Whole Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

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.

—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

—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 herein—backed up by extraordinary peer-reviewed science—has 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 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 Idiots Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and host of What Would Julieanna Do?

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.

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.