of what that looks like in her own kitchen.

In the Pantry

Healthy, flavorful oils, such as avocado, olive, coconut, peanut, and sesame oil

Onions and garlic

Dried beans

Wheat berries

Sprouted pumpkin seeds

Dehydrated coconut

Condiments, such as sun-dried tomatoes, mustard, coconut cream, cooking wine, different types of soy sauce

Bone broth concentrate

Canned salmon or sardines

Pepperoncini

Olives

Nuts

Lots of spices

Illustration by Oriana Zhang

In the Fridge

Raw milk, cream, and whole-milk yogurt from a local farm

Emmental, cheddar, and ricotta cheese

Eggs

Nutritional yeast

Higher-quality oils, such as sesame oil

Nuts and seeds, to slow down the oxidation process

Vegetables, such as celery, carrots, mushrooms, arugula, string beans, broccoli, kale

Sauerkraut or kimchi

Cold-brewed coffee

In the Freezer

Grass-fed or pasture-raised meats

Liver, such as chicken, turkey, or lamb

Sausages

Scallops

Peas and lima beans

Bone broth

Illustration by Oriana Zhang

A Sippable ‘Superfood’

“Bone broth is so good for your skin, hair, nails, and joints. It’s a missing ingredient in the American food supply,” said Dr. Shanahan. She makes a soup with bone broth and nutritional yeast. “That is like a superfood.”

Spotlight on Sprouting

Dr. Shanahan sprouts her own beans and wheat berries. “The function of sprouting is to activate the seed,” she said. “A seed is a little storage pod; it’s supposed to last for years.” Compounds called anti-nutrients help protect the seed, but they make it harder for our bodies to absorb nutrients from it. Sprouting seeds reduces the anti-nutrients and releases nutrients for us to access.

“Soak them for a while, dump out the water, put them in a colander, and then water twice a day,” Dr. Shanahan said. “Within a day or so you’ll see a little hint of something happening in the seed—the germination starting—and that’s enough. If you leave it longer, you risk getting mold.”

Dr. Shanahan’s Daily Nonnegotiables

Coffee: I’ve got to have my cold-brewed coffee! I have it with grass-fed milk from a local farm.

Meat: I want better-quality, grass-fed meats because I taste the difference, so I order it online from farms. I get whatever is most cost-effective at the time, so right now I have a lot of chicken in the freezer.

Vegetables: I tend to buy whatever looks good in the store. I grow fresh herbs, so I don’t have to buy and store those.

Dessert: I like to mix pasture-raised whole milk yogurt with a mixture of sprouted wheat berries, cashews, sprouted pumpkin seeds, vanilla, and ricotta.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.