Coronavirus Florida: Does U.S. food supply contribute to COVID-19 vulnerability?

With the U.S. passing the grim milestone last week of 100,000 novel coronavirus deaths — by far the most of any country in the world — experts scramble to learn more about the disease.

When it comes to COVID-19’s capricious nature — that is, how outcomes can vary so widely, from asymptomatic infection, to minor illness, to weeks-long flu battle, to ICU hospitalization and, in far too many tragic cases, death — the apparent randomness is especially troubling.

Why do folks in similar demographics and with similar health profiles so often have such disparate outcomes?

According to one national expert, immune response and metabolic health are closely connected.

Orlando-based physician and author Dr. Cate Shanahan has long railed against certain specific high polyunsaturated fatty seed oils — what she’s coined the “Hateful Eight” — that are ubiquitous in the U.S. food supply and are among the factors that most contribute to metabolic disease, even in people who are at a seemingly ideal weight.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Shanahan, who was formerly based in Los Angeles, appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and asserted that for most people under the age of 65 “the real threat is not the virus itself, but the way your body responds. Most of the folks under 65 who have to be admitted to the ICU are there because their body fat is full of inflammation-promoting, high polyunsaturated fatty seed oils.”

Shanahan went on to say “everyone under 65 who had a serious case of corona also has an underlying metabolic condition – whether they know it or not. Even thin people.”

And then she dropped the hammer: “I’m so sure that seed oils are the underlying cause of metabolic disruption that I’m calling for a challenge. Show me a single person under 65 without a serious underlying disease or immune deficiency who ended up in the ICU who had been categorically avoiding ‘hateful eight’ vegetable and seed oils for the prior five years and you’ve proven me wrong. I’ll stake my reputation on this.”

It should be noted that Shanahan has been collecting peer-reviewed data for more than two decades to make such claims, and her metabolic theories have gained her a wide following.

In addition to the three books she’s written — The Fatburn Fix: Boost Energy, End Hunger, and Lose Weight by Using Body Fat for Fuel; Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food; and Food Rules: A Doctor’s Guide to Healthy Eating — Shanahan helped create the Los Angeles Lakers’ PRO Nutrition program and was its science director for six years.

The late Kobe Bryant was a fan, famously adopting her dietary recommendations, which were based on the principles espoused in Deep Nutrition and included consuming bone broth to help joint and tendon recovery.

Bryant was quoted as saying he “trusted Dr. Cate implicitly [because] I’ve seen great results.”

Shanahan’s rapport with athletes makes sense.

She was an elite collegiate track star — good enough to be invited to the U.S. Olympic Trials in the 1,500-meter event.

However, her track career was derailed by a series of nagging soft-tissue injuries and she found that she “was almost as intrigued with trying to solve the mystery of why I was the team member who kept getting sidelined by shin splints, tendonitis, and other sports injuries as I was frustrated by the fact of being injured.”

Through decades of study and research, she has come to believe that not enough medical doctors truly understand the effects of different foods (and food additives) on our metabolic health.

But her biggest complaint is with the food industry, which routinely uses polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in its processed foods.

Sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil — basically, any kind of fat or oil that’s listed as “hydrogenated” on the ingredients list is verboten.

Instead, she wants folks to cook non-processed foods with non-processed, “healthy” fats, some of which include pure olive oil, avocado oil, almond oil, butter, coconut oil and peanut oil, among others.

And she urges folks to consume non-processed foods (including the aforementioned bone broth) and supplements that increase collagen production because collagen is one of the body’s most vital proteins — influencing everything from the health of hair, skin, nails, bones and circulation to how quickly tendons, ligaments and joints will recover after exertion.