Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

From Publishers Weekly Campbell's follow-up to his best-selling The China Study is more of the same, in the best way. He continues his quest to convince people that "the ideal human diet looks like this: Consumer plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible...eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, and whole grains." The entirety of the book is a passionate and convincing case for that ideal diet. Campbell has not written a book of diet tips, or even provided recipes. In fact, at times the book delves so deeply into scientific process— for example, explaining how cancer develops or how metabolism works—that many may find themselves having to read slowly to understand his point. Yet he makes the case that Americans are too prone to take pills to solve health issues (and doctors too prone to prescribe them) as a result of "reductionist thinking". His years of scientific study and calm, measured tone are highly convincing, making a firm case that changing one's diet is the best way to assure good health. Readers will be inclined to put down their processed food snacks once they read what could be a life-changer of a book. (May) "After reading The China Study and drastically changing my diet toward the more whole food, plant-based diet recommended by Dr. Campbell, my career numbers shot up when they were supposed to be declining. I thought to myself ‘Why doesn't everyone eat this way?!' This new book, Whole , answers that question with great clarity. Never again be confused about diet and nutrition."— Tony Gonzalez, Atlanta Falcons, 16-year National Football League player, record-setting tight end "America's premier nutritionist, T. Colin Campbell, with courage and conviction, articulates how the self-serving reductionist paradigm permeates science, medicine, media, big pharma and philanthropic groups blocking the public from the nutritional truth for optimal health."— Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., MD, author of the bestselling Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease "T. Colin Campbell, based on his long career in experimental research and health policy-making, uncovers how and why there is so much confusion about food and health and what can be done about it. His explanation is elegant, sincere, provocative, and far-reaching, including how we can solve our health-care crisis. Read and enjoy; there's something here to inspire and offend just about everyone (sometimes the truth hurts)."— Dean Ornish, MD, Founder and President of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; and author of the bestselling Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease " Whole makes a convincing case that modern nutrition's focus on single nutrients has led to mass confusion with tragic health consequences. Dr. Campbell's new paradigm will change the way we think about food and, in doing so, could improve the lives of millions of people and save billions of dollars in health care costs."— Brian Wendel, Creator and Executive Producer of Forks Over Knives "There are very few material game-changers in life, but this book is truly one of them. The information herein—backed up by extraordinary peer-reviewed science—has the power to halt and reverse disease, give you energy you've never known, and put you on a path of transformation in just about every positive way. Read it and get ready to soar."— Kathy Freston, New York Times bestselling author of The Lean and Quantum Wellness "Dr. Colin Campbell opened our eyes with The China Study . In Whole , Dr. Campbell boldly shows exactly how our understanding of nutrition and health has gone off track and how to get it right. Beautifully and clearly written, this empowering book will forever change the way you think about health, food and science."— Neal Barnard, Founder and President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine "This book is the key to understanding how to increase our natural longevity and health, it is key to slowing global warming, and all of this at no cost, rather, at immeasurable savings to society."— Mike Fremont, World Record Holder marathons for 88 and 90 year olds "In Whole , Dr. Campbell defines a super-paradigm that elucidates a philosophy—wholism—which medicine needs to aspire to in order to attain an enlightened solution. Whole is a masterpiece of intellectual triangulation, outlining the past, the present, and the critical next steps in the future of biochemistry, human nutrition, and healthcare. This book is going to unleash a health revolution!"— Julieanna Hever, MS, RD, CPT, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and host of What Would Julieanna Do? For more than 40 years, T. Colin Campbell, PhD, has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the author of the bestselling book, The China Study , and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers. The China Study was the culmination of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. Howard Jacobson, PhD, is an online marketing consultant, health educator, and ecological gardener from Durham, N.C. He earned a Masters of Public Health and Doctor of Health Studies degrees from Temple University, and a BA in History from Princeton. Howard cofounded VitruvianWay.com, an online marketing agency, and is a coauthor of Google AdWords For Dummies . When Howard is not chasing groundhogs away from blueberry bushes or wrestling with Google, he relaxes by playing Ultimate Frisbee and campfire songs from the 1960s. His current life goal is to turn the world into a giant food forest. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. WHOLE Rethinking the Science of Nutrition By T. COLIN CAMPBELL, HOWARD JACOBSON BenBella Books, Inc. Copyright © 2013 T. Colin CampbellAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-937856-24-3 Contents Introduction...............................................................xiPART I ENSLAVED BY THE SYSTEM..............................................Chapter 1 The Modern Health-Care Myth......................................3Chapter 2 The Whole Truth..................................................14Chapter 3 My Heretical Path................................................26PART II PARADIGM AS PRISON.................................................Chapter 4 The Triumph of Reductionism......................................45Chapter 5 Reductionism Invades Nutrition...................................58Chapter 6 Reductionist Research............................................75Chapter 7 Reductionist Biology.............................................88Chapter 8 Genetics versus Nutrition, Part One..............................107Chapter 9 Genetics versus Nutrition, Part Two..............................125Chapter 10 Reductionist Medicine...........................................140Chapter 11 Reductionist Supplementation....................................150Chapter 12 Reductionist Social Policy......................................164PART III SUBTLE POWER AND ITS WIELDERS.....................................Chapter 13 Understanding the System........................................181Chapter 14 Industry Exploitation and Control...............................196Chapter 15 Research and Profit.............................................214Chapter 16 Media Matters...................................................231Chapter 17 Government Misinformation.......................................247Chapter 18 Blinded by the Light Bringers...................................262PART IV FINAL THOUGHTS.....................................................Chapter 19 Making Ourselves Whole..........................................285Acknowledgments............................................................291About the Authors..........................................................293Notes......................................................................295Index......................................................................313 CHAPTER 1 The ModernHealth-Care Myth He who cures a disease may be the skillfullest, buthe that prevents it is the safest physician. —THOMAS FULLER What a great time to be alive! Modern medicine promises salvationfrom scourges that have plagued humanity since time began.Disease, infirmity, aging—all soon to be eradicated thanks toadvances in technology, genetics, pharmacology, and food science. Thecure for cancer is just around the corner. DNA splicing will replace our self-sabotagingor damaged genes with perfectly healthy ones. New wonderdrugs are discovered practically every week. And genetic modification offood, combined with advanced processing techniques, will soon be ableto turn a simple tomato, carrot, or cookie into a complete meal. Heck,maybe someday soon we won't have to eat at all—we can just swallow apill that contains every nutrient we need. There's only one problem with that rosy picture—it's totally false.None of those lofty promises is anywhere close to being realized. We "racefor the cure" by pouring billions of dollars into dangerous and ineffectivetreatments. We seek new genes, as if the ones we've evolved over millionsof years are insufficient for our needs. We medicate ourselves with toxicconcoctions, a small number of which treat the disease, while the resttreat 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 system. Fortunately, we have a far better, safer, and cheaper way of achievinggood health, one with only positive side effects. Furthermore, this approachprevents most of the diseases and conditions that afflict us before theyshow up, so we don't need to avail ourselves of the disease-care systemin the first place. THE DISEASE-CARE SYSTEM The United States spends more money per capita on "health" care thanany country on earth, yet when the quality of our health care is comparedwith other industrialized nations, we rank near the bottom. As a country, we're quite sick. Despite our high rate of health expenditures,we're not any healthier. In fact, rates of many chronic diseases haveonly increased over time, and based on health biomarkers like obesity,diabetes, and hypertension, they may be headed for further increases.The prevalence of obese individuals increased from 13 percent of the U.S.population in 1962 to a staggering 34 percent in 2008. The U.S. Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that the age-adjustedType 2 diabetes rate in the United States has more than doubled from 1980to 2010, from 2.5 percent to 6.9 percent of the population. Hypertension(high blood pressure) among American adults increased 30 percentbetween 1997 and 2009. Drugs and surgical advances are keeping the death rates more or lessconstant despite the increased risk factors (except for diabetes, whosemortality rate has increased an astounding 29 percent in North Americafrom 2007 to 2010). But the data make it clear that none of our advancesin medicine deal with primary prevention, and none are making us fundamentallyhealthier. They aren't decreasing the death rate. And the pricewe're paying for these advances is steep. For many years, the cost of medically prescribed drugs has beenincreasing at a rate faster than inflation. Think we're getting our money'sworth? Think again. Side effects of those very same prescription drugs are the third leadingcause of death, behind heart disease and cancer. That's right! Prescriptiondrugs kill more people than traffic accidents. According to Dr. BarbaraStarfield, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in2000, "adverse effects of medications" (from drugs that were correctlyprescribed and taken) kill 106,000 people per year. And that doesn'tinclude accidental overdoses. Add to that the 7,000 annual deaths from medication errors in hospitals,20,000 deaths from errors in hospitals not related to medications (likebotched surgeries and incorrectly programmed and monitored machines),80,000 deaths from hospital-caused infections, and 2,000 deaths per yearfrom unnecessary surgery, and the tire-screeching ambulance ride startsto look like the safest part of the whole hospital experience. Yet when you ask the U.S. government about this, you're met withdeafening denial. Look at the CDC web page on the leading causes ofdeath shown in Figure 1-1. Notice anything strange? Not a peep about the medical system beingthe third leading cause of death in the United States. Admitting that wouldbe bad for business, and if the U.S. government cares about one thinghere, it's the economic interests of the medical establishment. But what about when medical care doesn't kill? Surely the benefits tomillions outweigh a few hundred thousand deaths each year? Visit a nursing home or geriatric center to see for yourself how wellthe system serves those who need it most. You'll feel the physical andemotional pain of once-vibrant people suffering needlessly with ailmentsand illnesses caused in large part by the pharmaceutical cocktails theytake. Who can blame them? Doctors know best, right? And how manydaytime TV commercials promoting drugs to decrease their blood cholesterol,drive down their blood sugar, and increase their sex drive havethey watched? I could go on and on. But I think you get the picture: the more wespend on disease care, the sicker and more miserable we seem to become. THE GOOD NEWS All our trillions of dollars are not improving our health outcomes. Thepromised breakthroughs are always a decade away and recede just as fastas we chase them. Genetic research has led to nightmarish anti-privacyscenarios, as well as tragic misunderstandings in which mothers are havingtheir young daughters' breasts chopped off just because some geneticistpricked their daughters' fingers, tested their DNA, and scared them halfto death with predictions of possible future breast cancer. That's all pretty depressing, I admit. The good news is that we don't need medical breakthroughs or geneticmanipulation to achieve, maintain, and restore vibrant health. A halfcentury of research—both mine and that of many others—has convincedme of the following: • What you eat every day is a far more powerful determinant of yourhealth than your DNA or most of the nasty chemicals lurking in yourenvironment. • The foods you consume can heal you faster and more profoundlythan the most expensive prescription drugs, and more dramaticallythan the most extreme surgical interventions, with only positiveside effects. • Those food choices can prevent cancer, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes,stroke, macular degeneration, migraines, erectile dysfunction, andarthritis—and that's only the short list. • It's never too late to start eating well. A good diet can reverse manyof those conditions as well. In short: change the way you eat and you can transform your healthfor the better. THE IDEAL HUMAN DIET For some reason, "health food" has a reputation for being tasteless andjoyless. You might be thinking at this point that the miracle diet forhuman health must be the most grim fare imaginable. Fortunately, that'snot the case. Evolution thankfully has programmed us to seek out andenjoy foods that promote our health. All we have to do is get back to ourdietary roots—nothing radical or miserable required. The ideal human diet looks like this: Consume plant-based foodsin forms as close to their natural state as possible ("whole" foods). Eata variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes,and whole grains. Avoid heavily processed foods and animal products.Stay away from added salt, oil, and sugar. Aim to get 80 percent of yourcalories from carbohydrates, 10 percent from fat, and 10 percent fromprotein. That's it, in 66 words. In this book I call it the whole food, plant-based(WFPB) diet, and sometimes the WFPB lifestyle (I'm not crazy aboutthe word diet , which implies a heroic and temporary effort rather than asustainable and joyful way of eating). IF THE WFPB WERE A PILL Just how healthy is the WFPB diet? Let's pretend that all its effects couldbe achieved through a drug. Imagine a big pharmaceutical companyholding a press conference to unveil a new pill called Eunutria. Theyunveil a list of scientifically proven effects of Eunutria that includes thefollowing: • Prevents 95 percent of all cancers, including those "caused" by environmentaltoxins • Prevents nearly all heart attacks and strokes • Reverses even severe heart disease • Prevents and reverses Type 2 diabetes so quickly and profoundly that,after three days on this drug, it's dangerous for users to continue touse insulin What about side effects, you ask? Of course there are side effects.They include: • Gets you to your ideal weight in a healthy and sustainable fashion • Eliminates most migraines, acne, colds and flu, chronic pain, andintestinal distress • Improves energy • Cures erectile dysfunction (that makes the pill a blockbuster successall by itself!) Those are just the side effects for individuals taking the pill. There arealso environmental effects: • Slows and possibly reverses global warming • Reduces groundwater contamination • Ends the need for deforestation • Shuts down factory farms • Reduces malnutrition and dislocation among the world's poorestcitizens How healthy is the WFPB diet? It's hard to imagine anything healthier—oranything more effective at addressing our biggest health issues. Notonly is WFPB the healthiest way of eating that has ever been studied, butit's far more effective in promoting health and preventing disease thanprescription drugs, surgery, vitamin and herbal supplementation, andgenetic manipulation. If the WFPB diet were a pill, its inventor would be the wealthiestperson on earth. Since it isn't a pill, no market forces conspire to advocatefor it. No mass media campaign promotes it. No insurance coverage paysfor it. Since it isn't a pill, and nobody has figured out how to get hugelywealthy by showing people how to eat it, the truth has been buried byhalf-truths, unverified claims, and downright lies. The concerted effortof many powerful interests to ignore, discredit, and hide the truth hasworked so far. WHY THE WFPB DIET MAKES SENSE I have spent the last few decades studying the effects of the WFPB diet;for me, the diet's results are convincing based solely on the data. But it'sstill helpful to explore the question of why. Why is the WFPB diet thehealthiest way for humans to eat? Based on my training in biochemistry,I have a few conjectures that can be boiled down to one concept: oxidationgone awry. Oxidation is the process by which atoms and molecules lose electronsas they come into contact with other atoms and molecules; it's one of themost basic chemical reactions in the universe. When you cut an apple andit turns brown in contact with air or when your car fender rusts, you'rewitnessing oxidation at work. Oxidation happens within our bodies as well.Some of it is natural and good; oxidation facilitates the transfer of energywithin the body. Oxidation also gets rid of potentially harmful foreignsubstances in the body by making them water soluble (and therefore ableto be excreted in urine). Excessive uncontrolled oxidation, however, is theenemy of health and longevity in humans, just as excessive oxidation turnsyour new car into a junker and your apple slice into compost. Oxidationproduces something called free radicals, which we know are responsiblefor encouraging aging, promoting cancer, and rupturing plaques that leadto strokes and heart attacks, among other adverse effects impacting a hostof autoimmune and neurologic diseases. So how might a plant-based diet protect us from the disease- causingeffects of free radicals? For one thing, there is some evidence that high-proteindiets enhance free radical production, thus encouraging unwantedtissue damage. But it's virtually impossible to eat a high-protein diet ifyou're consuming mostly whole, plant-based foods. Even if you munchedon legumes, beans, and nuts all day, you'd be hard pressed to get morethan 12–15 percent or so of your calories from protein. But there's much more to whole, plant-based foods than the high-proteinanimal foods they replace. It turns out that plants also produceharmful free radicals—in their case, during photosynthesis. To counteractthat free radical production, plants have evolved a defense mechanism:a whole battery of compounds capable of preventing damage by bindingto and neutralizing the free radicals. These compounds are known, notparticularly poetically, as antioxidants. When we and other mammals consume plants, we also consumethe antioxidants in those plants. And they serve us just as faithfully andeffectively as they serve the plants, protecting us from free radicals andslowing down the aging process in our cells. Remarkably, they have noeffect on the useful oxidative processes I talked about earlier. They onlyneutralize the harmful products of excessive oxidation. It seems reasonable to assume that our bodies never went to thetrouble of making antioxidants because they were so readily available inwhat, for most of our history, was our primary food source: plants. It'sonly when we shifted to a diet rich in animal-based food and processedfood fragments that we tilted the game in favor of oxidation. The excessprotein in our diet has promoted excess oxidation, and we no longerconsume enough plant-produced antioxidants to contain and neutralizethe damage. It's important to remember, however, that this is just a theory. The mostimportant thing is not why the WFPB diet works so much as the fact thatit does work. The evidence is clear about the WFPB diet's effectiveness—whateverspecific reasons there may be. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS When I lecture publicly, I'm often asked about the numbers. Many peoplewant precise formulas and rules. How many ounces of leafy greensshould I eat daily? What proportion of my diet should be fat, protein, orcarbohydrate? How much vitamin C and magnesium do I need? Shouldcertain foods be matched with other foods and, if so, in what proportion?And the number one question I'm asked is, "Do I need to eat 100 percentplant-based to obtain the health benefits you talk about?" If you're asking those questions right now, here's my answer: relax.When it comes to numbers, I am reluctant to be too precise, mostlybecause (1) we don't yet have scientific evidence that fully answers thesequestions; (2) virtually nothing in biology is as precise as we try to makeit seem; and (3) as far as the evidence suggests at this point, eating theWFPB way eliminates the need to worry about the details. Just eat lots ofdifferent plant foods; your body will do all the math for you! As far as whether one should strive to eat 100 percent plant-basedinstead of something less—say, 95–98 percent—my answer is that I amnot aware of reliable scientific evidence showing that such purity is absolutelynecessary, at least in most situations. (Exceptions would includepatients with cancer, heart disease, and other potentially fatal ailments,for whom any deviation can lead to worsening or relapse.) I do believe,however, that the closer we get to a WFPB diet, the healthier we will be.I say this not because we have foolproof scientific evidence of this, butbecause of the effect on our taste buds. When we go the whole way, ourtaste buds change and remain changed, as we begin to acquire new tastesthat are much more compatible with our health. You wouldn't advise aheavy smoker who wants to quit to continue smoking one cigarette perday. It's much easier to go 100 percent than 99 percent, and you're muchmore likely to succeed in the long run. I'm also often asked whether I consider the WFPB diet to be vegetarianor vegan. When describing the WFPB diet, I prefer not to usethe "V" words. Most vegetarians still consume dairy, eggs, too muchadded oil, refined carbohydrates, and processed foods. Although veganseliminate all animal-based foods, they also often continue to consumeadded fat (including all cooking oils), refined carbohydrates (sugar andrefined flour), salt, and processed foods. The phrase whole food, plant-based is one I introduced to my colleagues as a member of a NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH) cancer-research grant review panel from 1978to 1980. Like me, they were reluctant to use the words vegetarian and vegan , or assign a particular value to the ideology that lies behind muchvegetarian and vegan practice. I was interested in describing the remarkablehealth effects of this diet in reference to the scientific evidence, ratherthan in reference to personal and philosophical ideologies—howevernoble they may be. (Continues...) Excerpted from WHOLE by T. COLIN CAMPBELL, HOWARD JACOBSON . Copyright © 2013 T. Colin Campbell. Excerpted by permission of BenBella Books, Inc.. All rights reserved. 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