T. Colin Campbell Quotes & Sayings

Casein [the main protein found in dairy], in fact, is the most 'relevant' chemical carcinogen ever identified; its cancer-producin g effects occur in animals at consumption levels close to normal-striking ly unlike cancer-causing environmental chemicals that are fed to lab animals at a few hundred or even a few thousand times their normal levels of consumption. — T. Colin Campbell

dairy intake is "one of the most consistent dietary predictors for prostate cancer in the published literature," and those who consume the most dairy have double to quadruple the risk. — T. Colin Campbell

We now had impressive evidence that low protein intake could markedly decrease enzyme activity and prevent dangerous carcinogen binding to DNA. — T. Colin Campbell

And as a nutritional researcher, I was surprised at first by the popularity and commercial success of the low-carb diet, especially given its serious flaws. The research on high-protein, high-fat diets has consistently demonstrated that they have disastrous health effects and fail to secure compliance and long-term weight loss. — T. Colin Campbell

Protein during promotion trumps the carcinogen, regardless of initial exposure. — T. Colin Campbell

These findings - the contents of Part II of this book - show that heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reversed by a healthy diet. — T. Colin Campbell

It's never too late to start eating well. A good diet can reverse many of those conditions as well. In short: change the way you eat and you can transform your health for the better. — T. Colin Campbell

Physician error, medication error and adverse events from drugs or surgery kill 225,400 people per year (Chart 1.5).11 That makes our health care system the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind only cancer and heart disease (Chart 1.4 — T. Colin Campbell

Every kilogram of beef requires 100,000 liters of water to produce. By comparison, a kilogram of wheat requires just 900 liters, and a kilogram of potatoes just 500 liters. — T. Colin Campbell

The national debate on health-care reform wildly misses the mark, with Democrats and Republicans alike arguing about who's going to pay rather than about what would actually make people healthy. — T. Colin Campbell

The problem is that we are asking the wrong questions - questions based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the wholistic nature of nutrition. We're asking, "How much vitamin C are we getting?" when we should be asking, "What foods should we be eating to support our bodies' ability to maintain health? — T. Colin Campbell

Much of my early career was spent working with two of the most toxic chemicals ever discovered, dioxin and aflatoxin. I initially worked at MIT, where I was assigned a chicken feed puzzle. Millions of chicks a year were dying from an unknown toxic chemical in their feed, and I had the responsibility of isolating and determining the structure of this chemical. After two and a half years, I helped discover dioxin, arguably the most toxic chemical ever found. This chemical has since received widespread attention, especially because it was part of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, or Agent Orange, then being used to defoliate forests in the Vietnam War. — T. Colin Campbell

Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go ... We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods ... — T. Colin Campbell

As you will come to see, much is governed by the Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. — T. Colin Campbell

At this point, any scientist, doctor, journalist, or policy maker who denies or minimizes the importance of a whole food, plant-based diet for individual and societal well-being simply isn't looking clearly at the facts. There's just too much good evidence to ignore anymore. — T. Colin Campbell

There is almost no direct relationship between the amount of a nutrient consumed at a meal and the amount that actually reaches its main site of action in the body - what is called its bioavailability. — T. Colin Campbell

physicians, Drs. Bill Castelli, Bill Roberts and Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., that in their long careers they had never seen a heart disease fatality among their patients who had blood cholesterol levels below 150 mg/dL. Dr. Castelli was the long-time director of the famous Framingham Heart Study of NIH; Dr. Esselstyn was a renowned surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic who did a remarkable study reversing heart disease (chapter five); Dr. Roberts has long been editor of the prestigious medical journal Cardiology. BLOOD CHOLESTEROL AND DIET — T. Colin Campbell

When absurdities get repeated often enough, they start sounding like truth. — T. Colin Campbell

Refined carbohydrates are the starches and sugars obtained from plants by mechanically stripping off their outer layers, which contain most of the plant's vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber. This "food" (regular sugar, white flour, etc.) has very little nutritional value. Foods such as pastas made from refined flour, sugary cereals, white bread, candies and sugar-laden soft drinks should be avoided as much as possible. But do eat whole, complex carbohydrate-containing foods such as unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grain products like brown rice and oatmeal. These unprocessed carbohydrates, especially from fruits and vegetables, are exceptionally health-promoting. — T. Colin Campbell

Costs have so consistently outpaced inflation that we now spend one out of every seven dollars the economy produces on health care — T. Colin Campbell

Cows' milk protein may be the single most significant chemical carcinogen to which humans are exposed. — T. Colin Campbell

Western culture is hell-bent on ignoring, disbelieving, and, in some cases, actively twisting the truth about what we should be eating - so much so that it can be hard for us to believe that we've been lied to all these years. — T. Colin Campbell

Plant- and animal-based foods are hugely different in terms of their nutrient contents, and watching what foods you consume is far more important than obsessing over calorie-counting without respect to where those calories come from. — T. Colin Campbell

DURING THE PAST TWO TO THREE DECADES, we have acquired substantial evidence that most chronic diseases in America can be partially attributed to bad nutrition. Expert government panels have said it, the surgeon general has said it and academic scientists have said it. More people die because of the way they eat than by tobacco use, accidents or any other lifestyle or environmental factor. — T. Colin Campbell

Nutrition is not a mathematical equation in which two plus two is four. The food we put in our mouths doesn't control our nutrition - not entirely. What our bodies do with that food does. — T. Colin Campbell

There's only one thing that we have to do in life, and that is to die. — T. Colin Campbell

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), included a recent article by Barbara Starfield, M.D., stating that physician error, medication error and adverse events from drugs or surgery kill 225,400 people per year (Chart 1.5).11 That makes our health care system the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind only cancer and heart disease — T. Colin Campbell

You can't be protein deficient without being calorie deficient because even if you take the foods that have the least amount of protein in them, let's say potatoes, for example, or rice at 8 or 9%. That's the figure we more or less need. — T. Colin Campbell

So removing vitamin E from its context within plant foods is like sending a general into battle without any troops. — T. Colin Campbell

In short, it is about the multiple health benefits of consuming plant-based foods, and the largely unappreciated health dangers of consuming animal-based foods, including all types of meat, dairy and eggs. — T. Colin Campbell

I was raised on a dairy farm and ate plenty of meat and eggs until about twenty years ago. I started doing nutritional research, and a decade pr so after that my family made some major dietary changes. I'm just paying attention to what the data are telling me: The scientific evidence came first. — T. Colin Campbell

Foci development was almost entirely dependent on how much protein was consumed, regardless of how much aflatoxin was consumed! — T. Colin Campbell

The people who eat the most animal protein have the most heart disease, cancer and diabetes. — T. Colin Campbell

Part of our current paradigm is that bad stuff in the environment causes cancer, and the more enlightened elements involved in the war on cancer seek to reduce our exposure to that bad stuff. Not part of our current paradigm is that the food we eat is a much more powerful determinant of cancer than just about any environmental toxin. — T. Colin Campbell

Nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development. In — T. Colin Campbell

Instead, the secret of health has been in front of us all along, in the guise of a simple and perhaps boring word: nutrition. When — T. Colin Campbell

Even rational, data-driven scientists could be sent into prolonged states of hysteria when presented with evidence that their favorite foods might be killing them. — T. Colin Campbell

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. — T. Colin Campbell

The answer to the American health crisis is the food that each of us chooses to put in our mouths each day. It's as simple as that. — T. Colin Campbell

The evidence cited here represents only an infinitesimally small fraction of the total number of interactions operating every moment in our bodies. Clearly, the common belief that we can investigate the effects of a single nutrient or drug, unmindful of the potential modifications by other chemical factors, is foolhardy. This evidence should also make us extremely hesitant to "mega-dose" on nutrients isolated from whole foods. Our bodies have evolved to eat whole foods, and can therefore deal with the combinations and interactions of nutrients contained in those foods. — T. Colin Campbell

(I'm not crazy about the word diet, which implies a heroic and temporary effort rather than a sustainable and joyful way of eating). — T. Colin Campbell

I know of nothing else in medicine that can come close to what a plant-based diet can do. In theory, if everyone were to adopt this, I really believe we can cut health care costs by seventy to eighty percent. That's amazing. And it all comes from understanding nutrition, applying nutrition, and just watching the results. — T. Colin Campbell

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. — T. Colin Campbell

I have heard one doctor call high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets "make-yourself-sick" diets, and I think that's an appropriate moniker. You can also lose weight by undergoing chemotherapy or starting a heroin addiction, but I wouldn't recommend those, either. — T. Colin Campbell

We don't need to know the effects of single agents on health, because this is not the way that nature works. Nutrition has a wholistic effect on health; one that we consistently miss and misinterpret when we focus on isolated nutrients. — T. Colin Campbell

If we limit our sight to individual players, we'll never see the big picture. The issue is a systemic one, maintained by interconnected actors, all acting in their self-interest to further their goals. The trouble is not, or not always, the actors themselves, or their intrinsic motivations. Instead, it's the overarching goal of the entire system that's at fault: corporate profit above public health. — T. Colin Campbell

With industry's sales and marketing machines cloaked in mantles of charitable virtue, no wonder most Americans don't realize that the junk that passes for food is in fact the biggest contributor to our health crisis, and the junk that passes for medicine keeps us just well enough to continue to spend on both the food and the medicine. — T. Colin Campbell

Focusing on individual nutrients, their identities, their contents in food, their tissue concentrations, and their biological mechanisms, is like using math and physics to catch balls. It's not the way nature evolved, and it makes proper nutrition far more difficult than it needs to be. Our bodies use countless mechanisms, strategically placed throughout our digestion, absorption, and transport and metabolic pathways, to effortlessly ensure tissue concentrations consistent with good health - no database consultation required. But as long as we let reductionism guide our research and our understanding of nutrition, good health will remain unattainable. — T. Colin Campbell

One way to identify the optimal human diet, pretty obvious to all but fundamentalist reductionists, is to survey and compare populations as they already exist, and see what they eat and how healthy they are. — T. Colin Campbell

What you eat every day is a far more powerful determinant of your health than your DNA or most of the nasty chemicals lurking in your environment. — T. Colin Campbell

No chemical carcinogen is nearly so important in causing human cancer as animal protein. — T. Colin Campbell

This is also the case with our disease-care system: it focuses on treating symptoms as if they were root causes, and as a result, it tends to choose interventions that completely ignore the true root causes and thus make it highly likely that symptoms will reappear. — T. Colin Campbell

Let's start with the most prominent ecological crisis of our time: global warming. When you look seriously at the numbers, you find that switching from a meat-based to a plant-based diet would do more to curb and reverse global warming than any other initiative. — T. Colin Campbell

The health care establishment is structured to profit from chemical and surgical intervention. Diet still takes the back seat to drugs and surgery. One criticism that is constantly leveled at the dietary argument is that patients will not make such fundamental changes. One doctor charges that Dr. Esselstyn's patients change their eating habits simply because of Esselstyn's "zealous belief."47 This criticism is not only wrong and insulting to patients; it is also self-fulfilling. If doctors do not believe that patients will change their diets, they will neglect to talk about diet, or will do it in an off-handed, disparaging way. — T. Colin Campbell

Science and theology are both lenses through which to interact with and interpret reality, sort of like a microscope and a pair of binoculars. Both sets of lenses tell us more about the world than we could see with the naked eye, but the information we get from each can diverge considerably. — T. Colin Campbell

If you flip a coin three times and it lands on heads each time, it's probably chance. If you flip it a hundred times and it lands on heads each time, you can be pretty sure the coin has heads on both sides. That's the concept behind statistical significance - it's the odds that the correlation (or other finding) is real, that it isn't just random chance. — T. Colin Campbell

worse than any pressure exerted by the tobacco industry. — T. Colin Campbell

Casein, and very likely all animal proteins, may be the most relevant cancer-causing substances that we consume. — T. Colin Campbell

The ideal human diet looks like this: Consume plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible ("whole" foods). Eat a 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 your calories from carbohydrates, 10 percent from fat, and 10 percent from protein. — T. Colin Campbell

Genetic medicine is the ultimate reductionist fantasy. — T. Colin Campbell

For an enzyme to be functional, it must fold into a precise three-dimensional shape. How such a complex folding can take place remains a mystery. A small chain of 150 amino acids making up an enzyme has an extraordinary number of possible folding configurations: if it tested 1,012 different configurations every second, it would take about 1,026 years to find the right one. . . . Yet, a denatured enzyme can refold within fractions of a second and then precisely react in a chemical reaction. . . . [I]t demonstrates a stunning complexity and harmony in the universe.21 — T. Colin Campbell

Perhaps it is a testament to the power of modern marketing savvy that an obese man with heart disease and high blood pressure became one of the richest snake oil salesmen ever to live, selling a diet that promises to help you lose weight, to keep your heart healthy and to normalize your blood pressure. — T. Colin Campbell

But if I tell them about dozens and dozens of studies showing that the countries with low rates of heart disease consume low amounts of animal-based foods, and dozens and dozens of studies showing that individuals who eat more whole, plant-based foods get less heart disease, and I go on to document still more studies showing that a diet low in animal-based foods and high in unprocessed plant-based foods can slow or reverse heart disease, then people are more inclined to pay some attention. — T. Colin Campbell

The solution to losing weight is a whole foods, plant-based diet, coupled with a reasonable amount of exercise. It is a long-term lifestyle change, rather than a quick-fix fad, and it can provide sustained weight loss while minimizing risk of chronic disease. — T. Colin Campbell

One of the more exciting benefits of good nutrition is the prevention of diseases that are thought to be due to genetic predisposition. We now know that we can largely avoid these "genetic" diseases even though we may harbor the gene (or genes) that is (are) responsible for the disease. — T. Colin Campbell

We need to make nutrition the central element of our health-care system. Furthermore, — T. Colin Campbell

A plant-based diet is more likely to produce good health and to reduce sharply the risk of heart problems, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, gallstones, and kidney disease. — T. Colin Campbell

What is clear is that diets naturally high in fiber and low in animal-based foods can prevent colorectal cancer. — T. Colin Campbell

We had fully confirmed the original work from India and had done it in exceptional depth. Let there be no doubt: cow's milk protein is an exceptionally potent cancer promoter in rats dosed with aflatoxin. The fact that this promotion effect occurs at dietary protein levels (10-20%) commonly used both in rodents and humans makes it especially tantalizing - and provocative. — T. Colin Campbell

A good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness. — T. Colin Campbell

Excessive animal protein is at the core of many chronic diseases. — T. Colin Campbell

We've discovered that cow's milk protein at reasonable levels of intake markedly promotes experimental cancer growth, which is outside of the nutrition paradigm. We've discovered that experimental cancer growth can be turned on and off by altering practical levels of nutrient intake, and can be treated by nutritional means, which is outside of the cancer treatment paradigm. — T. Colin Campbell

Population studies begun forty to fifty years ago show that when people migrate from one country to another, they acquire the cancer rate of the country to which they move, despite the fact their genes remain the same. — T. Colin Campbell

In brief, the relationship between amount consumed and amount used for virtually all nutrients is not a linear relationship. — T. Colin Campbell

The distinction between government, industry, science and medicine have become blurred. — T. Colin Campbell

What made this project especially remarkable is that, among the many associations that are relevant to diet and disease, so many pointed to the same finding: people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. Even relatively small intakes of animal-based food were associated with adverse effects. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored. From the initial experimental animal studies on animal protein effects to this massive human study on dietary patterns, the findings proved to be consistent. The health implications of consuming either animal or plant-based nutrients were remarkably different. — T. Colin Campbell

These studies showed that people who migrated from one area to another and who started eating the typical diet of their new residency assumed the disease risk of the area to which they moved. — T. Colin Campbell

Furthermore, a pattern was beginning to emerge: nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development. — T. Colin Campbell

Scientists can argue philosophy all day long, but what really counts is evidence. This begs the question: What counts as evidence? What ways of looking for answers are considered good or bad science? Which methods are appropriate for what subjects of exploration? The answers to these questions are themselves quite subjective, even if science believes itself to be an objective, value-free pursuit. They depend heavily on the questions being asked, and also on how the answers are sought. — T. Colin Campbell

I have come to see that the benefits produced by eating a plant-based diet are far more diverse and impressive than any drug or surgery used in medical practice. Heart diseases, cancers, diabetes, stroke and hypertension, arthritis, cataracts, Alzheimer's disease, impotence and all sorts of other chronic diseases can be largely prevented. These diseases, which generally occur with aging and tissue degeneration, kill the majority of us before our time. — T. Colin Campbell

a lot of so-called health breakthroughs are not nearly as impressive as their marketing makes them appear. While it may be good business to spin the numbers to increase sales, it isn't good science. One — T. Colin Campbell

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 crippling, painful and lengthy battles with disease. There are many better ways to die, and to live. — T. Colin Campbell

In the next ten years, one of the things you're bound to hear is that animal protein is one of the most toxic nutrients of all that can be considered. Quite simply, the more you substitute plant foods for animal foods, the healthier you are likely to be. — T. Colin Campbell

That's another pitfall of reductionism: Until scientists have the means to isolate and measure things, they insist those things don't and can't exist, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant an superstitious. — T. Colin Campbell

In every respect, vegans appear to enjoy equal or better health in comparison to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. — T. Colin Campbell

Other countries spend, on average, only about one-half of what the U.S. spends per capita on health care. Isn't it reasonable, therefore, for us to expect our system to rank above theirs? Unfortunately, among these twelve countries, the U.S. system is consistently among the worst performers. — T. Colin Campbell

The increasing fascination with and funding of genetic technology is simply another medical dead end, another reductionist rabbit hole that will lead us no further toward preventing and reversing chronic illness. — T. Colin Campbell

Americans love to hear good things about their bad habits. — T. Colin Campbell

Once people start introducing animal products into their diet, that's when the mischief starts. — T. Colin Campbell

In one study of ten countries,14 a higher consumption of calcium was associated with a higher - not lower - risk of bone fracture (Chart 10.3 — T. Colin Campbell

You can't patent a recommendation to eat lots of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. So there's no incentive for industry to invest in such research and no incentive for researchers to study and validate such claims. — T. Colin Campbell

I don't care if you eat worms and cardboard; if you eat 35% fewer calories, you will lose weight and your cholesterol levels will improve50 in the short run, but that is not to say that worms and cardboard form a healthy diet. — T. Colin Campbell

First, nutrition is the master key to human health. Second, what most of us think of as proper nutrition - isn't. — T. Colin Campbell

Real scientists investigate parts, not wholes. But this diminishes the goals of true science. What most scientists are doing today really should be called technology, not science. — T. Colin Campbell

Men with the highest dairy intakes had approximately double the risk of total prostate cancer, — T. Colin Campbell