Deep Nutrition

The concept of gene health is simple: genes work fine until disturbed. External forces that disturb the normal ebb and flow of genetic function can be broken into two broad categories: toxins and nutrient imbalances.

the greatest gift on Earth is a set of healthy genes.

Overcooking traps these flavorful materials in an indigestible matrix of polymerized flesh that forms when meat begins to dry out. You can only taste, and your body can only make use of, minerals that remain free and available.

It’s looking as though we’ve grossly underestimated the dictum “You are what you eat.” Not only does what we eat affect us down to the level of our genes, our physiques have been sculpted, in part, by the foods our parents and grandparents ate (or didn’t eat) generations ago.

what scientists call genetic expression. Just as we can get sick when we don’t take care of ourselves, it turns out, so can our genes.

1. Meat cooked on the bone 2. Organs and offal (what Bourdain calls “the nasty bits”) 3. Fresh (raw) plant and animal products 4. Fermented and sprouted foods—better than fresh!

fat is a source of energy, like sugar. Unlike sugar, however, fat is a major building material for our cells, comprising 30 to 80 percent (dry weight) of our cell membranes. And unlike sugar, fat doesn’t trigger the release of insulin, which promotes weight gain.

one is getting a balanced education while the other is getting schooled in the dirty streets of chemical chaos. In a sense, our lifestyles teach our genes how to behave. In choosing between healthy or unhealthy foods and habits, we are programming our genes for either good or bad conduct.

Our genes make their day-to-day decisions based on chemical information they receive from the food we eat, information encoded in our food and carried from that food item’s original source, a microenvironment of land or sea. In that sense, food is less like a fuel and more like a language conveying information from the outside world.