Dr. T. Colin Campbell Challenges the American Dietary Dogma

Based on his upbringing, T. Colin Campbell, PhD, would seem an unlikely candidate to have dedicated four decades of his life conducting research to demonstrate the benefits of a plant-based diet.

Dr. T.Colin Campbell with Bastyr students
Dr. T. Colin Campbell with
Bastyr University students

"I was raised on a farm with milk and cows, eating the typical American diet," admits Dr. Campbell, who first started hearing about vegetarianism in the 1980s and initially thought a diet without meat was "a strange idea, to tell the truth."

As a doctoral student at Cornell, Dr. Campbell's research focused on what he knew: the importance of animal foods and proteins. His early career was spent trying to find ways to get people to consume more "good quality protein," which at the time meant animal protein, he says. The first paper he ever published was in the Journal of Dairy Science.

In his book, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, (co-authored by his son, who became a medical student after learning of his father's findings) Dr. Campbell tells the story of how his view on nutrition and health changed from one focused on the importance of animal-based protein to the antithesis. He shared this story with an audience on Bastyr University's campus in late February.

Dr. Campbell first began to question the traditional ideas about nutrition shortly after accepting a faculty position at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1965. A colleague invited him to participate in a project in the Philippines related to restoring health to malnourished and starving children. Dr. Campbell says he and his colleagues believed that the children were malnourished for one of two reasons: they weren't eating enough calories or their diet did not consist of enough protein.

Dr. Campbell observed a correlation between higher incidences of liver cancer in children and the consumption of more protein. Around this same time, he discovered a paper in an obscure research journal from India showing that cancer tumors grew larger and more rapidly in research animals who consumed more protein as opposed to those whose protein consumption was lower.

"As I started to look, there was one surprise after another and I began to question everything I'd been taught," he says.

Dr. Campbell applied for, and received, a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the link between higher doses of protein and liver cancer risks. His research, which looked at early cancer, seemed to corroborate what the India study showed. Further research showed that the results were different if plant-based proteins were used rather than animal-based ones.