Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

by T. Colin Campbell

The China

My research agenda couldn’t have been more noble: end childhood malnutrition in poor countries by figuring out how to get more high-quality protein into their diets.

My arena was the Philippines,

(Even though malnutrition is largely an issue of not getting enough calories overall, in the mid-1960s we thought that calories from protein were somehow special.)

Here’s the main finding that turned my worldview—and ultimately, my world—upside down: the children in the Philippines who ate the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer—

I chose to follow this discovery everywhere it led me.

I ultimately became aware of two things: First, nutrition is the master key to human health. Second, what most of us think of as proper nutrition—isn’t.

First, nutrition is the master key to human health. Second, what most of us think of as proper nutrition—isn’t. If you want to live free of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes for your entire life, that power is in your hands (and your knife and fork).

And no wonder: the standard Western diet, along with its trendy “low fat” and “low carb” cousins, is actually the cause, not the cure, of most of what ails us.

the standard Western diet, along with its trendy “low fat” and “low carb” cousins, is actually the cause, not the cure, of most of what ails us.

Instead, the secret of health has been in front of us all along, in the guise of a simple and perhaps boring word: nutrition.

When it comes to our health, it turns out the trump card is the food we put in our mouths each day. In the process of learning all this, I also learned something else very important: why most people didn’t know this already.

The medical and scientific research e...

far from embracing these findings, have systematically dismissed and even suppressed them. Few medical professionals are aware that our food choices can be far more effective shiel...

Few medical professionals are aware that our food choices can be far more effective shields against disease...

Few scientists are trained to look at the “big picture,” and instead specialize in scrutinizing single

picture,” and instead specialize in scrutinizing single drops of data instead of comprehending meaningful rivers of wisdom.

drops of data instead of comprehending meaningful ...

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear grateful testimonials to the healing power of whole, plant-based foods. Anecdotal as each of these stories may be, the overall weight of their combined evidence is substantial.

At this point, any scientist, doctor, journalist, or policy maker who denies or minimizes the importance of a whole food, plant-based diet for individual and societal well-being simply isn’t looking clearly at the facts. There’s just too much good evidence to ignore anymore.

Western culture is hell-bent on ignoring, disbelieving, and, in some cases, actively twisting the truth about what we should be eating—so much so that it can be hard for us to believe that we’ve been lied to all these years.

It’s often easier to simply accept what we’ve been told, rather than consider the possibility of a conspiracy of control, silence, and misinformation.

That’s why this new book felt necessary. The China Study focused on the evidence that tells us the whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest human diet. Whole focuses on why it’s been so hard to bring that evidence to light—and on what still needs to happen for real change to take place.

The China

Study focused on the evidence that tells us the whole food, plant-based diet is t...

notice, the health implications of this research: the mental prison, or paradigm, in which Western science and medicine operate, which makes it impossible to see the obvious facts that lie outside it. For many reasons, we now operate under a paradigm that looks for truth only in the smallest details, while entirely ignoring the big picture.

Modern science is so detail obsessed that we can’t see the forest for the vascular cambium and secondary phloem and so on.

the trouble occurs when we start denying that there is a big picture, and stubbornly insist that the narrow reality we see, heavily laden with our own biases and experiences, is all there is.

trouble occurs when we start denying that there is a big picture, and stubbornly insist that the narrow reality we see, heavily laden with our own biases and experiences, is all there is. The fancy word for this obsession with minutiae is reductionism. And reductionism comes with its own seductive logic, so that people laboring under its spell can’t even see that there’s another way to look at the world.

To reductionists, all other worldviews are unscientific, superstitious, sloppy, and not worthy of attention. All evidence gathered by non-reductionist means—presuming that research can get ...

All evidence gathered by non-reductionist means—presuming that research can get funding in the first p...

Part III looks at the other side of this equation: the economic forces that reinforce and exploit this paradigm for their own self-interest as they chase financial success. These forces completely manipulate the public conver...

My own disclaimer: I have no financial interest in you believing me. I don’t sell health products, health seminars, or health coaching. I’m seventy-nine years old,

When you start talking about what you’ve learned from this book with your friends and you encounter passionate disdain for me and my motives (and you will!), just consider the original source of the claims they’re citing. Ask yourself: What’s their financial interest? What do they have to gain from suppressing the information I share here?

you encounter passionate disdain for me and my motives (and you will!), just consider the original source of the claims they’re citing. Ask yourself: What’s their financial interest? What do they have ...

He who cures a disease may be the skillfullest, but he that prevents it is the safest physician. —THOMAS FULLER

We “race for the cure” by pouring billions of dollars into dangerous and ineffective treatments.

We medicate ourselves with toxic concoctions, a small number of which treat the disease, while the rest treat the harmful side effects of the primary drugs.

We talk about the health-care system in America, but that’s a misnomer; what we really have is a

disease-care ...

Drugs and surgical advances are keeping the death rates more or less constant despite the increased risk

factors (except for diabetes, whose mortality rate has increased an astounding 29 percent in North America from 2007 to 2010).

But the data make it clear that none of our advances in medicine deal with primary prevention, and none are ma...

Side effects of those very same prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. That’s right! Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents.

That’s right! Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents.

But I think you get the picture: the more we spend on disease care, the sicker and more miserable we seem to become.

All our trillions of dollars are not improving our health outcomes.

A half century of research—both mine and that of many others—has

convinced me of the following: ♦ What you eat every day is a far more powerful determinant of your health than your DNA or most of the nasty chemicals lurking in your environment. ♦ The foods you consume can heal you faster and more profoundly than the most expensive prescription drugs, and more dramatically than the most extreme surgical interventions, with only positive side effects. ♦ Those food choices can prevent cancer, heart

What you eat every day is a far more powerful determinant of your health than your DNA or most of the nasty chemi...