While studies show that those who consume less than 10 percent protein tend to not to have cancer, Americans tend to consume — on average — nearly double that amount.

Or so said nutrition expert-researcher-health advocate T. Colin Campbell on Oct. 16 in UNC Asheville’s Lipinsky Auditorium.

Campbell, who addressed “The Great Food Secret” during an hour-long presentation, drew a standing-room-only audience of about 650 people.

“The average protein consumption in the United States is 17 percent ... mostly due to the consumption of animal-based protein ... I’d say the only protein we need is from plants,” he said.

“Since 1839, when protein was discovered, it’s been virtually synonymous with nutrition.”

While acknowledging that many people have “heard that high-fat diets increase cholestrol,” Campbell said other effects of animal protein consumption include:

• Intiates Type 1 diabetes

• Increases calcium bone loss,

• Cow’s milk is a common cause of childhood allergies

• Cow’s milk is associated with cataract formation, arthritis and digestive disorders.

In speaking more generally, Campbell said that “nutrition therapy is superb for diabetes Type 2 and reduced the ‘meds’ for Type 1.”

He also contended that a whole-food, plant-based diet “prevents, suspends and cures” all cancers, heart diseases, multiple sclerosis and kidney stones — “and promotes superb physical fitness.”

Further, Campbell said, “The food-based protocol for disease prevention is the same as for treatment” and “the effects produced are rapid, broad and profound ... It’s life-saving. We tend to dismiss preventive medicine.”

After a pause, he added, “You don’t have to believe me ... Just try it.”

He told of a doctor who is famous for telling those of his new patients, who are diabetics, “to give him all of their ‘meds.’” He then puts them on a whole-food, plant-based diets -— and they get better and no longer need “meds.”

“So where does nutrition fit in?” he asked, rhetorically. “It doesn’t,” Campbell said with a note of sadness.

He said nutrition studies suffer from the following:

• Poorly understood by the public.

• Research funding hardly exists.

• Doctors are not trained in nutrition. “Med schools — they don’t teach nutrition. They (interested doctors) take it (nutrition classes) as an elective. They don’t get that this is the most important topic of all.”

On the bright side, Campbell said, “I see changes now. I see med schools and doctors -— on a grassroots level” — working to learn about nutritition and taking the subject much more seriously.