Whole

1. Our "health-care" system is a costly, ineffective "disease-care" system focused on symptoms.

We talk about the health-care system in America, but that’s a misnomer; what we really have is a disease-care system.

Expensive and ineffective. The United States spends more per capita on "health" care than any other nation, yet ranks poorly in health outcomes. Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension are increasing, despite technological and pharmaceutical advancements. This system reacts to illness rather than preventing it.

Focus on symptoms. The current system primarily treats the symptoms of disease, not its underlying causes. This reactive approach leads to a cycle of managing chronic conditions with drugs and surgeries, which often have harmful side effects and fail to restore fundamental health. Side effects from correctly prescribed drugs are a leading cause of death.

Ignoring prevention. Our medical system largely neglects primary prevention through lifestyle and diet. It waits until diseases manifest clinically before intervening, missing the opportunity to address the root causes that develop over years. This approach is costly and fails to make people fundamentally healthier.

2. A whole food, plant-based diet is the most powerful, rapid, and broad tool for achieving vibrant health.

Change the way you eat and you can transform your health for the better.

Powerful prevention and reversal. A whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet, focusing on vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, and whole grains, is the most effective way to prevent and reverse most chronic diseases. This includes cancer, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, and many others. It works faster and more profoundly than drugs or surgery.

Rapid and broad effects. The health benefits of a WFPB diet appear quickly. Diabetics often need medication adjustments within days due to rapid blood sugar improvement. This diet addresses a wide range of conditions simultaneously, suggesting a common underlying cause related to poor nutrition.

• Prevents 95% of cancers
• Reverses severe heart disease
• Cures erectile dysfunction
• Improves energy and eliminates chronic pain

Positive side effects. Unlike pharmaceuticals, the WFPB diet has only positive side effects. These include achieving ideal weight, increased energy, improved mood, and even significant environmental benefits. If this diet were a pill, its inventor would be the wealthiest person on earth.

3. The reductionist paradigm, focusing only on isolated parts, blinds science and medicine to wholistic truths.

The fancy word for this obsession with minutiae is reductionism.

Focus on parts, not whole. Reductionism is the belief that understanding the world requires breaking it down into its smallest components. In science and medicine, this leads to studying isolated genes, chemicals, or mechanisms, ignoring the complex interactions of the whole system. This approach misses the "big picture."

Paradigm as prison. Reductionism has become the dominant scientific paradigm, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to see or accept evidence that falls outside this narrow view. Anything not measurable or isolatable is often dismissed as unscientific or irrelevant, even if it holds profound truth.

Limits understanding. While reductionist techniques are useful tools, they are insufficient for understanding complex biological systems like the human body. Focusing solely on parts out of context prevents us from seeing how they interact within the whole, leading to incomplete and often misleading conclusions about health and disease.

4. Nutrition is a complex, dynamic system managed by the body, not a simple sum of isolated nutrients.

Nutrition is not a mathematical equation in which two plus two is four.

Beyond simple math. The body's response to food is not a simple sum of individual nutrient effects. Nutrients interact with each other and with countless other food chemicals within an unimaginably complex metabolic network in our cells. This complexity defies simple linear models.

Body's wisdom. The body intelligently manages nutrient absorption and utilization based on its needs at any given moment.

• Nutrient bioavailability varies greatly depending on the food matrix and the body's status.
• The body maintains nutrient concentrations within narrow, healthy ranges despite wide variations in dietary intake.

Whole food advantage. Whole foods contain a vast array of interacting chemicals that work synergistically. Isolating nutrients in supplements removes them from this natural context, often diminishing their effectiveness and sometimes causing harm. The whole food is far greater than the sum of its isolated parts.

5. Genes are starting points, but nutrition and lifestyle primarily control whether disease develops.

The influence of nurture (i.e., nutrition) has far more influence on health and disease outcome than nature (i.e., genes).

Genes are not destiny. While genes provide the blueprint and predispositions, they do not predetermine health or disease outcomes in most cases. Environmental factors, particularly nutrition, act as the "on-off switch" for gene expression, controlling whether disease-promoting genes are activated or suppressed.

Diet trumps genetics. Studies show that when populations migrate and change their diets, they acquire the disease rates of their new location, regardless of their genetic background. Even in identical twins with the same DNA, differences in diet and lifestyle lead to different disease outcomes.

Nutrition controls gene expression. Proper nutrition can prevent genetic damage and, more importantly, influence how the body responds to already damaged genes. A WFPB diet can turn off cancer-promoting genes and support the body's natural repair mechanisms, often mitigating or preventing disease progression even when genetic predispositions exist.

6. Industry money distorts health research, prioritizing profitable reductionist solutions over effective wholistic ones.

Monetary return is the principal fuel that propels our biomedical system, and almost all professional biomedical researchers are part of and beholden to this system.

Profit over health. The primary goal of the health-care system is profit for industries like pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and processed food, not public health. This profit motive dictates which research questions are asked, which studies are funded, and how findings are interpreted and disseminated.

Funding bias. Research funding is heavily skewed towards reductionist studies that can lead to patentable, profitable products like drugs and supplements. Research into the benefits of whole foods is underfunded because it offers little market potential. This creates a system where scientists are rewarded for pursuing commercially viable, often less effective, avenues.

Compromised integrity. Funding pressure can subtly influence research design, data interpretation, and publication decisions. This leads to a narrow, biased body of evidence that supports industry interests, even if it means ignoring or downplaying powerful findings about nutrition and lifestyle that could genuinely improve health.

7. Media and government health messages are heavily influenced by industry, leading to public misinformation.

The story the media tells us about health and nutrition comes from a script written by the very people who profit from our pain and suffering.

Industry influence on media. Media outlets, reliant on advertising revenue from pharmaceutical and food industries, often act as mouthpieces for these corporations. They report on reductionist studies that support industry products while ignoring or downplaying powerful evidence for wholistic nutrition. This creates public confusion and fatalism about health.

Government pandering. Government health agencies and policy makers are heavily influenced by industry lobbying and campaign contributions. This results in dietary guidelines and public health programs that favor corporate interests over objective science and public well-being. Examples include biased nutrient recommendations and misleading food labeling.

Misleading information. The public receives a distorted view of health science, focusing on minor details, conflicting findings, and the promise of future high-tech cures. This misdirection diverts attention from the simple, effective power of diet, keeping people sick and dependent on the profitable disease-care system.

8. Disease advocacy and professional organizations often serve industry interests over public health.

But their donations and PR, their awards and fundraisers, just reinforce the system in which they are embedded—a system that lauds reductionist research and ignores nutrition.

Corporate funding. Many prominent disease advocacy groups (like the American Cancer Society) and professional organizations (like the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) receive significant funding from pharmaceutical and food industries. This financial dependence compromises their independence and influences their messaging and priorities.

Promoting reductionism. These organizations often promote reductionist approaches like screening, drugs, and surgery, aligning with their funders' interests. They downplay or ignore the role of nutrition in preventing and treating diseases, despite compelling evidence. Their dietary recommendations are often vague or even contradict scientific findings to avoid offending sponsors.

Gatekeeping and silencing. These groups act as gatekeepers, controlling professional education, licensing, and public discourse on health. They may marginalize or attack individuals and research that challenge the prevailing, industry-friendly paradigm, stifling innovation and preventing the public from accessing potentially life-saving information.

9. Nutritional supplements, products of reductionism, are often ineffective and can be harmful.

Not only do most supplements not improve our health, some that have been studied most intensely actually appear to harm us.

Isolated nutrients fail. The supplement industry is built on the reductionist idea that isolating nutrients from whole foods retains their health benefits. However, studies consistently show that supplements of individual vitamins and minerals often fail to provide the same benefits as consuming those nutrients in whole foods.

Potential for harm. Large, long-term studies have shown that some popular supplements, like beta-carotene and vitamin E, not only don't prevent disease but can actually increase the risk of certain cancers and overall mortality. This highlights the unpredictable and potentially dangerous effects of consuming nutrients out of their natural context.

Misleading marketing. The supplement industry uses selective reporting of short-term or biomarker studies to market products with unproven or even disproven long-term health benefits. This misleads consumers into spending billions on products that offer little value and may distract them from adopting genuinely healthy dietary habits.

10. Our food choices have profound, interconnected impacts on the environment, animals, and human poverty.

What we eat, individually and collectively, has repercussions far beyond our waistlines and blood pressure readings.

Environmental impact. The industrial production of animal-based foods is a major contributor to environmental degradation.

• Requires vastly more land and water than plant-based foods.
• Contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions (methane).
• Leads to deforestation and pollution of water resources.

Animal cruelty. Factory farming practices prioritize efficiency over animal welfare, subjecting billions of animals to cruel and unnatural living conditions. Choosing plant-based foods reduces demand for these inhumane systems.

Human poverty. In developing countries, land is often used for raising livestock or growing feed for export, displacing local farmers and contributing to food insecurity and poverty. Shifting to plant-based agriculture could feed significantly more people with fewer resources.

11. True health empowerment comes from personal dietary choices, not waiting for medical breakthroughs.

The most important step is to change the way you eat.

Personal power. Despite the overwhelming influence of the reductionist, profit-driven system, individuals possess the ultimate power to reclaim their health through dietary choices. Adopting a WFPB diet is the most effective way to prevent and reverse chronic disease and reduce reliance on the disease-care system.

Bottom-up change. Systemic change is difficult from the top down due to entrenched interests. However, widespread individual adoption of healthy eating habits can create a powerful bottom-up movement. As more people experience the benefits, demand for healthy food and honest health information will grow, eventually shifting the system.

Embrace wholism. Moving forward requires embracing a wholistic view of health, recognizing the interconnectedness of diet, body, environment, and society. It means questioning reductionist dogma and demanding transparency and integrity from science, media, government, and health organizations. The revolution begins with personal choice.

Last updated: May 6, 2025