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Old age can and should be graceful and peaceful.
thus making our health care system the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind only cancer and heart disease
“We are best at hiding those things which are in plain sight.”
Good health is about being able to fully enjoy the time we do have. It is about being as functional as possible throughout our entire lives and avoiding disabling, painful, and lengthy battles with disease. There are many better ways to die, and to live. Because
It’s okay to measure the specific effect of, say, selenium on breast cancer, but it’s not okay to measure multiple nutritional conditions in the same study, in the hope of identifying important dietary patterns.
Everything in food works together to create health or disease. The
more we think that a single chemical characterizes a whole food, the more we stray into idiocy.
Do I think that the China Study findings constitute absolute scientific proof? Of course not. Does it provide enough information to inform some practical decision-making? Absolutely.
Our transitions were originally made for health reasons, as a result of my research findings, but have come with an increasing sensitivity to ethical and environmental reasons for eating a plant-based diet.
Heart disease has been our number one cause of death for almost 100 years.4 This disease does not recognize gender or race boundaries; all are affected. If you were to ask most women what disease poses the greatest risk to them, heart disease or breast cancer, many women would undoubtedly say breast cancer. But they would be wrong. Women’s death rate from heart disease is eight times higher than their death rate from breast cancer.5,6
the rural Chinese are still slimmer while consuming a greater volume of food and more calories.
All autoimmune diseases are the result of one group of physiological mechanisms gone awry, much like cancer. In this case, the mechanism is the immune system mistakenly attacking cells in its own body. Whether it is the pancreas as in Type 1 diabetes, the myelin sheath as in MS, or joint tissues as in arthritis, all autoimmune diseases involve an immune system that has revolted. It is an internal mutiny of the worst kind, one in which our body becomes its own worst enemy.
In the case of Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the pancreas cells responsible for producing insulin. This devastating, incurable disease mostly strikes children, creating a painful and difficult experience for young families. What most people don’t know, though, is that there is strong evidence that this disease is linked to diet and, more specifically, to dairy products. The ability of cow’s milk protein to initiate Type 1 diabetes13–15 is well documented. The possible initiation of this disease goes like this:
This process boils down to a truly remarkable statement: cow’s milk may cause one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child. For obvious reasons, this is one of the most contentious issues in nutrition today.
We have had evidence for well over a hundred years that animal protein decreases bone health. The explanation of animal protein causing excess metabolic acid, for example, was first suggested in the 1880s4 and was documented as long ago as 1920.5 We also have known that animal protein is more effective than plant protein at increasing the metabolic acid load in the body.6,
Not surprisingly, five out of six plant-based foods measured also were associated with lower rates of macular degeneration (broccoli, carrots, spinach or collard greens, winter squash, and sweet potato). Spinach or collard greens conferred the most protection. There was 88% less disease for people who ate these greens five or more times per week when compared with people who consumed these greens less than once per month.
of cataracts as the people who consumed the least lutein. Lutein is an interesting chemical because, in addition to being readily available in spinach, along with other dark leafy green vegetables, it also is an integral part of the lens tissue itself.49,50 Similarly, those who consumed the most spinach had 40% fewer cataracts.
We all know that growing old brings with it diminished capacities compared with our younger days. But there is good science to show that thinking clearly well into our later years is not something we need to give up. Memory loss, disorientation, and confusion are not inevitable parts of aging, but problems linked to that all-important lifestyle factor: diet.
The seven studies mentioned above all show that one or more nutrients found almost exclusively in plants are associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline in old age.
The benefits of a healthy lifestyle are enormous. We want you to know that, based on the information presented in this book, you can increase the odds that you will: • live longer
• look and feel younger • have more energy • lose weight • lower your blood cholesterol • prevent and even reverse heart disease • lower your risk of prostate, breast, and other cancers • preserve your eyesight in your later years • prevent and treat diabetes • avoid surgery in many instances • vastly decrease the need for pharmaceutical drugs • keep your bones strong • avoid impotence • avoid stroke • prevent kidney stones
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Our bodies have evolved with this infinitely complex network of reactions in order to derive maximal benefit from whole foods, as they appear in nature. The misguided may trumpet the virtues of one specific nutrient or chemical, but this thinking is too simplistic. Our bodies have learned how to benefit from the chemicals in food as they are packaged together, discarding some and using others as they see fit. We cannot stress this enough, as it is the foundation of understanding what good nutrition means.
Chart 11.2: Nutrient Composition of Plant- and Animal-Based Foods (Per 500 Calories of Energy) Nutrient Plant-Based Foods* Animal-Based Foods Cholesterol (mg) — 137 Fat(g) 4 36 Protein (g) 33 34 Beta-carotene (mcg) 29,919 17 Dietary Fiber (mg) 31 — Vitamin C (mg) 293 4
Folate (mcg) 1,168 19 Vitamin E (mg_ATE) 11 0.5 Iron (mg) 20 2 Magnesium (mg) 548 51 Calcium (mg) 545 252 * Equal parts of tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, peas, and potatoes ** Equal parts of beef, pork, chicken, and whole milk
If you do not eat any animal products, particularly if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, you should take a small B12 supplement regularly and consider getting tested for B12 levels. If they are on the low side, consider getting confirmatory tests for methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, which are considered to be better indicators of vitamin adequacy, as well.
Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or “expressed,” and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
Much of this focus on genes, however, misses a simple but crucial point: not all genes are fully expressed all the time. If they aren’t expressed, they remain biochemically dormant. Dormant genes do not have any effect on our health. This idea is obvious to most scientists and many laypeople, but its significance is seldom understood. What causes some genes to remain dormant, and others to express themselves? The answer: environment, especially diet.
If you take two Americans living in the same environment and feed them exactly the same meaty food every day for their entire lives, it would not be surprising if one died of a heart attack at age fifty-four and the other died of cancer at the age of eighty. What explains the difference? Genes. Genes give us our predispositions. We all have different disease risks due to our different genes. But while we will never know every risk to which we are predisposed, we do know how to control those risks. Regardless of our genes, we can all optimize our chances of expressing the right genes by
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Even if a WFPB diet is more effective at treating heart disease than brain cancer, you can be sure that this diet will not promote one disease while it stops another. It will never be “bad” for you. This one good diet can only help across the board.
Quite simply, you can maximize health for diseases across the board with one simple diet.
Our food choices have an incredible impact not only on our metabolism, but also on the initiation, promotion, and even reversal of disease; on our energy; on our physical activity; on our emotional and mental well-being; and
on our world environment. All of these seemingly separate spheres are intimately interconnected.
Principle #8 is central to the main theme of my 2013 book, Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, written with Howard Jacobson.28
One of the most fortunate findings from the mountain of nutritional research we’ve encountered is that good food and good health is simple. The biology of the relationship of food and health is exceptionally complex, but the message is still simple. The recommendations coming from the published literature are so simple that we can state them in one sentence: eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, while minimizing the consumption of refined foods, added salt, and added fats.
Daily supplements of vitamin B12, and perhaps vitamin D for people who spend most of their time indoors and/or live in the northern climates, are encouraged. For vitamin D, you shouldn’t exceed RDA recommendations. That’s it. That’s the diet science has found to be consistent with the greatest health and the lowest incidence
There are three excellent reasons to go all the way. First, following this diet requires a radical shift in your thinking about food. It’s more work to just do it halfway. If you plan for animal-based products, you’ll eat them—and you’ll almost certainly eat more than you should. Second, you’ll feel deprived. Instead of viewing your new food habit as being able to eat all the plant-based food you want, you’ll be seeing it in terms of having to limit yourself, which is not conducive to staying on the diet long-term. And third, you will, within a month or so, perhaps a little more, actually
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we acquire from eating large amounts of fat and refined carbohydrates. If your friend had been a smoker all of his or her life and looked to you for advice, would you tell them to cut down to only two cigarettes a day, or would you tell them to quit smoking altogether? It’s in this way that we’re telling you that moderation, even with the best intentions, sometimes makes it more difficult to succeed.
After encountering these questions over and over, I wrote The China Study Solution (titled The Campbell Plan in hardcover). If you want a specific eating plan for two weeks with recipes and evidence-based answers to the common questions about what exactly you should be eating with a nod to behavior-change strategies,
Big Medicine in America is in the business of treating disease with drugs and surgery after symptoms appear.
Obviously neither kids nor their parents are learning about how milk has been linked to Type 1 diabetes, prostate cancer, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, or other autoimmune diseases, and how casein, the main protein in dairy foods, has been shown to experimentally promote cancer and increase blood cholesterol and atherosclerotic plaque.
Then when that person comes along and actually cures patients with Brussels sprouts and broccoli, as Esselstyn did, and gets better results than any other pill or procedure known, you’ve suddenly announced that something works, hands down, better than what 99% of the profession is doing. Summarizing his point, Ess says: Cardiologists are supposed to be experts in diseases of the heart—and yet they have no expertise in treating heart disease, and when that awareness strikes them, they get very defensive. They can treat the symptoms, they can take care of arrhythmias, they can get you
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The only person that likes change is a newborn, and it’s natural, it’s human nature. Anywhere you go, 99% of the people are eating incorrectly. The numbers are against you, and it’s very hard for those 99% to look at you in the 1% and say, “Yes, he’s right, we are all wrong.”
If anybody would be a perfect “nutrition-oriented physician role model” in an educational setting, it would be Dr. John McDougall.
Research on the causes of disease and non-drug interventions simply doesn’t occur in medical education settings. For example, academic researchers may be furiously trying to find a pill that will treat the symptoms of obesity, but not be devoting any time or money to teaching people how to live a healthier life. Dr. Angell writes
We pay a high price for allowing these medical biases. A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that one in five new drugs will either get a “black box warning,” indicating a previously unknown serious adverse reaction that may result in death or serious injury, or will be withdrawn from the market within twenty-five years.32 Twenty percent of all new drugs have serious unknown side effects, and more than 100,000 Americans die every year from correctly taking their properly prescribed medication.33 This is one of the leading causes of death in America!
Whole.)
Almost 2,500 years ago, Plato wrote a dialogue between two characters, Socrates and Glaucon, in which they discuss the future of their cities.
Though it is indeed remarkable that one of the greatest intellectuals in the history of the Western world condemned meat eating almost 2,500 years ago, I find it even more remarkable that few know about this history. Hardly anybody knows, for example, that the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, advocated diet as the
chief way to prevent and treat disease, or that George Macilwain knew that diet was the way to prevent and treat disease, or that the man instrumental in founding the American Cancer Society, Frederick L. Hoffman, knew that diet was the way to prevent and treat disease. How did Plato predict the future so accurately? He knew that consuming animal foods would not lead to true health and prosperity. Instead, the false sense of rich luxury granted by being able to eat animals would only lead to a culture of sickness, disease, land disputes, lawyers, and doctors. This is a pretty good description
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where using prescription drugs and going to hospitals is the third leading cause of death? How did we get to a place where advocating a plant-based diet can jeopardize a professional career, where scientists spend more time overcoming and mastering nature than respecting it?
