New video series that you can watch online at no charge

If you know me at all, you know of my great admiration and respect for this legendary Cornell professor of nutritional biochemistry, Dr. T. Colin Campbell. Since 2002, when I first began my quest to learn all about the optimal diet for humans, I have been following the career of this great man.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell -- author of The China Study and the world's leading authority on health promoting, plant-based nutrition.

During the early stages of my study, I found myself searching for legitimacy and authenticity that would resonate with the mainstream — and I found it big-time with Dr. Campbell. After a splendid career spanning more than 40 years, he went public with all of the startling things he had discovered about what we humans should be eating. Early on, his colleagues warned him about sharing those “dirty little secrets” that he had discovered about our toxic, meat-laden, typical western diet. (See earlier post re academic freedom.)

Finally, in 2005, at the insistence of his wife Karen, he realized that it was finally time to tell his complete story — as she said, “for the children of the world.” So, that’s exactly what he did when he and his son published The China Study in January of 2005. Since that time, with virtually no up-front marketing of any kind, that fine book has been read by over one million people worldwide and is consistently still selling in the top 100 books in all of Amazon.

Later that same year, I first met Karen and Colin Campbell at the Zen Palate Restaurant in New York City, where he was speaking to a handful of vegetarian zealots. I remember thinking at the time, “This great man will probably win a Nobel Prize someday for his work, but for now, less than twenty people turn out to hear him speak in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.” But that was before he appeared on Larry King & Extra, before Bill Clinton told the world about him and before the movie Forks Over Knives, which opens in public theaters in May 2011…I saw a preview of this powerful movie that features the careers of Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn (Cleveland Clinic). Don’t miss it.

Dr. T. Colin Campbell and J. Morris Hicks review the manuscript of "Healthy Eating - Healthy World" after eating a "4-Leaf" meal next to the Cornell campus in December of 2010

During the past five years since first meeting Dr. Campbell, I have had the good fortune of becoming his friend and getting to know his family. Just recently, he and his son Nelson wrote the foreword to our book, which you can read on the Book Preview page of this site. Just this weekend, I watched a new 7-part video series featuring Dr. Campbell in a setting that’s almost like sitting with him for a relaxed chat.

Each video is about ten minutes, with Dr. Campbell (about half of each video) talking without notes about how his nutritional discoveries unfolded. In the first video, he talks about the death of his mother-in-law from colon cancer at a young age — an event that led to a career of trying to find out why.

Introduced in the first video by his son and my friend, Nelson; the videos also include a professional moderator who sets the stage for each topic in the series. Following in the sequence of his book, Dr. Campbell talks about how animal-based foods are the primary drivers of so many of our “diseases of affluence” like cancer and heart disease. He is particularly critical of dairy which has “no redeeming qualities” in terms of being a nutritious food. This is significant, as he was raised on a dairy farm.

As of August 15, 2011, these videos are no longer available. They will reside here should they become available in the future.

My advice is that you carve out an hour or so, sit down and watch this very powerful series of seven videos in chronological order. By the time you finish, you will feel like you know this great man…and you may even be motivated to make some changes that will change your life, and leave a much better world for generations that follow.