WFPBD?

Photo by M Clock

In this world of invasive acronyms, I just had to throw that one at you.

I have been reading a book entitled "Whole" by  T. Colin Campbell, PhD, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University.  The book deals with the highly emotional subject of dietary practices and mortality in the U.S.  I offer that any new or revised discussion about diets and death, especially when it involves some objective data, is bound to be potentially fiery and polarized.

Add some money and politics, a hint of backroom deals and subjective scientific interests, cancer, death and disease as an unintended outcome, and you have a great recipe for a good book.

And this one is not fictional.

The book is about the Whole Food Plant-Based Diet (WFPBD).  Dr. Campbell  has been studying nutrition and the benefits of this dietary approach for quite a while.  He has seen the emerging repercussions of our Western diet, one that  relies heavily on processed foods as well as a large proportion of calories derived from animal products (dairy) /protein. 

His data shows much less disease (Diabetes, Heart Disease and Cancer) in animal studies with a diet limited (20% or less of the day's caloric content) in animal protein (Casein) vs a diet high in Casein (80% of daily caloric intake). 

These studies reproduced earlier Indian studies on the same subject, and were also in agreement with population-based studies in a China study by Dr. Campbell as well.

In the China Study, from the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, they looked at 65 counties in China in terms of mortality rates of Cancer and chronic disease, and correlated that with  dietary surveys and labwork in those same counties.  The dates of the study spanned from the mid 1970's to the early 80's.

What they found was that counties with a high animal-based foods intake, had a markedly higher death rate from "Western diseases" (DM, CAD, Ca), than counties that had a predominantly plant-based dietary intake. The populations and counties studied were chosen due to their demographics,  that favored communities that tended to stay in their location and had similar regional dietary practices and genetics.

So, the conclusion of the study, as detailed in the book "The China Study" was that eat a plant-based / vegan diet (avoiding animal-based products such as pork, beef, poultry, eggs, fish, eggs, cheese and milk) as well as avoid refined CHO and processed foods, can escape, reduce, or reverse the development of chronic diseases.

Yikes. 

Worth taking note of?  Just another "fad" diet?   A drive-by study that details what to do, and then a few months later another study is revealed that refutes it entirely?

I don't know, but this seems to be legit.  Not in a "do-it-or-die" sense per se, but in a common sense, getting back to a levelheaded means of  proper nutrition in a 'real food' sense.  Yet, I guess you could argue that meat is real food, and it certainly is.  But maybe not so good for you as afr as your body might be concerned.

But what if the emphasis on fast and cheap for our food in America is leading to our current health epidemics?  I think there would be broad agreement in the notion that our current state of "food" is a far stretch nutritionally from what a whole food diet could provide.

Dr. Campbell also goes on to detail in his book "Whole" the demise of useful nutritional information, in his opinion, from the idea that the benefit from isolated nutrients (Calcium, Acai, Iron, Fish oil) as studied in a vacuum leads to distortion of those benefits and marginalizes the upside of whole foods that contain those essential nutrients.  He terms that way of studying nutrition as Reductionism.

There is really so much we don't know about the exponentially complex nature of how our bodies handle whole foods, but it makes sense to keep it "Whole", and not fall prey to "Reductionism" in terms of nutritional information and thought, as well as 'fast and cheap' for our food at the expense of decent nutrition.  Food should 'taste good', but also 'be good' (nutritionally) for you as well.

I am not nearly done reading this 300+ page hardcover book yet, but I will certainly press on...