Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

by T. Colin Campbell

In fact, in 1983, my Cornell University research group showed that we could switch early cancer growth on and off in rats simply by changing the amount of protein they consumed.

Equally amazing, when cancer was switched off for a relatively long time by feeding a low-protein diet, it could be turned on again by switching to a high-protein diet.

The effect was striking. When turned on, cancer growth was vigorous and robust. When turned off, it was totally shut down. Major changes in cancer development, both positive and negative, were...

Part of our current paradigm is that bad stuff in the environment causes cancer, and the more enlightened elements involved in the war on cancer seek to reduce our exposure to that bad stuff.

Not part of our current paradigm is that the food we eat is a much more powerful determinant of cancer than just about any environmental toxin.

He “knew,” as did almost all cancer specialists back then, that cancer occurs because of chemical carcinogens and viruses and genes, not because of modest changes in nutrient consumption.

Animal protein intake determined cancer development far more than the dose of the chemical carcinogen.

Colin, you’re talking about good food! Don’t take it away from us!” He did not question the validity of our research results; he was concerned that I was trying to undermine his personal love for animal protein.

I knew then that our research was becoming a lightning rod for people’s strong feelings about their food habits.

I went on to speculate about someday using a nutritional strategy to treat cancer in humans.

Potential upside of nutritional therapy: turning off cancer development completely. Likelihood based on experimental data: very high. Potential downside of nutritional therapy from a health perspective: none. We all know about the side effects of chemo and radiation, as well as their far-from-stellar success rates. Surely it made sense to give nutrition a try?

The majority of oncologists still worship one of the three “traditional” treatments and have no patience for or understanding of nutritional treatment options.

while the clock is still ticking, the conversation is barely shifting. If it isn’t a new surgery, chemo cocktail, or radiation protocol, the cancer industry isn’t buying.

That’s the scientific method at its best: all of us competing not for personal glory and wealth, but to serve the highest truth and the highest good.

We’ve discovered that cow’s milk protein at reasonable levels of intake markedly promotes experimental cancer growth, which is outside of the nutrition paradigm.

We’ve found that cancer growth is controlled far more by nutrition than by genes, which is outside of the scientific paradigm.

We’ve shown that the nutrient composition of foods is more a determinant of cancer occurrence than chemical carcinogens, which is outside of the cancer-testing and regulatory agency paradigms.

We’ve found that saturated fat (and, for that matter, total fat and cholesterol) is not the chief cause of heart disease (there’s animal-based proteins as well),...

I then began to see, through my public policy work, why paradigms exist and how they function. I especially became aware that the ideas inside of a paradigm are often strikingly opposed to ideas outside of it, thus making the boundaries clearer.

Actually, deciding whether an observation is or is not heretical has real consequences. In the medical research world, unexpected observations are oftentimes ignored.

In reality, they might be gems, either pointing out flaws in what we consider to be normal or suggesting a new dimension to our thinking.

We formulate hypotheses, then create or search for evidence to “prove” them.

Another way to pursue truth, proposed by the famous science philosopher Karl Popper, is to try to falsify our hypotheses—in effect, to seek out the boundaries of our mental paradigms and push against them, to see if they can withstand scrutiny.

In the China Study, we discovered that blood cholesterol for rural Chinese adults averaged 127 mg/dL, with individual village averages ranging 88–165 mg/dL.6 At that time (the mid-1980s), 127 mg/dL was considered dangerously low.

and there was some surprising evidence among Western subjects that incidences of suicides, accidents, and violence,7 as well as colon cancer,8 were higher when total cholesterol levels were below 160 mg/dL.

Instead, we discovered that the Chinese villagers averaging 127 mg/dL were actually far healthier than Americans with so-called normal cholesterol levels.

Now we had to make sense of the apparent paradox that the healthiest Chinese people had cholesterol levels that would have been considered dangerously low in the United States.

Further examination revealed that, for this Chinese range of 88–165 mg/dL, like the U.S. range of 155–274 mg/dL, lower levels of cholesterol were associated with increased protection from several cancers and serious related diseases. The Chinese population showed correlations between low cholesterol and health that could not be observed in the United States because almost no Americans had cholesterol that low. The Chinese range showed us that cholesterol of 88 mg/dL could be healthier than cholesterol of 155 mg/dL, a finding that simply could not have been gleaned from a study of a U.S. population.

Even today, it is so heretical that no one wants to say the obvious—that casein is the most relevant chemical carcinogen ever identified.

I’m glad I didn’t run because I have observed that giving some attention to unexpected observations that might otherwise be discounted or discarded can be unusually rewarding, especially if these observations are pursued to an explanation.

I tell them very simply to never be afraid to ask questions, even ones everyone tells you are stupid. Just be prepared to use good science and logic when defending your perspective.)

It was only when I started questioning the mechanisms of the scientific method itself that I stepped outside the biggest, most restrictive, and most insidious paradigm of all: reductionism.

We’ll begin in chapter four by introducing reductionism and its opposing worldview, wholism, in a philosophical and historical context.

We’ll see how reductionism has infected the most fundamental tenets of research, as well as the development of health products and services, turning powerful institutions into veritable zombies: seemingly animate, yet devoid of any compassion or desire to make us well.

The problem arises only when, as in the parable, the individual points of view are mistakenly seen as describing the whole truth. When a laser-like focus is misunderstood as a global overview.

because I found myself outside the predominant scientific paradigm, I was therefore able to better understand where the limitations of that paradigm were.

In its broadest sense, a paradigm is a mental filter that restricts what you are able to see at any one time.

Without the ability to focus on one thing and shut out distractions, you wouldn’t be able to get much done.

Filters—mental and literal—become problematic only when we forget about them and think that what we’re seeing is the whole of reality, instead of a very narrow slice of it.

In a world shaped by the paradigm of water, anyone who suggests the existence of “not water” is automatically a heretic, a lunatic, or a clown.

If you are a reductionist, you believe that everything in the world can be understood if you understand all its component parts.

A wholist, on the other hand, believes that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. That’s it: the entire debate in a nutshell.

Ironically, this dismissal of wholism by scientists is the height of dogmatism, a fundamentalist stance that denies the possibility of any truth other than that granted by reductionism.

both. Church officials attached rigid dogmas to certain understandings of the universe, with the result that any questioning of those understandings constituted heresy.

What had been perfectly logical scientific assumptions based on observable facts (such as the earth being the center of the universe, as in Ptolemaic astronomy) were distorted into immutable principles of faith.

Firsthand observation of reality was now rightly viewed as a dangerous activity—for what if you observed something th...

Although what we humans can observe has changed and grown over time, that fundamental belief about truth has not. Each new advancement in technology only allows us to break the world into smaller and smaller pieces.

In rejecting religious control of science, we also are rejecting the useful perspectives theology offers: a way of looking at the world as a fundamentally connected whole.

A willingness to accept that there are things we may not ever be able to fully understand, and instead can only observe.

Probably more than any other scholastic luminary of that time, he recognized the relationship between the whole and its parts. Da Vinci was what we call a polymath, a term that refers to his exceptional range of artistic, humanistic, and scientific talents. But more relevant than his specific achievements