eating habits, they fight to keep the worst foods front and center on the American plate.
So frankly, everything surprises me. But what can you do? Life is short. You have to just work as hard as you can to get the word out. And over time people really do take this knowledge in hand, and they share it with other people they know. The most important thing is that they share it with their kids, because that will change the fundamental direction in which we're headed.
JOHN ROBBINS: Many things that I had once thought were controversial have over time become mainstream. Things that had been bitterly fought are now being taken as self-evident. At this point in history, at this point in the arc of change, what steps would you like to see people take?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: We need to think societal change. The Internet enables us to reach many, many people with the click of a button. That is great, and we need to use it. We also need to leverage the power of business. We have been working with a number of businesses now, including the GEICO insurance company that is known for its cute, green lizard icon. GEICO instituted plant-based diets at ten of its thirteen facilities around the United States, so that their employees could try it, taste it, and adapt to healthier meals. And we have tracked the results. In our first GEICO study over the course of 22 weeks, employees lost an average of 11 pounds, and saw their blood-pressure levels drop. They also missed less days from work. We published those findings in the American Journal of Health Promotion.
We need to work for societal change, because the price of bad food habits is simply too high. Americans now eat more than a million animals every hour. And many more are consumed elsewhere around the world. The environment is degrading faster than many of us had ever thought, and human health is paying a terrible price for our current shortsightedness.
JOHN ROBBINS: What is the food revolution that you would like to see take place?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: My hope is that what is on the plate will be different and that what is growing in the fields will be different, as well. In turn, animals will have an entirely different experience—that is, they will no longer be considered dinner. When I went downtown yesterday to a meeting, I went into a large office building. There was a man outside finishing up his cigarette before he could go into his nonsmoking building. And I hope that, ten or twenty years from now, that same guy will be standing outside finishing up his chicken wing before he is allowed to go into his vegan office building.
JOHN ROBBINS: There are so many people today waking up to the reality that the industrial food machine is spewing out and advertising to our kids some of the most unhealthy foodlike substances imaginable. The price we are paying for it as individuals, as families, and as a society, is exorbitant. Yet so many of the policies of our government have reinforced and supported the industrial food machine: feedlot agriculture, Monsanto, McDonald's, factory farms, and even now, genetically engineered foods. In the face of the momentum of that and all the lobbyists down in Washington, what are the steps that a group of people can take to make a difference politically?
DR. NEAL BARNARD: Every five years, Congress decides what the agricultural subsidy programs are going to look like as it formulates the Farm Bill. Up until this point, the U.S. Government gives almost nothing to vegetables and fruits, and it gives huge subsidies to animal agriculture. The biggest part of the Farm Bill is the SNAP Program—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which used to be called Food Stamps. The program is well intentioned—it is supposed to provide food for needy people. However, the program has become largely a service for the junk-food industry. Other food-assistance programs provide reasonably healthy food. The WIC program, which serves women, infants, and children, is limited to a finite list of foods that are more or less healthful. School lunches have at least some limitations now as well. For example, you can't serve sugary sodas in most school lunches. The SNAP program is different and is not remotely health conscious. It does cover vegetables and fruits and grains and beans, but it also covers sausage, cheese, Red Bull, candy, potato chips, and sugary sodas. The fact is, convenience-store operators who operate in neighborhoods in “food deserts” are reimbursed just as well for junk food as they are for fresh fruits and vegetables. As a result, they have no incentive for stocking anything other than candy and packaged snacks. They are not going to put an orange or some fresh spinach on the shelf because fresh things have a shorter shelf life. If the food stamps pay for potato chips and other things that have a longer shelf life, economic pressures favor the worst foods. Small wonder that economically disadvantaged people are at higher risk for obesity and diabetes, compared with their wealthier counterparts.
We would like to limit the SNAP program to those foods that are healthy: grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits, whether they are fresh, frozen, or perhaps in a can. If the retailers were only compensated with government money for healthful foods, it would spell the end of food deserts. The result would be that needy folks who are now paying a terrible price for the junk food avalanche that is all around them could instead become the healthiest people in America.
4
Dr. T. Colin Campbell
Is Animal Protein Good for You?
T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., has been at the forefront of nutrition research for more than forty years. His legacy, The China Project, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell's academic credentials are extraordinary. He is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. Dr. Campbell has more than seventy grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and more than 300 research papers on his resume. He is coauthor of the bestselling book, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health.
Dr. Campbell grew up on a dairy farm. Over the decades, his research has led him to believe that dairy products, and animal protein in general, are having a profound impact on human health that is not at all what most of us imagine. His decades of research have brought him to some startling conclusions.
JOHN ROBBINS: Dr. Campbell, like you I grew up eating a lot of dairy products. How has your research impacted your personal dietary choices?
DR. T. COLIN CAMPBELL: I was raised on a dairy farm and milked cows until starting my doctoral research more than fifty years ago at Cornell University in the animal science department. Meat and dairy foods were my daily fare, and I loved them.
When I began my experimental research program on the effects of nutrition on cancer and other diseases, I assumed it was healthy to eat plenty of meat, milk, and eggs. But eventually, our evidence raised questions about some of my most-cherished beliefs and practices.
Our findings, published in top peer-reviewed journals, pointed away from meat and milk as the building blocks of a healthy diet, and toward whole, plant-based foods with little or no added oil, sugar, or salt.
My dietary practices changed based on these findings, and so did those of my family.
JOHN ROBBINS: What did you discover?
DR. T. COLIN CAMPBELL: In human population studies, rates of heart disease and certain cancers strongly associate with animal-protein-based diets, usually reported as total fat consumption. Animal-based protein isn't the only cause of these diseases, but it is a marker of the simultaneous effects of multiple nutrients found in diets that are high in meat and dairy products and low in plant-based foods.
Historically, the primary health value of meat and dairy was touted to be a generous supply of protein. But therein lay a Trojan horse.
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