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     "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.