Entire: Rethinking the Science of Diet

Highly informative look into impact of nutrition on health and health policy in the US
Whole is a provocative reflection on nutrition and its role in health. The author gives a highly critical account of health policy and nutrition in the United States from his long experience in both policy, medicine and biochemical and nutritional research. The book is balanced, the author tries to be objective to the extent possible when one has an entrenched view, and full of evidence. The account is fairly damning of reductionist western medicine’s philosophy on health and methodology for curing disease. The author believes the complexity of the human body does not lend itself to targeted cures based on the body having missing ingredients and believes we need to view the body wholistically and that nutrition is the most import determinant of health. Furthermore good nutrition is founded in a whole foods and plant based diet and that animal meat and dairy are key sources of free radicals. Unfortunately after reading this it is pretty hard not to rethink your diet so practically the book is inconvenient but of course the lessons learned are truly invaluable.The book is separated into 4 sections which the first and last are an introduction and conclusion. The first core content section is titled Paradigm as a Prison. The author goes about discussing the current western paradigm of medicine and health for which reductionism is king. The author discusses how reductionism makes sense for certain kinds of problems but when faced with complexity of a level that is incomprehensible reductionism leads to misunderstanding and is akin to people being blinded trying to understand an elephant by considering a small part. The author shows some metabolic charts and describes some of his early research regarding a potential carcinogen and how the concepts of cause and effect turned out to be so much more nuanced than initially believed. There is no question that reductionist science has been the way of progress for science from the enlightenment with its champion being physics but there is definitely a growing appreciation of the intrinsic difficulty to understand the details of complex dynamical systems in other parts of applied math and science more broadly. The author notes that though broad based health studies don’t use the same kinds of statistics and chemical analysis to try to argue their point, they give a robust view of how health is impacted by diet and his China Study gives a form of insight into nutrition and health that is of extreme importance. In particular the author argues convincingly that nutrition can’t be understood by decomposing the orange as the nutrition absorbed by the parts is different from the whole and that a whole foods and plant based diet leads to much lower cancer rates. These are the results from his China Study which looked at health across China as a function of different diets. Its almost impossible for someone to believe that nutrition doesn’t impact health but nonetheless the author notes as a general point that cancer rates of ethnic groups are a function of their local conditions and eating habits. The more contentious point is not about the importance of nutrition for health but on its magnitude of influence and its speed of effectiveness. The author believes that cancer rates are predominantly determined by nutrition, not partially and that a turn to a whole foods and plant based diet can have quick turnaround effect. As a consequence of these two fundamental differences he believes health policy needs to be totally changed.This takes the author into his next section which is a description of the status quo. It is fairly damning and many of the institutions most people think are promoting worthy goals the author takes apart. Many people will likely be offended but the authors arguments are clear and most are persuasive. The author argues that the current policies in place focus on health care after health issues surface rather than the recipe that people should follow to prevent health problems from arising. The author also argues that from multiple directions the whole foods plant based diet will help the planet and that includes environmental noting the methane emissions from the dairy industry. The author argues that the current health care system and reductionist medicine already is the third largest killer in the United States though that is not a recognized fact though there is strong evidence to suggest it. The author argues that the funding of research science lends itself to trials with narrow goals and is funded by a combination of the government and drug companies (which are subsidized by the government) and narrow goals are perpetuated by self interest. The medical profession is also biased by its self interest and as a consequence not for profit foundations, headed by doctors, continue to pursue solutions that are within the current western paradigm to the detriment of the health of society. The author argues that the research centers, both university and professional, the medical profession, the government, many of the large charities and the media are all doing society a disservice with their current approach (some more consciously than others).Whole is a great book that makes the reader re-think a lot of things that are taught to them throughout their lives with strong evidence. One comes away with more healthy skepticism and some reinforced beliefs about the role of diet in healthy living. Unfortunately the diet proposed is pretty hard to follow so unfortunately most of us will fail at it due to problems of self control, but nonetheless important lessons are learned from this and a more realistic perspective of the medical profession and current policy are formed. Definitely recommend this

Great book, with lots of useful information. A must after the China study.Bought it second-hand. The book came in good condition, but I did expect a better-looking cover. Delivery was delayed.

Hello.This review is a bit longer and it gives an overview of the book.I encourage you to read it till the end.”An old story: Six blind men are asked to describe an elephant. Each feels a different body part: leg, tusk, trunk, tail, ear, and belly. Predictably, each offers a vastly different assessment: pillar, pipe, tree branch, rope, fan, and wall. They argue vigorously, each sure that their experience alone is the correct one. I can’t think of a better metaphor to highlight the big problem with scientific research today. Except that instead of six blind men, modern science tasks 60,000 researchers to examine the elephant, each through a different lens.”As a result, our knowledge or information about health and medicines is all complicated and messed up. Now, no one is responsible for it,not even the researchers or the doctors.We all live on a planet which is ruled by paradigms. And we all accept these paradigms to be the absolute truth.Like we are told in our childhood that drinking milk is good and then we form paradigms that milk is something very essential and we cannot be healthy without it.Do you know that, one of the most active reason for cancer is casein ( from animals ) and drinking milk has been associated with causing cancer.Many of us are unaware of this fact because these experiments are not published in magazines and newspapers.The milk industry is worth Billions of dollars and you can reason out that everything is somehow connected.Let me tell you that how paradigms work.They work effortlessly and smoothly because they face no or very less resistance from any outer source. We believe that what we know is the truth and never question ourselves or others. In its broadest sense, a paradigm is a mental filter that restricts what you are able to see at any one time.This may sound strange but have you ever asked yourself that why do I need to drink this milk, and even if I need to drink it then why only of the cow and buffalo? What crime has the dog and the sheep done that I avoid their milk?Let me give another example-“In a 2005 commencement address, the late novelist David Foster Wallace told a story that gets to the heart of how paradigms work: “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”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.Coming to the book, it talks of Nutrition and why it is so important.The author also discusses the various paradigmsand shows that many researches show what they want to show and not the truth.He talks of his own experience as a researcher.He explains the right diet and the correct foods that we should be eating.The knowledge provided in the book is against many known paradigms ,so read it with an open mind.Reading it will surely benefit you, both in the short term and the long term.Thank you for reading this review.

We already owe a lot to Dr. COLIN Campbell for The China Study.This book is also a great work and easy to understand for non scientific people like me.