Synopses & Reviews
New York Times Bestseller
What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine.
Every apple contains thousands of antioxidants whose names, beyond a few like vitamin C, are unfamiliar to us, and each of these powerful chemicals has the potential to play an important role in supporting our health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isnt nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, there is an almost infinite number of possible biological consequences.
And thats just from an apple.
Nutritional science, long stuck in a reductionist mindset, is at the cusp of a revolution. The traditional gold standard” of nutrition research has been to study one chemical at a time in an attempt to determine its particular impact on the human body. These sorts of studies are helpful to food companies trying to prove there is a chemical in milk or pre-packaged dinners that is good” for us, but they provide little insight into the complexity of what actually happens in our bodies or how those chemicals contribute to our health.
In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell (alongside his son, Thomas M. Campbell) revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits havent changed.
Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.
"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)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Dr. Campbell succeeds in taking a fresh, honest look at the science of nutrition, as he unveils the startling truth behind sickness and reveals a sure-fire way to achieve the excellent health you deserve.”
Chef AJ, Author of Unprocessed
Whole should be required reading for anyone interested in health ... I predict that this book will be the catalyst for millions of people to not only change their diets, but how they think about and make decisions concerning health and medicine. The revolution that will reform our broken healthcare system has begun.”
Pamela A. Popper, PhD, ND, Executive Director of The Wellness Forum; Coauthor of Food Over Medicine
"Why is the most expensive health care system in the world not working? This book provides scientific 'big picture' clarity amidst a sea of confusion about how commercially driven 'disease management' is costing us millions of lives—while wasting trillions of dollars. Understanding how this 'health care monster' operates is the first step toward creating a system that truly promotes health."
J. Morris Hicks, consultant, author of Healthy Eating, Healthy World and international blogger at hpjmh.com
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
Americas 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; theres 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. Campbells 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 hereinbacked up by extraordinary peer-reviewed sciencehas the power to halt and reverse disease, give you energy youve 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 philosophywholismwhich 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 Idiots Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and host of What Would Julieanna Do?
It seemed to be the eternal question: What should we eat to optimize our nutrition and our health? In 2005, T. Colin Campbell's The China Study
answered this question definitively. Backed by the most extensive study of nutrition ever conducted and bolstered by dozens of additional studies and cases, The China Study
gave us a simple but powerful answer: Eat a diet based on whole, plant-based food, and dramatically reduce your risk of a broad spectrum of diseases, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
Whole picks up where The China Study left off. The China Study revealed what we should eat and provided the powerful empirical support for this answer. Whole answers the question of why. Why does a whole-food, plant-based diet provide optimal nutrition? Whole demonstrates how far the scientific reductionism of the nutrition orthodoxy has gotten offtrack and reveals the elegant wonders of the true holistic workings of nutrition, from the cellular level to the operation of the entire organism. Whole is a marvelous journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, led by one of the masters of the science.
About the Author
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.