Voted Best Physician last week by “Kaua‘i People,” Dr. Cate Shanahan of Kalaheo is doing all she can to redefine what it means to be in the doctoring field. “In medical school the focus is on sickness like it’s an
Voted Best Physician last week by “Kaua‘i People,” Dr. Cate Shanahan of Kalaheo is doing all she can to redefine what it means to be in the doctoring field.
“In medical school the focus is on sickness like it’s an inevitability,” Shanahan said. “We’re reacting to the sickness.”
Shanahan and husband, Luke, co-authored a book exploring the evolution of nutrition and how to recover “the power we have to control our own health.” Join the authors of “Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food” at 2 p.m. Saturday at Borders Books and Music.
“If we just learn a few rules about cooking… and take the time to cook, we can avoid so many dread diseases,” she wrote in an e-mail.
In her 10 years as a physician on Kaua‘i she’s observed the robust health of the population born and raised here. Thus began a quest to know more about nutrition. “Deep Nutrition” is Shanahan’s response to what she says medical school lacked.
“In the olden days doctoring and nutrition were more connected. Even cook books from the 1800s included healing recipes for whatever ailed you,” she said. “Back then food was fundamentally different — fresh, local and homemade. We are learning that again now.”
From research on nutrition and the evolution of the human body, the Shanahans developed what they refer to as the Four Pillars of World Cuisine.
The first pillar is fresh food, which includes not only vegetables but also sushi and unpasturized dairy. The second is fermented and sprouted foods.
“Old time guys prefer their poi fermented,” Shanahan said. “They leave it in the sun on a roof top until it bubbles. It develops live bacteria and has fewer starches when fermented.”
The third pillar of world cuisine is meat on the bone.
“Skin and fat are integral to traditional foods,” she said. “In the past people were undoubtedly tougher and that’s what it is to be human. We are tough. We’ve just gotten so far from eating like humans.”
What Shanahan means is that all the processed foods that are common place in the American diet undermine health.
“The reason I went to medical school in the first place was to get at the root of what makes people sick,” she said. “Many doctors say the human body is a flawed design — that‘s wrong. We’ve just gotten so used to seeing people who are not healthy that we don’t even notice it anymore.”
In research on indigenous people and evolution she discovered how many cultures use the entire animal, discarding nothing. Which leads to the fourth pillar — eating organ meats.
“I specifically say organ meats because they are packed with nutrients,” she said. “Extra vitamins are stored there, including the eyeballs, liver and intestines.”
Shanahan hopes to enlighten and educate the public on nutrition basics that will return them to good health.
“We need to calm down and ask how did this happen,” she said. “We want to think rather then react.”
• Pam Woolway, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681, ext. 257 or pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
