Food Over Medicine - Book Review

I recently had the pleasure of reading the book Food Over Medicine: The Conversation That Could Save Your Life. Authors Dr. Pamela Popper, PhD, ND and Glen Merzer take on the subjects of health, nutrition, and the practice of modern medicine as we know it today. They do an excellent job in doing so and in a very unusual fashion might I add.

Food Over Medicine is literally a conversation between Glen and Pam on some of the most pressing health issues that face our current system today. Both authors maintain a high degree of credibility and professionalism that you would expect when covering these serious topics, yet their style is fun, casual, and entertaining to say the least.

About The Authors

Dr. Pamela Popper, PhD, ND is the Executive Director of The Wellness Forum located in Colombus, OH. She is a naturopathic doctor who uses lifestyle medicine, and more specifically plant-based nutrition, to prevent and reverse many of the chronic diseases ailing her patients. She has appeared in the blockbuster documentary Forks Over Knives and is an internationally recognized speaker and expert in the field of nutrition, medicine, and health.

Glen Merzer is coauthor of Mad Cowboy with Howard Lyman, as well as No More Bull! with Howard Lyman and Joanna Samorow-Merzer. Glen is a playwright and screenwriter residing in California. He has been a vegetarian for forty years and vegan for almost twenty.

Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by Dr. T. Colin Campbell - Book Review

This summer spawned the publication of Dr. T. Colin Campbell's latest book Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition. This was a follow up to his bestseller The China Study  which took the nutrition world by storm back in 2005 and continues to be a leading seller today. Today I provide a book review on Whole.

Both The China Study and Whole paint a picture (and very intriguing one at that) of the health and nutrition world as it's come to exist today. While The China Study gives more of the intricate details of the individual studies relating to health and nutrition, Whole focuses on the bigger picture of how it all fits together within our current "system". Dr. Campbell lays out how a reductionist approach to nutrition, health, and medicine functions within our current system, and, more importantly, why the system operates the way it does.

Whole is comprised of three main parts followed by Dr. Campbell's engaging thoughts in Part IV on how we should move forward if we wish to turn around the current disease-care system we've come to know today.

Whole - Part I - Enslaved by The System

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.

Part I of Whole plants a seed in readers to think differently. It reveals a wholistic approach towards our healthcare system as we move forward. The present-day strategies of using pills, procedures, and/or surgeries to combat the epidemic of chronic disease is, for all intensive purposes, not working. Instead, Dr. Campbell enlightens us on the benefits of a whole foods, plant-based (WFPB) diet in our quest to end the epidemic of sickness and suffering.

Part I goes on to detail Dr. Campbell's background of how he grew up on a dairy farm and then made his subsequent entrance into the scientific world as a leading nutritional biochemist looking to rid the world of hunger and malnourishment. The details of his upbringing provide a very telling story with a surprising twist of fate.

Chapter 1 - The Modern-Day Health-Care Myth
Chapter 2 - The Whole Truth
Chapter 3 - My Heretical Path