authorDiscover the Best Books Written by T. Colin Campbell
Thomas Colin Campbell is an American biochemist specializing in nutrition's effect on long-term health. He is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University.
Campbell has become known for advocating a low-fat, whole-foods, plant-based diet. He claims responsibility for coining the term "Plant-Based diet" to help present his research on a diet at the National Institutes of Health in 1980. He is the author of over 300 research papers and four books, The China Study (2005, co-authored with his son, Thomas M. Campbell II, which became one of America's best-selling books about nutrition), Whole (2013), The Low-Carb Fraud (2014) and The Future of Nutrition: An Insider's Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right (2020) Campbell featured in the 2011 American documentary Forks Over Knives.
Campbell was one of the lead scientists of the China–Cornell–Oxford Project on diet and disease, set up in 1983 by Cornell University, the University of Oxford, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine to explore the relationship between nutrition and cancer, heart, and metabolic diseases. The study was described by The New York Times as "the Grand Prix of epidemiology."
Campbell joined MIT as a research associate, then worked for ten years in the Virginia Tech Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition before returning to Cornell in 1975 to join its Division of Nutritional Sciences. In addition, he has worked as a senior science adviser to the American Institute for Cancer Research and sits on the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine advisory board.
He is known in particular for research, derived in part from the China study, that appears to link the consumption of animal protein with the development of cancer and heart disease. For example, he argues that casein, a protein found in mammal milk, is "the most significant carcinogen we consume."
Campbell has followed a "99% vegan" diet since around 1990. He does not identify himself as a vegetarian or vegan because, he said, "they often infer something other than what I espouse." He told the New York Times: "The idea is that we should be consuming whole foods. We should not rely on the idea that genes determine our health. We should not depend on the idea that nutrient supplementation is the way to get nutrition because it's not. I'm talking about Whole, plant-based foods.
He has been a member 1978 of several United States National Academy of Sciences expert panels on food safety and holds an honorary professorship at the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. He is featured in the documentaries Forks Over Knives, Planeat, Vegucated, and PlantPure Nation, a film produced by Campbell's son, Nelson Campbell. Campbell is also on the advisory board of Naked Food magazine.
He is the founder of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, a 501 organization created to provide education about the whole food, plant-based diet Campbell recommends. The Center partners with eCornell to offer an online course which is the focus of the education programs. Campbell is the president of the board of directors for the Center.
