Whole
Rethinking the Science of Nutrition
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine.
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 pre-packaged 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 (alongside his son, Thomas M. 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.
Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Campbell's follow-up to his best-selling The China Study is more of the same, in the best way. He continues his quest to convince people that "the ideal human diet looks like this: Consumer plant-based foods in forms as close to their natural state as possible...eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, beans and legumes, and whole grains." The entirety of the book is a passionate and convincing case for that ideal diet. Campbell has not written a book of diet tips, or even provided recipes. In fact, at times the book delves so deeply into scientific process for example, explaining how cancer develops or how metabolism works that many may find themselves having to read slowly to understand his point. Yet he makes the case that Americans are too prone to take pills to solve health issues (and doctors too prone to prescribe them) as a result of "reductionist thinking". His years of scientific study and calm, measured tone are highly convincing, making a firm case that changing one's diet is the best way to assure good health. Readers will be inclined to put down their processed food snacks once they read what could be a life-changer of a book.
