While we as a society generally recognize corporate performers with plaques, certificates, bonuses, and promotions, the doctors of the plant-based science movement appear to be awarded with success stories from their patients and tearful thanks from strangers who followed their advice in books and videos, often after years of suffering from afflictions such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol. Who are these doctors? They're standing against the prevailing medical and nutrition opinions of our day, much like those who stood against the tobacco industry years ago, when everybody from movie stars to doctors promoted cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and snuff.
Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn
Dr. Esselstyn has famously stated, "If the truth be known, coronary artery disease is a toothless paper tiger that need never exist, and if it does it exist, it need never progress." He founded The Cleveland Clinic, a wellness institute with a focus on preventing and reversing heart disease through diet. As for the awards on his shelf, how about an Olympic Gold Medal for starters? He pulled an oar on the U.S. rowing team that took the gold in 1956. He has received the Benjamin Spurlock Award for Compassion in Medicine, the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame Award, the 2013 Yale University George H.W. Bush '48 Lifetime of Leadership Award, the American School of Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award, and many others.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell
Equally as influential in the initial spread of plant-based nutrition and its elimination of so-called Western diseases such as heart attacks and strokes is Dr. Campbell, co-author of "The China Study." The New York Times awarded that book with the phrase, "Grand Prix of epidemiology." Dr. Campbell also wrote the books "Whole" and "The Low Carb Fraud." There was some talk about nominating him for a Nobel Prize award, but so far nothing has come of this. Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn were involved in similar, but separate, studies at the same time; Dr. Esselstyn worked with clinical trials, while Dr. Campbell studied population data. When the two doctors found out about each other, they became instant friends, and their fields of study complemented each other. Dr. Campbell has been in a few award-winning plant-documentaries, such as "Forks Over Knives" and "H.O.P.E.: What You Eat Matters."
Dr. John A McDougall
Completing this trio of the doctors most famous for their work in the field of diet over medicine is Dr. McDougall. You may recognize that name from The Right Foods brand of plant-based soups at your local supermarket. Dr. McDougall, along with his wife Mary, have helped numerous patients since he first observed the differences in the health between generations on the sugar plantation where he worked as a young doctor in Hawaii. His oldest patients, who had come to Hawaii from countries like China and the Philippines, lived on a diet comprised of mostly rice. Successive generations ate more Western foods, heavy in meat, dairy, and oils. While the older generation lived healthy and medication-free into their 90s, the younger generations became "fatter and sicker." Dr. McDougall continued to study this, and began to work helping his patients heal themselves with diet. He has received the American College of Medicine Lifetime Achievement Award.
More Award-Winning Doctors in the Field
Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Campbell, and Dr. McDougall are possibly the most famous of the doctors in this movement, but there are many more. In Santa Rosa, California, a wellness institute called TrueNorth has been home, over the years, to doctors working in this field, including TrueNorth founder Dr. Alan Goldhammer, who has been awarded the Indiana State Public Health Excellence in Health Science Award, and the Graduate-of-the-Last-Decade Award from his alma mater. Others at that facility have included Dr. Michael Klaper, who received the Plantrician Project Luminary Award and the Courage of Conscience Award.
