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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] one more time - eat from the land, not the factory
  • Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:57:20 -0600


"Nutrition should not be defined by the effects of isolated nutrients.
That's pharmacology, a strategy now known not to work, in spite of the $25
billion or so that we annually spend on nutrient supplements. Unequivocal
evidence now exists to show that nutrition, when provided by the use of
whole, plant-based foods, can control the expression of our mischievous genes
that otherwise would lead to serious ailments such as heart disease,
diabetes, certain autoimmune diseases and many lesser ailments."


It's Time for an NIH Institute for Nutrition
July 9, 2010 08:00 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/t-colin-campbell/its-time-for-an-nih-insti_b_637080.html

By T. Colin Campbell, Professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at
Cornell University and co-author with his son Thomas Campbell, MD, of "The
China Study."

Finally, a long overdue scientific correction is happening. The human genome
project is failing to advance the cause of human health, as promised. There
is a fundamental but frustratingly and long overlooked reason why this is
happening.

Working out the details of the human genome was worth doing, on several
accounts: monitoring environmental pollutants, evaluating evolutionary
lineages, identifying criminal suspects. But initially promising great
advances in human health was not and should not have been one of these
promises. Hypothesizing that knowledge of the associations of specific genes
with serious diseases like cancer, heart disease and related diseases would
lead to great health advances (through drug development) was a superficial
and costly oversimplification of disease causation.

Although genes and/or their mutated forms are fundamental to the initiation
of all disease events, it is not their mere presence or absence that
determines disease outcomes. Genes may start the job but they do not finish
it. The far more important question we should ask is: what controls the
expression of genes (to produce products, mostly enzymes) that lead to health
and disease events? Experimental and extensively published research from my
laboratory over several decades has long convinced me that nutrition
primarily provides this control. We have failed to acknowledge this question
or sought its answer for far too long because we have failed to understand
the scientific fundamentals of nutrition. Not one medical school in the
nation adequately teaches this science, although a few give it lip service.

Still worse is the failure of federal funding agencies to recognize nutrition
as a legitimate medical science. The National Institutes of Health, the most
prominent biomedical research institution in the world, since its founding
has kept nutrition well hidden. Not one of its 27 institutes and related
centers is dedicated to nutrition! Some NIH administrators say nutrition is
embedded in other programs but do not be fooled. First, dedicated nutrition
funding is meager (less than five percent of the heart and cancer
institutes--the two largest). Second, this small amount has been used
primarily to study single nutrient effects in randomized clinical trials, a
seriously flawed hypothesis.

Nutrition should not to be defined by the effects of isolated nutrients.
That's pharmacology, a strategy now known not to work, in spite of the $25
billion or so that we annually spend on nutrient supplements. Unequivocal
evidence now exists to show that nutrition, when provided by the use of
whole, plant-based foods, can control the expression of our mischievous genes
that otherwise would lead to serious ailments such as heart disease,
diabetes, certain autoimmune diseases and many lesser ailments. For many
years, experimental findings from my laboratory have shown that genetic
initiation of cancer (by a powerful chemical carcinogen) can be stalled even
reversed by a modest nutritional modification that is consistent with this
same whole, plant-based food effect. (This research was funded by NIH because
of my interest in cancer but, eventually, we learned that it was the tail,
nutrition, that wagged the dog -- cancer.) Physician colleagues of mine,
including Drs. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., Dean Ornish, Roy Swank and Neal
Barnard have now published peer-reviewed findings showing this kind of
nutrition not only to prevent serious diseases such as heart disease,
diabetes and related ailments but to treat them into remission.

There is no other strategy in contemporary health science or medical practice
that comes close to the breadth and depth of health benefits achievable by
nutrition. We must begin to understand, communicate and apply this knowledge
if we ever hope to reduce health care costs by reducing the burden of
disease. We will never do this by depending on outmoded notions of what
single (or even a few) genes, single nutrients or single chemicals (i.e.,
drugs) will do to create health. That thinking generates wealth for a few at
the expense of health for the many. It is time to recognize the natural and
harmonious biological complexity of health processes, and choose the
lifestyle strategy that best maintains and restores that harmony. Nature has
had eons of time to work this out. It's also time to develop a professional
science of nutrition that serves the biological health of the population, not
the economic health of commerce.

As for health professionals who claim they cannot convince patients to change
their dietary practices, this is not surprising when the professionals
themselves are not educated in this field and are vested in a strategy that
is the antithesis of good nutrition. It is time we recognize what nutrition
can do and a good place to start is to establish an NIH Institute of
Nutrition dedicated for this purpose.





  • [Livingontheland] one more time - eat from the land, not the factory, Tradingpost, 07/09/2010

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