Dr. T. Colin Campbell: Keeping Plant-Based Nutrition Whole for Optimal Health

Health doesn't come from the end of a needle or from a pill; it comes from the food we put in our mouth.

The whole medical system, in contrast, is focused on a very reductionist approach. Individual nutrients do whatever they do, there's individual diseases, and there's individual mechanism responsible for the disease, and we can use individual chemicals to treat the disease, like drugs. So, our whole medical system, for example, is an enterprise in reductionism.

We don't have a good immune system for the same reason that we have a lot of heart disease, for the same reason we have a lot of diabetes, the same reason we have a lot of obesity and cancer—because nutrition.

Consuming a more plant-based diet actually builds the immune system almost better than anything. And that immune system is what handles pathogens like bacteria or fungi or viruses, if you will, or new cancer cells.

The environment, the environment problems we have, global warming and climate change... The number one cause of that problem... is we're eating the wrong food, producing the wrong food, that just tears up the environment.

More protein makes more cancer, makes more heart disease. Eating that kind of diet makes more diabetes, chronic kidney disease, all of it.

You know, of the 35 countries, the so-called Western countries in the world, of those 35 countries on the western diet, more or less, we are number one in the use of pharmaceuticals ... We are number one in the cost of healthcare. We're number three in prevalence of obesity.

Through the ages, especially the last couple hundred years in the west, we've got more fascinated with making money on food rather than using food to make health.

Nutrition is not about one nutrient doing this, that, or something else. It's not about one mechanism to account for its effect. It's actually accounted for by an infinite collection of all kinds of nutrients all working together. It's marvelous.

I got, basically, two posts, pillars, or whatever you want to call them, that really support what I think and comprehend the science. One is: Let's eat plants... Number two: Let's try to use whole plants.

There's a lot of people in the inner city and elsewhere, they don't have the funding or the means to get access to good food, or even to grow their own food. They're victims to our system. And so they have an excessive amount of obesity and diabetes and things like that.

We can get all the protein we need from whole plants.

The number of deaths arising from our use of pharmaceuticals is actually the fourth leading cause of death in this country.

We see a relationship between saturated fat consumption... and colon cancer. That's pretty clear.