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veganvirgo's review
5.0
This is an important book that will be read by far too few people. It challenges just about everything we've been "taught" about what we need to do to maintain health and then tells us how we got into this predicament in the first place. Dr. Campbell is very brave to so thoroughly challenge the status quo.
sophievanbeek's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
This book was hard to get through, especially the beginning. Still the message of this book is very important. I am still skeptical on some of the books points, but overall I think the book is full of valuable information.
maram200's review
4.0
It's very hard to know that everything you knew about a certain thing and believed to be true turns out to be wrong.
When comes to nutrition, most people if asked what a healthy diet is they would probably mention what's on the food pyramid that was published in 1974. It has been 40+ years, you would have assumed by now that the education system would have changed that but still people believe in this system!
To be honest I was naive like most people, didn't know a thing or two about diet and just believed everything that I was taught in school but after my father developed cancer and went on a plant based diet which to say the least saved his life, I started rethinking the whole idea of nutrition.
It's fair to stay that whenever I talk about this topic, I am labelled as an idiot. And to be honest it hurts a lot to know that people are still believe in this flawed medical system instead of knowing the truth. This book is wonderful because it puts everything I believe in into words.
I literally want to buy a billion of copies of this book and give out to everyone to read.
I just wish, I truly hope one day that this research against past myths is changed from minority to majority.
When comes to nutrition, most people if asked what a healthy diet is they would probably mention what's on the food pyramid that was published in 1974. It has been 40+ years, you would have assumed by now that the education system would have changed that but still people believe in this system!
To be honest I was naive like most people, didn't know a thing or two about diet and just believed everything that I was taught in school but after my father developed cancer and went on a plant based diet which to say the least saved his life, I started rethinking the whole idea of nutrition.
It's fair to stay that whenever I talk about this topic, I am labelled as an idiot. And to be honest it hurts a lot to know that people are still believe in this flawed medical system instead of knowing the truth. This book is wonderful because it puts everything I believe in into words.
I literally want to buy a billion of copies of this book and give out to everyone to read.
I just wish, I truly hope one day that this research against past myths is changed from minority to majority.
ora_fern's review
3.0
The first third of the book was genuinely interesting. After that the focus of the book shifted to more American-specific topics as well as too in-depth scientific discussions that weren't very interesting nor easy to follow for a layperson.
Overall, it's a good book. Just not as good as I had hoped and expected.
Overall, it's a good book. Just not as good as I had hoped and expected.
mattpr_co's review against another edition
5.0
Very compelling case for a different way to look at health and wellness. It raises a lot of questions about the status quo of promoting a single nutrient or vitamin to effect a specific outcome, when they are naturally part of a larger system as are our bodies and world.
davidr's review
5.0
"There are these two young fish swimming along and the happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says,'Morning boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'"
This joke spells out one of the main themes of this fantastic book. Medical science is caught up in a reductionist paradigm, and people don't realize how stuck they are in it. They cannot imagine that there is any other valid approach to medical research and to health care.
Reductionism is the idea that you can understand everything in the world if you understand all its component parts. In other words, the whole is simply the sum of its parts. This is opposed to "wholism", which is the belief that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Medical science has become very focused on performing research that is narrowly focused on studying the effects of individual molecules, enzymes, nutrients, chemical reactions, and genes. The problem is that no component works in isolation. It is foolhardy to focus on the effect of a single nutrient, because each nutrient interacts with thousands of other nutrients, enzymes, and molecules in extremely complex ways. Campbell spells out the paradox of bioavailability:
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.
The reason is that the body absorbs as much of a nutrient that it needs at that moment, rather than as much of the nutrient that is consumed.
This reductionist approach is now firmly established by the research community; a scientist cannot get funding unless he narrowly focuses on a single nutrient, or a single molecule or chemical. Campbell shows how a few researchers (including himself) have tried to break out of this paradigm, and the ruinous effect on their careers.
Campbell's career has not suffered significantly; he is the professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University. He was the lead scientist of the largest epidemiological study ever. He is not a quack. He has served on expert panels for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and as a senior science adviser to the American Institute for Cancer Research.
Campbell's voice comes through in his writing as an embittered scientist, one who feels that nutrition's important wholistic effects on health have been ignored. They are ignored by researchers, by dieticians, by doctors, by the government, and by the various disease societies (e.g., American Cancer Society, American Society for Nutrition). He writes very convincingly, that the establishment is not interested in improving health and preventing disease--only in fighting diseases after they occur.
This is a very important book. I read Campbell's previous book
[b:The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health|178788|The China Study The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health|T. Colin Campbell|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1376474019s/178788.jpg|544922] about seven years ago, and it was most impressive. This book brings a somewhat different message, about the entire medical establishment, and the need for more emphasis on prevention of disease, through a wholistic approach.
elephant's review
4.0
This is just quite a complex book. I really cannot write a review that will do it justice. The author redefines holisism as wholism - explaining how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the wholist paradigm encompases reductionism, which is today's tendancy to break things down to the smallest parts and examine each individually.
This book is as much about philosophy as it is about diet.
As far as diet goes, the author recommends eating "whole, plant-based foods, with little or no added oil, salt, or refined carbohydrates like sugar or white flour." He explains that we do not need to consume animal protein - milk, meat and eggs, and that over a very small amount, animal protein is carcinogenic to us and should be avoided. He also explains that our health care system has profit as it's goal rather than health. It really is an eye-opening book and I highly recommend it.
This book is as much about philosophy as it is about diet.
As far as diet goes, the author recommends eating "whole, plant-based foods, with little or no added oil, salt, or refined carbohydrates like sugar or white flour." He explains that we do not need to consume animal protein - milk, meat and eggs, and that over a very small amount, animal protein is carcinogenic to us and should be avoided. He also explains that our health care system has profit as it's goal rather than health. It really is an eye-opening book and I highly recommend it.
karmakat's review
3.0
Informative book, but a bit dense and somewhat repetitive. (Reductionism in nutrition and related fields is bad. I get it.)