Whole

Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

By: T. Colin Campbell PhD/PhD, Howard Jacobson

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine.

Whole, a New York Times bestseller and an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, is a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.

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 isn’t 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 that’s 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 prepackaged 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 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 haven’t changed.

©2013 T. Colin Campbell (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

" 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 best-selling author of The Lean)

"In this provocative book, 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. The China Study revealed what we should eat; Whole answers why. Read and enjoy; there’s something here to inspire and offend just about everyone." (Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president, Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Sausalito)

Genius

Someone who is going to school for nutrition. This book is truly life-changing. I’ve read so many books and heard so many lectures. This makes so much sense. Critics yeah think this man is now onto some thing are delusional and will lose a wealth of knowledge they could of gained. This went against many of my held beliefs. Including thinking Dr. Axe was a miracle. However after reading this I am worried that he is a big sham. Hopefully unaware avoid he is doing in the supplement industry.

Excellent

Everyone in the United States should be the story. Mr. Campbell is a very intelligent man and has a lot of information to offer

Re-affirming what I suspected

For anyone who wants to understand why the hell everybody is not eating s whole plant based diet and what is causing them to not do so.

Just listening to the thoughts of this great man (and his fellow WFPBD revolutionaries) has changed my life forever and no doubt will have saved me from an early death and a lot of pain and suffering from eating the typical Australian diet.

Thank-you, Mr T. Campbell.

exposition of manifestly incompetent systems

Dr. Campbell expertly highlights the abject failures of medical, scientific, nutritional, and government organizations to achieve increased health and describes many of the ways they fight against factual information regarding health and nutrition.

It's a book that everyone who eats needs to read

I read a few of the negative reviews and they seem to miss the point of the book in a big way. I guess it's hard to stop eating addictive food like dairy and meat and nobody wants to hear that they are causing themself harm but they certainly are when developed countries of the world have their top causes of death being related to eating meat and dairy (as well as processed foods).

For example Amazon Customer said that chimpanzees are omnivores and hunt for meat, this is true but here is the reality of that: "The chimpanzee is an omnivorous frugivore. It prefers fruit above all other food items and even seeks out and eats them when they are not abundant. It also eats leaves and leaf buds, seeds, blossoms, stems, pith, bark and resin. Insects and meat make up a small proportion of their diet, estimated as 2%."

Yes they eat meat but it comprises a meager 2% of their diet and they prefer to eat fruit even when it is scarce. That is not how it sounded in the review. Humans in developed countries are consuming over 10% of their calories from meat sources.

The book goes where no author would dare go without worry of losing funding for their future projects and losing most of their meat-head friends. What is really unfortunate is that most of the truth about diet is hidden away in books like this and are overwhelmed by the bogus "reductionist" studies that are mentioned on the front page of the newspapers, magazines, television, and internet.

I do agree that the name of the book, "Whole" might not be appropriate as the book is about the corrupt systems that we the people have to face every day of our lives. The reader should become angry that every single expert and person who is supposed to be looking out for us is not. They are simply looking out for their own situation. The entire medical establishment is designed to keep people in the dark and not to help people. They thrive on the extremely large earnings of big pharma which as a whole is literally killing us off.

Read This Book

Read this book for so many reasons. You need to take care of you, Doctors, pharmaceutical, government are making a fortune keeping you sick for profit. You are being lied to on so many levels for profit. Learn more in this book, then research further. A whole food plant based lifestyle will help your mental and physical well being, save you money, help the planet recover with less waste in land fills, less pollution, helps preserve resources, decreases water pollution and soil erosion, land could be farmed to feed people and not animals for consumption, restore air quality and so much more, simply by being mindful about what and how you eat. We all need to care, Thank you Mr. Campbell for stepping up with another informative inspiring book.

I wish I'd have known this 60 years ago!

T Colin Campbell is an extremely intelligent person who is absolutely correct in not only his understanding of wholistic nutrition and the benefits to the body mind and Spirit of any human being, but he also completely understands and points out many of the culprits in our society who are depriving people of proper knowledge, scientific studies that are done credibly versus incredibly, and the undermining of the entire health system for profit, notoriety, and fear!
I learned about plant-based nutrition, (which is not vegan or vegetarian) but a totally wholistic approach to eating around 2012. that was 10 years ago. my first research into this was with common movies, documentaries, books and literature that is out there by Caldwell Esselstein, his son Rip and his daughter Jane, and many recipes are out there by all of them including his wife Mary. T Colin Campbell has studies that people have been certified through that I didn't even realize about until this book. I typically don't have much trouble eating plant-based when I have to eat out although I prefer cooking and knowing what's going in my food including what kind of water is being used! While we're living in an age of total toxicity from Air to groundwater and continual toxins being poured into them, we need to be aware more than ever before and do everything we can to retain our health and teach others as well as and especially, the children.
It grieves me to a point of tears to see people giving their children dairy products, meat, fish, oils, sugars, refined and processed foods, canned foods, and so much more that is giving them something that is not only detrimental to their health but will likely cause a lifelong addiction unless they learn what their parents should know by now and should have stopped them from doing to begin with.
thank you Mr Campbell for your years of service and continued learning and searching for truth which you have explained in extravagant detail to us. Where are other men like you; strong in your convictions based on scientific knowledge and truth; not politically correct paradigms and lies!
As I said everyone should listen to this book and review it perhaps annually as a refresher.

If only everyone would read this

Some repetitive information if you have already read the China study, but overall provided very good information.

A frontal assault on nutritional 'science'

This book reiterates the findings of Campbell's The China Study that concludes a whole food, plant based (WFPB) diet significantly reduces illnesses caused by the standard Western diet. However, Campbell directly attacks the Medical-Agricultural-Academic complex as committing fraud on the American people by seeking maximum profits through largely ineffective and harmful medical solutions.

This book supports the premise that US medicine is purely a profit driven industry that will not acknowledge nutrition as the single most effective cure for most of the illnesses that prevail in America today. Campbell supports his conclusions that many doctors and medical researchers are in the pockets of Big Pharma and other ancillary industries that benefit from the status quo. With personal anecdotes and other studies, including The China Study, he questions industry-funded research projects which are skewed to reach the most profitable conclusions. Alarmingly, the medical industry itself is the third leading cause of death, behind heart disease and cancer, but this statistic is ignored by US government authorities.

He also attacks the dietary supplement industry and genetic researchers as largely favoring a "reductionist" versus a "holistic" view of health and nutrition. It is profitable to sell a drug. It is not profitable to sell a lifestyle based on eating plants.

This book is an excellent sequel to The China Study and expands on an increasingly popular theme that rightly contests the validity of what we're being told and sold. Books such as Wrong by David Freedman and Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre are also excellent Audible selections in this genre.

More Poking the Bear

Would you listen to Whole again? Why?

I will listen to this book again and recommend it to everyone I care about. The revelations in this book are too important to keep to yourself.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book made me glad to have found it and angry that anyone would try to discredit Dr Campbell for writing it. The disease culture in this world needs to be confronted with the facts presented in this book.