Eat More Plants

Here are 5 ways to enjoy the slimming nutrition of plant foods

Experiment with eating different vegetables, and you’ll find the ones you like. lunamarina/Shutterstock

The most significant thing you can do to improve your health, vitality, and energy levels, according to nutrition scientist Dr. T. Colin Campbell, is to change the way you eat. This doesn’t mean following the fad diet du jour, joining Overeaters Anonymous, or counting every calorie. It means, at least according to Campbell, simply eating more real foods, especially plants.

So, there you have it. Your mom was right when she told you to eat your vegetables. As Campbell explains in his provocative, thoroughly referenced, and fascinating best-seller “The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health,” first published in 2004, eating a whole-food, real-food, plant-based diet is not only protective against cancer, adult-onset diabetes, and heart disease, it can actually reverse these conditions.

Lessons From the Philippines

It was while Campbell was doing original research in the Philippines that he uncovered what he calls “a dark secret” in his book. That dark secret was that Filipino children on the highest protein diets seemed to have the worst health outcomes. “Children who at the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer!” Campbell wrote.