T Colin Campbell in conversation with Ron Weiss

World-renowned biochemist and nutritionist Dr T Colin Campbell, pioneer of the whole food plant-based nutrition movement and co-author of The China Study, reflects on nutrition research and on what our current attitude to food means for the future and for our health with his friend Dr Ron Weiss, a physician, farmer and founder of Ethos Primary Care, a farm-based healthcare system. Campbell is unable to be in the UK and will join the event via video screen.

Campbell is best known for the China Project, the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. It was a partnership between Cornell and Oxford universities and the government of China and studied the diets of people in 65 rural Chinese districts. He says we are more confused than ever about what good nutrition looks like despite extensive research and huge volumes of public information on nutrition. He argues that an institutional emphasis on individual nutrients instead of whole foods has had catastrophic consequences. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He is founder of the T Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, a non-profit organisation that aims to increase awareness of the impact food has on our bodies, communities and the planet.

Weiss is a physician and farmer. He is the founder of Ethos Farm to Health, the world’s first farm-based healthcare system. He is board certified in both internal medicine and lifestyle medicine and is assistant professor of clinical medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Weiss’ medical practice, Ethos Primary Care, is located in the centre of Ethos, a 300-year-old working, organic regenerative farm in Long Valley, New Jersey. The farm produces more than 80 different varieties of vegetables, fruits and grains for patients and the community at large.  These ‘living medicines’ are used by Weiss’ patients to reverse and prevent chronic illness and are the foundation of a whole foods, plant-based diet, a term coined by Campbell in The China Study. Weiss, who has said ‘whole plant foods are the most powerful disease-modifying tools available to the medical practitioner’, has been highly influenced by Campbell, describing him as a father figure both professionally and personally.

Part of the programme of American literature and culture.

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