The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health

There is no doubt about it - "western style" diets cause heart disease, obesity, cancers, etc. The "dieases of civilisation" as they call them. But how any decent scientist can draw the conclusions they do in the China Study is beyond me.

The idea that animal products cause cancer and other diseases is rediculous. The foods in the Western Diet that cause the cancers, the heart diseases are the highly processed foods that we tend to eat. They are high in sugar or high in sugar and fat (the worst combo there is). They have no nutritional value you to them except empty calories - ice-cream, soft drinks, cakes, pastries, pasta, rice, etc.

You can't eat the above types of foods and expect to be healthy. Considering most in the west eat those sorts of foods AND animal products doesn't mean that animal food is the villan.

I take the view that we should all eat what we are biologically evolved to eat. And for most of the 800,000 or so years homo-sapiens have been around, we have been hunter-gatherers. The hunting being the primary source of food. We are designed to eat protein and fat but not highly processed foods like bread - which has only really been available to us in the last 10,000 years. No where near long enough for us to evolve properly to handle.

I would agree with the authors pronouncement to avoid milk - modern milk is so processed that it's no good. I'm sure they'd agree that proper raw, unprocessed milk is ok. They like their raw food. Why not raw meat then?

Let's say we put all the readers of this book on an island for a year. We give half of them nothing but protein and fats for that year. The other half gets all carbohydrates -- no protein, no fat. That group, the carb-only group, would be dead in a year. The other group will do just fine.

The actual dietary requirement for carbs in the diet is zero. Now, does that mean we should eat zero carbohydrates? No. There are incredibly important things in carbohydrate-containing foods such as phytochemicals, flavonoids, vitamins, minerals, anti-inflammatories and all kinds of stuff we desperately need for optimal health.

But is there a physiological need for the metabolism to have carbohydrates in the diet? No. There is, however, a physiological need for glucose. The brain needs a certain amount of glucose per day. But, the body can make that amount of glucose just fine from fatty acids and proteins.

So avoid process foods, sugars and the like and you'll be fine.

a must read for those concerned about their health (4/7 people found this helpful)

This book changed so much about what I thought was 'healthy' eating. I had no idea about the links between animal protein and cancer, for example. Also how unhealthy dairy products are for you as well. By the time I finished this book, I became a veggie and I instead to stay one for the rest of my life! I highly recommend this book if you are concerned at all about your health - it is essential!

80% : Excellent Study but Different Conclusions Possible (14/18 people found this helpful)

Whole-food diet
The book recommends a diet of 100 % whole plant foods. All writers outside the food processing industry could not disagree that it is safest to eat 100% natural whole-foods ie foods which have not been industrialised (eg corn-fed beef), fractionated (eg the myriad of foods constructed from extracts of corn, wheat and soy), contaminated (with numerous chemicals) or otherwise processed (eg homogenised milk). However there is no agreement that all the foods should be plant foods.

Animal Protein (Chapter 3)
Campbell reports that if aflatoxin poisoned rats are given too much casein they develop cancer. Casein is a fractionated food, derived presumably from modern industrialised cow's milk and something that humans do and should not eat on it's own - one wonders what would have happened if the rats had been given natural whole milk with is fat, other proteins, vitamins and enzymes (if not pasteurised) etc needed for proper digestion intact ? What would have happened if there were given other fractionated foods such as fructose extracted from otherwise healthy fruit ? - diabetic symptoms ??
Though dairy foods are modern food in evolutionary terms, humans have used them successfully for thousands of years.
From these experiments on HIGH LEVELS of FRACTIONATED, DAIRY foods on RATS, and one or two other experiments which he did not describe, Campbell goes on to conclude that ALL WHOLE ANIMAL FLESH foods (fish , poultry and meat and eggs) are dangerous to HUMAN health in ANY QUANTITY. This is in spite of the evidence that hunter gatherers survived for hundreds of thousands of years eating large amounts of animal foods of all types and that even some modern civilisations have survived perfectly healthily on all animal food diets. Today, many civilisations outside the western developed world live very healthily while consuming animal foods in substantial quantities (eg Japanese, one of the healthiest nations in the world eat substantial amounts of fish).

Nutrients (Chart 11.2)
No food writer would disagree that humans need to eat nutritious foods, as natural as possible with sufficiently high levels of vitamins, minerals and other organic nutrients. Table 11.2 focuses on those nutrients which are better obtained from plant foods. However many other nutrients vital or important to human health are better obtained from animal foods because they are not available in plant foods or the amounts available in plant foods are much lower- these include vitamins B12, B2 and B3 and D, minerals such as zinc and selenium, long chain omega 3 fatty acids, carnitine, creatine, carnosine and coenzyme Q10. If one adopts a vegan diet it can be difficult or impossible to obtain all these without using dietary supplements.

Western Diet (Charts 4.7, 4.8, 8.4,14.3)

In industrialised western societies, most of the food eaten is industrialised food rather than whole food. Animals are fed unnaturally and both plant and animal foods are fractionated. The resultant processed foods are loaded with fat, refined sugar and starch and modified animal and plant proteins and are low in essential nutrients. In the above mentioned charts, the industrialised western societies have highest incidence of disease - the most obvious association is with the industrialisation of food as the amount of truly natural whole animal and plant foods eaten is rather low in these countries. Primitive societies which do not use industrialised foods seem to do better.

Conclusion
From an ecological point of view it would be nice to believe that one could survive on an entirely vegan whole-food diet - however this seems to be very risky as it defies the whole history of human development for hundreds of thousands of years. The biggest risk to human health seems to be the industrialisation of food production rather than consumption of natural animal food. Four out of five stars are given because it could be optimum for 80 % of food to be whole plant food with 20% whole animal food (fish from the sea, true free range poultry and eggs, grass fed red meat and even some milk and butter, not margarine).

Extraordinary work (6/8 people found this helpful)

I have read dozens of books on the subject of nutrition and health, but this is the only one that has had a profound and permanent effect on me. Everything in this book just made sense. The writing is clear, intelligent and surprisingly passionate, and I was utterly hooked from the first page to the last. It's impossible to ignore the hundreds of scientific studies that point to a direct relationship between what we eat and the state of our health. These studies are presented in an easy to understand manner and the writer maintains a scientific detachment that allows the reader to make up his or her own mind. There are chapters on different types of chronic diseases, backed up with scientific research that will leave you in no doubt that most of these diseases are entirely avoidable.

This book made me realize for the first time that an animal based diet is directly linked to chronic diseases and cancer, and that I must take responsibility for my health. I had always been suspicious of milk products and knew that they caused more harm than good, but giving them up was always an uphill struggle - not any more!

This book has given me hope because many of our modern diseases can be reversed with appropriate diet and a long and healthy life is within our reach. Since reading this book I have made radical changes to my diet (which I had never been able to do before) and have a new found respect for my body and the food I put in it.

This is truly an important and profound work that will revolutionise your thinking and eating habits. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Life changing book (6/9 people found this helpful)

This book ought to be mandatory reading for every adult in the world. It is fantastic and life changing! Thank you Dr Campbell.

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health

T. Colin Campbell

Reader Reviews:

Just Bad Science (18/27 people found this helpful)

a must read for those concerned about their health (4/7 people found this helpful)

80% : Excellent Study but Different Conclusions Possible (14/18 people found this helpful)

Extraordinary work (6/8 people found this helpful)

Life changing book (6/9 people found this helpful)

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