Uncovering the Power of Whole Foods: A Comprehensive Look at the Science of Nutrition

Olivia: Great book, with lots of useful information. A must after the China study.

Bought it second-hand. The book came in good condition, but I did expect a better-looking cover. Delivery was delayed.

Germany on Nov 21, 2023

Rachel Pearlman: Liked the logic involved!
Used for personal health improvement!

Germany on Sep 14, 2023

PO !: Hello.
This review is a bit longer and it gives an overview of the book.I encourage you to read it till the end.

"An old story: Six blind men are asked to describe an elephant. Each feels a different body part: leg, tusk, trunk, tail, ear, and belly. Predictably, each offers a vastly different assessment: pillar, pipe, tree branch, rope, fan, and wall. They argue vigorously, each sure that their experience alone is the correct one. I can’t think of a better metaphor to highlight the big problem with scientific research today. Except that instead of six blind men, modern science tasks 60,000 researchers to examine the elephant, each through a different lens."

As a result, our knowledge or information about health and medicines is all complicated and messed up. Now, no one is responsible for it,not even the researchers or the doctors.

We all live on a planet which is ruled by paradigms. And we all accept these paradigms to be the absolute truth.
Like we are told in our childhood that drinking milk is good and then we form paradigms that milk is something very essential and we cannot be healthy without it.
Do you know that, one of the most active...

India on Jun 25, 2017

A. Menon: Whole is a provocative reflection on nutrition and its role in health. The author gives a highly critical account of health policy and nutrition in the United States from his long experience in both policy, medicine and biochemical and nutritional research. The book is balanced, the author tries to be objective to the extent possible when one has an entrenched view, and full of evidence. The account is fairly damning of reductionist western medicine's philosophy on health and methodology for curing disease. The author believes the complexity of the human body does not lend itself to targeted cures based on the body having missing ingredients and believes we need to view the body wholistically and that nutrition is the most import determinant of health. Furthermore good nutrition is founded in a whole foods and plant based diet and that animal meat and dairy are key sources of free radicals. Unfortunately after reading this it is pretty hard not to rethink your diet so practically the book is inconvenient but of course the lessons learned are truly invaluable.

The book is separated into 4 sections which the first and last are an introduction and conclusion. The first core...

United States on Apr 29, 2015

Helen MacAllister: Professor Campbell's China Study was a most useful read so when this book was published I wanted to follow up on the issues surrounding Prof Campbell's philosophy. I wholly applaud the thinking - makes such a lot of sense as a lifestyle choice to become vegan. Good for health and a wise environmental choice too. No-one seems to take on board that consuming dairy products is so illogical. Cows' milk is the perfect food - for baby cows. Contains the goodies to make large baby mammals grow very quickly into very big animals. Not suitable ingredients for human babies who grow from tiny infants.slowly over many years into people sized humans. No-one(normally) goes up to a cow in a field and suckles from her udder - why do it from a bottle that has been whizzed up (to homogenise the fat content), rapidly heated and cooled (pasteurised) to kill some but not all of the bugs it might contain, extracted from a cow whilst she might be passing dung, transferred into a plastic bottle, wrapped up in a crate whizzed around a warehouse , then around the country on a lorry, then stored on supermarket shelves, then possibly frozen at home, then defrosted - and you think it is good for you?. Quite...

United Kingdom on Oct 07, 2013

PapaPhil27: I read the China Study a few years ago by the same author. It completely changed the way I thought about food. This book is an up to date revision of a lot of the material in the original book but, in my opinion, in a much more readable format. The China Study was an incredible piece of work that shed a new light on the industry of food. This one does the same and should serve as a wake up call to people everywhere, especially in North America, to return to the diet we (humans) were designed to eat. The best part is that by following the advice in the book, the reader has a number of side benefits: better health, gentler on the environment, moving to solve world hunger (really!) and probably a longer more enriched life. Sounds like a commercial doesn't it? The author is very cognizant of how contrary what he is proposing is to what the food industry would have us do but as he puts it - the evidence is overwhelming, we have gotten way off track. We are among the richest nations in the world but our health is among the worst. This book offers some explanation and solutions. A thoroughly good read!

Canada on Jun 28, 2013

John Chancellor: There is a quotation from Isaac Asimov at the beginning of Chapter 9 of the book, "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." One of the primary reasons that science is gathering knowledge faster than we gather wisdom is the nature of scientific research. The first major lesson you will learn is the difference between a holistic, or as the author coins it a wholistic approach and a reductionist approach to research. The wholistic approach backs up and looks at the big picture in context. The reductionist model narrows the scope and looks at isolated, small slices of research. We have been moving deeper and deeper into a reductionist model in so many areas of modern life and in particular in scientific research. You will need to keep these two approaches in mind as you read through the book. Mr. Campbell believes that we gain insight and therefore wisdom by taking a wholistic view of things in the proper context.

Mr. Campbell tries to condense 50 years of professional research, the wisdom gained from that research and the transformation of his personal philosophy into a 300 page book. That is a very difficult...

United States on Jun 03, 2013