Colin Campbell Nutritionist

In the first of series highlighting the benefit the world has realised by the use of my name by The Great, The Good and and the Not So Good, I bring you Colin T Campbell Nutritionist.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Jacob Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell Univerity and author of The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health.

Through his work as a professor, researcher, and scientist for almost 40 years, Dr. Campbell has been an inspiration and health resource to people around the world. The high point of his career was serving as director of the China Study, the most comprehensive study of diet, lifestyle, and disease ever done with humans in the history of biomedical research. The New York Times described the project as the "Grand Prix of Epidemiology".

VIP: The China Study focuses on the difference between diseases of affluence and diseases of poverty. What are the principal differences? Could you give us examples of diseases in each category?

TCC: Diseases of affluence are those that tend to occur much more frequently in industrially advanced, mostly Western nations. They tend to be chronic and degenerative, progressing with age (e.g., cancers, cardiovascular diseases, etc.). Diseases of poverty, as the name implies, are those that occur in the poorer societies and are strongly related to inadequate public health conditions and poor nutrition (e.g., infectious diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, tuberculosis, pneumonia).

VIP: Why is a study of over 6000 people in rural China relevant to Americans today?

TCC: All humans share virtually the same biochemistry and physiology, regardless of ethnicity, race and gender. They differ, both as individuals and as groups of people, in the DEGREE to which they respond to dietary insult. But the direction of the effect is essentially the same.

Pretty useful stuff. OK I'm off to McDonalds for Breakfast