Forks Over Knives (7 page)

T. COLIN CAMPBELL grew up on a dairy farm and was educated at Penn State and Cornell, where, after working on a postdoctoral degree at MIT and teaching at Virginia Tech, he returned for a tenured full professorship in 1975. He has also consulted as a senior science adviser to the American Institute for Cancer Research and currently sits on the advisory board of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Since 1978, he has been a member of several National Academy of Sciences expert panels on food and health, and he holds an honorary professorship at the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine in Beijing as well as Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Colin is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University and project director of the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project.

Colin is best known for the best-selling book
The China Study,
which he coauthored with his son, Thomas M. Campbell, MD. The book represents the culmination of Colin’s work as well as his two-decade research partnership with Cornell, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine. It ties the consumption of animal-protein-based foods to the development of cancer and heart disease, noting that casein, a protein found in milk from mammals, is “the most relevant carcinogen ever identified.”

“The study was organized to investigate why cancer mortality rates, published in 1981 by Chinese medical academies, were so varied in different parts of the country—and to assess what role diet and lifestyle factors might play in these unusual rates of disease.

“It was a huge undertaking—we collected data from 130 villages involving 6,500 adults and their families. What we found, based on evaluation of the
complex relationship between multiple diet and lifestyle factors, was that the consumption of whole, plant-based foods offered the best strategy for creating health and preventing serious diseases.

“The reception to these findings was generally positive, although there were some negative reports. I was often at the center of this debate—which resulted in some serious consequences.

“The more this went on, the more I learned how deeply connected science is to industry. Accusations about my personal life and my ethics continued, even one that said I had taken my NIH money for personal use, which was a terrible lie. Another example occurred at Cornell, where I was teaching a well-received course on plant-based nutrition. Then, when our book was published and I took a year off to lecture, the course was arbitrarily taken off the books by the department director, who was a consultant for the dairy industry.

“Despite these difficulties, I’m optimistic. The more this information is out there, and the more people experience its benefits, the more the public will change its ways. The horse is out of the barn, as we used to say on the farm.”

Figure 4:
In 1980, Dr. Junshi Chen, currently Senior Research Professor with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, teamed with Colin Campbell to create what the
New York Times
called “the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.” More than 350 workers were trained to study 6,500 people in 65 counties scattered across China (see above). The results, published in the book
The China Study,
found that the scientific evidence was clear: Whole, plant-based foods were beneficial to human health, while animal-based foods were not.

Next to heart disease, cancer is the leading cause of death among Americans; nearly one in three people will develop the disease in their lifetime. Cancer can progress in the body undetected for years, and many cancers are ultimately fatal in spite of expensive interventions like surgery and drugs.

How does your body develop cancer? A normal cell divides and redivides over the course of its life until its telomeres (a telomere is a DNA sequence that lies at the end of a chromosome) are shortened to the point where reproduction is no longer possible. Shortly thereafter, the cell dies. However, some cells may mutate during this process, which can set the stage for cancer development. These mutated cells often reproduce much more rapidly than normal cells, forming tumors and even metastasizing to other parts of the body.

While an individual may be genetically susceptible to cancer, diet and lifestyle choices play a much larger role in whether or not a person will develop it. Some components of food, like animal protein, are powerful cancer promoters. Dairy foods in particular increase the risk of cancer because consuming them causes increased production of a hormone called “insulin-like growth factor” (IGF-1). Higher levels of IGF-1 cause higher levels of estrogen in women and testosterone in men, and abnormal levels of these hormones are responsible for most breast and prostate cancers.

On the other hand, plant-based foods are filled with nutrients like phyto-chemicals and antioxidants that can fight cancer. Eating these foods can help your body repair mutated cells, or cause apoptosis (death of the cells), reducing your risk of developing cancer.

The number of reported cases of type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 to 95 percent of diabetes cases, is growing at an alarming rate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are currently 25.8 million diabetics in the United States; 79 million more people suffer from pre-diabetes. Much of this growth rate is due to the increased incidence of diabetes in children. In fact, young people account for 45 percent of new type 2 diabetics.

As a result, the disease that used to be called “
adult onset
diabetes” is now simply labeled “type 2 diabetes.” Today, some 186,300 Americans under the age of twenty have this form of the disease, and 2 million adolescents between the ages of twelve and nineteen have pre-diabetes. The cost to treat the disease increases by an additional $8 billion every year.

The common view of diabetes is that it develops because of eating too much sugar, but this is not the case. As Dr. Neal Barnard explains, with type 2 diabetes, the body still produces insulin—the hormone that escorts glucose into the cells so it can be used for energy—but the cells develop insulin resistance. Because the cells resist the action of insulin, glucose cannot enter the cells and builds up in the bloodstream. This in turn can cause serious complications.

Why does this resistance happen? Because the cells have become clogged with lipids, or fats. The benefit of switching to a low-fat, plant-based diet is that it causes the cells to release this excess fat, which in turn allows insulin to function normally again. Thus, the solution to insulin resistance is to eat a low-fat, plant-based diet. Countries where people consume a diet based on healthy, high-carbohydrate foods have the lowest diabetes rates in the world.

Dr. Barnard’s own research on dietary intervention for diabetes validates the effectiveness of this diet: Patients who were put on a low-fat, plant-based diet experienced greater improvement in their diabetic condition than those placed on a traditional diabetes-management diet, which continues to allow meat and dairy products.

Although it doesn’t receive as much attention as higher-profile diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease can be the most hellish. Alzheimer’s patients exhibit few, if any, symptoms at first, but the disease slowly turns into full-fledged dementia. Not only do Alzheimer’s patients suffer from the disease, the disease can persist for a very long time, which can be terribly difficult for family members who become caregivers. This is why preventative measures are so crucial.

Alzheimer’s is another manifestation of poor cardiovascular health. Studies show that even moderately high cholesterol levels in people in their forties can significantly increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s later in life: One study showed that for those with cholesterol levels between 200 and 239, the risk of developing dementia increased by 52 percent, and for those with levels of 240 or higher, the risk was increased by 66 percent.

Research has yet to produce a cure for Alzheimer’s, but studies have consistently demonstrated the virtues of a preventative plant-based diet. During the July 2000 World Alzheimer’s Congress, for instance, researchers released the results of a study undertaken between 1993 and 1999 that examined 5,395 individuals aged fifty-five years and older. “On average,” the report concluded, “people who remained free from any form of dementia had consumed higher amounts of beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and vegetables than the people in the study who developed Alzheimer’s.”

WHEN SAN’DERA PRUDE
*
, a hospital administrator in Cleveland, Ohio, was in her late thirties, she came down with nagging symptoms—chills, sweating, dizziness, the shakes—and endured them for several months before she decided to consult a doctor. The physician informed her that she had hypertension (i.e., high blood pressure) and diabetes, then handed her a prescription and told her to “watch what you eat.”

San’Dera left the doctor’s office with no idea what she was supposed to be “watching”—and in any case, it probably didn’t matter because she was in deep denial about her condition. She relied on her pills to offset any symptoms and continued eating whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it, causing her to gain a great deal of weight, which made her uncomfortable and depressed.

Struggling to lose her extra pounds, San’Dera tried several crash diets but always ended up going back to her usual fare of scrambled eggs with cheese, sausage, bacon, French toast, and fast-food burgers and quick, fatladen meals from the cafeteria at work.

San’Dera was desperate to break the cycle of overeating caused by the stress of her diagnosis and her depression. One day she prayed, “You’ve got to do something, you’ve got to do something. Lord, help me.” And the next day San’Dera was approached to be part of a documentary about the power of dietary intervention (i.e.,
Forks Over Knives
) and was referred to Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.

Dr. Esselstyn recommended that San’Dera give up meat, dairy, and processed foods and start on a whole-food, plant-based diet with no refined sugar or added oils. This was a tall order, given her dietary habits, but San’Dera agreed to do it—and to meet often with Dr. Esselstyn. Within a few weeks, she felt better than she had in years, and her blood-sugar levels had returned to normal. By the time the filming was over, San’Dera’s symptoms had disappeared, and she had discontinued all of her medications. Even better, her new husband has joined her on the diet and not only has lost weight but was able to discontinue his own diabetes medications.

*
Before her marriage, she appeared in the film
Forks Over Knives
as San’Dera Nation.

Unfortunately, more and more men are suffering from erectile dysfunction at younger and younger ages. Drug companies have built a billion-dollar business around this condition. Just one Viagra pill can cost as much as $15. Using Viagra twice a week can cost as much as $1500 per year, and as yet there are no generic versions of the best-selling drugs available. In spite of their expense, these drugs don’t always work; half of the men who take them report that they are ineffective. And the side effects include stomach discomfort, bladder pain, bloody urine, dizziness, diarrhea, and pain during urination.

Erectile dysfunction is often the first symptom of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Terry Mason calls it “the canary in the coal mine” letting you know that you have vascular disease. And, as Dr. Mason says, “If you have vascular disease anywhere, you have it everywhere.”

A plant-based diet is not only much less expensive than Viagra and similar drugs, but it usually results in a permanent solution to erectile dysfunction without any negative side effects. There are remarkable benefits to be enjoyed from eating well!