Why, despite the many advances in science and technology over the past few decades, does our health only seem to be getting worse? Why, despite so much time and energy spent studying the foods we eat, are we more confused than ever about nutrition—what good nutrition looks like, and what it can do for our health?

Colin Campbell’s first book, The China Study—with 3 million copies sold (and growing!)—laid out the exhaustive evidence for the whole foods, plant-based diet as the healthiest way to eat. His New York Times bestselling follow-up, Whole, addressed the widespread scientific emphasis on reductionism that has kept our focus on the discrete behaviors of individual vitamins and nutrients in the foods we eat, rather than diet’s synergistic effects on health.

Now in The Future of Nutrition, Campbell takes on the institution of nutrition itself: the history of how we got locked in to focusing on “disease care” over health care; the widespread impact of our reverence of animal protein on our interpretation of scientific evidence; the way even well-meaning organizations can limit what science is and is not taken seriously; and what we can do to ensure the future of nutrition is different than its past.

The Future of Nutrition offers a fascinating deep-dive behind the curtain of the field of nutrition—with implications both for our health and for the practice of science itself.