Ignoring Holistic Nutrition Research Harms Many

This video is from a Canadian news show that aired during Dr. Roy Swank’s lifetime. It covers some drug trials for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and also covers Dr. Swank’s diet trial for MS.  Towards the end of the video, one of the docs running a drug trial scoffs at Dr. Swank’s results because the diet study was not a randomized control trial. This Doctor’s reductionist worldview is behind his assertion that randomized control trials (trials focusing on one factor, one outcome/mechanism at a time) are the most reliable approach to establish causal relationships between diet and health.

 Randomized Control Trials might be the “Gold Standard” when testing drugs or supplements, but they are not the best methods for studying diet’s effect on health and disease.

 On page 148 of Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s book, “Whole: Rethinking The Science of Nutrition”, Dr Campbell writes:

 “Most People in the medical community of practitioners and researchers do not regard looking for global mechanisms of health and disease as proper science. Before admitting nutritional medicine to the “legitimate disciplines” club, they would want to know the precise details of how such a complex system works for each disease event. Short of that they would insist on identifying the “active agents” of food, rather than simply accepting that the food itself is what’s good for us. Of course, they are asking for something that is impossible – at least when it comes to nutrition – we don’t know exactly how it works, because we cannot identify all the parts, what they do and how they do it. We just know that it does work”

 Nutrition is a holistic phenomenon and until reductionist nutrition research operates within a holistic paradigm,doctors and researchers will continue to ignore the mountains of holistic research linking WFPB diets to protection against a variety of diseases.