Two Sources of a Serious Misunderstanding of Nutrition

Do you notice what you’re swimming in?

Professor T. Colin Campbell should need no introduction to students of plant-based nutrition. The co-author of the seminal books The China Study, The Low-Carb Fraud and Whole, Professor Campbell has published over 300 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, throughout a research career that began in the late 1950s.

His personal story is fascinating. Colin, as he is known to his many friends, grew up on a dairy farm, and began his scientific career completely convinced of the central importance of animal protein in the human diet. In fact, his PhD thesis was about a way of increasing the amount of edible protein that can be gained from ruminant animals.

As he recounts in The China Study, Colin’s subsequent research began turning up some findings about the consumption of protein that challenged all the beliefs he had acquired – both during his upbringing, and in his undergraduate education as a nutritional biochemist – about this nutrient, which was dubbed ‘the stuff of civilisation’ upon its discovery in the late 19th century.

Sadly, most scientists who encounter anomalous data that contradict the dominant paradigm in their field, simply discard these data and attempt to ignore their implications. Luckily for us, Colin was cut from a different cloth. He continued to design and conduct experiments to explore the impact of animal protein consumption on the health of animals and eventually – in the massive epidemiological study that became known as ‘The China Project’ – on humans.

As his research progressed, Colin came up against considerable resistance, and even outright hostility, from his academic colleagues, employers, and members of the many government expert panels that he served on. The vehemence of this opposition, and its persistence even in the face of overwhelming evidence against its intellectual foundations, led him to deeply ponder the nature of paradigms.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of paradigms, Colin defines them in his book Whole:

“… a paradigm is a mental filter that restricts what you are able to see at any one time. Mental filters are essential [to stop you becoming] overwhelmed by stimuli and therefore unable to respond to the important ones. Without the ability to focus on one thing and shut out distractions, you wouldn’t be able to get much done. And in science, without the literal filters of microscopes and telescopes we would know precious little about inner and outer space.

Filters – mental and literal – become problematic only when we forget about them and think that what we’re seeing is the whole of reality, instead of a very narrow slice of it. Paradigms become prisons only when we stop recognizing them as paradigm.”

He goes on to quote a story told by the novelist David Foster Wallace to illustrate this point:

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they 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?'”

Both of the 2 sources of misunderstanding of nutrition that Colin discussed in his presentation at the International Plant-Based Nutrition Healthcare Conference related to the effect of dominant paradigms on the minds of both nutrition researchers and the general public.

These 2 sources of misunderstanding are:

1. An overemphasis on protein; and
2. Focus on single nutrients (reductionism)

You can view my summary of Colin’s presentation in the International PBNHC Round-Up Webinar (1:35:30).

Here’s my challenge to you: when it comes to nutrition, can you recognise the water you swim in? That is, can you identify the paradigms that shape your thoughts, feelings and behaviours around your food choices and behaviour?

For example,

• Have you been influenced by the dominant paradigm that asserts the central importance of protein, so that you worry about whether you’re meeting your daily protein requirement, use online calculators to measure your intake, or take protein powders?
• Does the paradigm of reductionism (attributing complex outcomes to a single, simple cause, such as ‘bowel cancer is caused by a low fibre intake’) cause you to succumb to the lure of ‘superfoods’ that promise protection against all manner of diseases if you just consume acai berries/maca/chia/kombucha/whatever the latest fad is? Or do you worry about whether you’re ‘getting enough iron/calcium/zinc/whatever nutrient a supplement manufacturer is trying to make you anxious about?
• Or do you operate from the paradigm that raw food is the only ‘natural’ source of nourishment, and does this cause you to avoid eating plant foods that research has demonstrated the benefits of, because they can only be eaten cooked?

Even the paradigm that plant-based nutrition is best for all human beings needs to be recognised as a paradigm, so that you don’t unconsciously block off your mind to new information! We must all be prepared to show the intellectual courage displayed by Professor T. Colin Campbell, who richly deserved the Plantrician Project Luminary Award that Dr Scott Stoll presented him with at the conference (see photo above).

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