Reviews

The China Study

The following book review is for those of you who have ever flirted with becoming a vegetarian, or for those of you who want to understand the connection between diet and disease.

The China Study, published in 2006, gives us a framework for understanding critical, life-saving nutritional information. T. Colin Campbell, PhD, the principal author, credits biomedical researchers in China for the “tipping point” in the development of his ideas. In addition, scientist from the University of Oxford and from Cornell joined Campbell over his forty-plus years of studies into the relationship between diet and disease. His conclusions, hopefully, will give you the information necessary to dispel a multitude of health myths. Dr. Dean Ornish advises, “Everyone in the field of nutrition science stands on the shoulders of Dr. Campbell…Reading it may save your life.”

Dr. Campbell provides over 750 references that point the way to less cancer, less heart disease, fewer strokes, less obesity, less diabetes, less autoimmune disease, less osteoporosis, less Alzheimer’s, less kidney stones, and less blindness. The findings demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness.

Dr. Campbell, raised on a dairy farm in Northern Virginia, was taught that milk was Nature’s most healthy food. The beginning of his “awakening” came while coordinating a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. During the 10-year project, he investigated the high prevalence of liver cancer in Filipino children. He uncovered that children of the wealthiest families ate the highest animal protein diets and were the ones most likely to get liver cancer.

Campbell began to investigate the role of nutrition in the development of cancer: his research was funded for 27 years, mostly by the National Institute of Health, the American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Campbell, along with biomedical researchers from Cornell University, Oxford and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, surveyed diseases and diet and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. It produced more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between dietary factors and disease. People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoided chronic disease. The most exciting benefit of good nutrition is the prevention (or delay) of diseases that are thought to be due to genetic predisposition.

To help the reader understand the cancer process, Dr. Campbell uses an analogy to planting a lawn. There are three stages of cancer: initiation, promotion, and progression. Initiation is when you put the seeds in the soil, promotion involves sun and water to make the grass grow, and progression is when the grass gets out of control. Carcinogens are the initiators; promotion happens when the right conditions are met. Promotion is reversible – this is where dietary factors become so important.

Liver cancer rates are high in rural China: Campbell found that while the primary culprit (initiation) was Hepatitis B virus (HBV), diet played a key role. The blood cholesterol levels provided the main clue. “…our findings suggested those who were infected with HBV, and who were simultaneously eating more animal-based foods, had higher cholesterol levels and more liver cancer than those infected with the virus and not consuming animal-based foods.”

In the remaining Part II, Campbell discusses what other researchers have found regarding the diseases of affluence. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s obesity and diabetes are relatively unknown in traditional cultures that subsist mostly on whole plant foods: these ailments arrive when a traditional culture starts accumulating wealth and starts eating more meat and dairy.

The same diet that is good for the prevention of cancer is also good for the prevention of heart disease and the other diseases of affluences. “Furthermore, this diet (a whole foods, plant-based diet) can only benefit everyone, regardless of his or her genes or personal dispositions.”