Book report on the China Study

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BOOK REVIEW

Coutesy: “NAMAH”, a holistic health-journal from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry

 

Title: The China Study

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

Authors: T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell II

Publishers: Benbella Books, USA. (2005).

Price: US $24.95.

 

 

This is a radical and provocative book, scientifically challenging all our traditional notions about diet and nutrition. As one reviewer1 succinctly puts it: “If T. Colin Campbell were living 500 years ago, he might have been burned at the stake. He would have been denounced as a heretic who dared challenge the prevailing information.”

 

Dr Campbell is a professional biochemist, who has worked in the field of experimental nutritional and biomedical research for more than four decades. He has authored hundreds of scientific papers and is considered one of world’s foremost authorities on cancer research. He has headed many American and International expert panels and organizations in the fields of research, funding and policy making for prevention of cancer.

 

Campbell grew up as a traditional boy in a dairy farming and cattle raising family. As a young scientist, he joined mainstream research in trying to find better ways of increasing the output of milk and meat. Then a turning point came in 1968. It was a scientific paper published from India2, which showed the seemingly odd result of the effect of milk protein on two groups of laboratory rats. One group was fed a normal diet of 20% milk protein and the other group was given a reduced 5% milk protein diet. When both the groups were exposed to carcinogens, every single animal in the 20% group developed cancer and not a single rat in the 5% group got cancer; it was a 100 to 0 score! Other scientists ignored this result as some mistake in the lab-procedures, but Campbell investigated it deeply. In the follow up research with his team, he found that even after cancer developed in laboratory rats, it’s further progression could be “switched on and switched off at will” just by changing the level of milk protein in the diet. He probed it further by working on other species, other types of carcinogens and other proteins. The results were clear, consistent and unmistakable: the development of cancer was linked to “animal protein” in the diet. When a similar amount of protein was supplied from plant-foods, cancer did not grow. He had found a definite link between diet and cancer, validating and surpassing the results of the original paper2 from India.

 

Now Campbell critically examined the published work of other scientists in this field. He discovered that many other studies had linked “animal protein” to heart disease, diabetes, cataracts, macular degeneration, autoimmune diseases and dementia. In some of the publications, indisputable photographic evidence from angiography was shown where the clogged arteries of the heart patients started opening up after switching over to a purely plant-based diet; thus not only preventing but also reversing the heart disease by dietary changes.3-4 Here, Campbell found a strong supporting evidence of his work, linking animal protein to various diseases. He has cited more than 750 published references as the primary sources of scientific information in his book. This vast synthesis is what makes the book fundamentally different from the results of a single study.

 

 

 

The final opportunity to confirm the lab-results in a human population came in 1981. Cornell University-USA, Oxford University-UK and Chinese Institute of Preventive Medicine collaborated in a mega-project called “The China Study”. The project was headed by Dr Campbell and it surveyed 65 rural and semi-rural counties of China, collecting data abut eating habits, living conditions, prevalence of diseases, major causes of death, with blood and urine samples. This is the largest-ever dietary survey of human population. The collection of data continued for more than two decades and then, in the year 2005, Dr Campbell has published the outcome. They found “more than 8000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease.” These observations of a large human population have confirmed the results of lab experiments on animals. Dr Campbell summarizes it as, “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 avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored.”

 

 

 

Instead of giving detailed guidelines like most diet-books, Dr Campbell gives a simple general principle: to switch over to a “whole (i.e. unprocessed), varied (i.e. many sources), plant-based (i.e. excluding meat, eggs, fish and dairy products) diet.” He recommends just two supplements: a daily dose of vitamin B-12 and a daily 10 minutes’ walk in mild sunshine for an ‘active form of vitamin D.’ He claims that all the chronic diseases, which we habitually associate with aging and senility, are NOT inevitable; old age can be graceful and free from diseases.

 

 

 

The book is divided into 4 parts. The first part is about Dr Campbell’s own work probing the relationship between diet and cancer. The second part synthesizes the work of other researchers linking diet to other chronic diseases. The third part summarizes some general principles about diet and health. The fourth part, titled “Why haven’t you heard this before,” is a detailed one, uncovering a dark side of present civilization. It exposes how powerful groups in cattle industry, poultry industry, dairy industry, pharmaceutical industry, medical establishments, fast-food chains and even in policy making government panels subvert the dissemination of this information to the masses because they stand to lose a lot of money.

 

 

 

A simple question, asked by another reviewer5, sums up the message of the book: “If you were offered a single pill that would prevent heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and a host of other diseases, would you take it? What if you were told that instead of a pill, you could get the same results as a strict vegetarian?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewed by: Arun Chaturvedi.

 

 

 

 

References:

www.vegparadise.com <http://www.vegparadise.com/> . Madhavan TV and Gopalan C, (1968): “The effect of dietary protein on carcinogenesis of aflatoxin.” Arch. Path. 85, pp 133-137. Esselstyn CB, Ellis SG, Medendorp SV et al. (1995): “A strategy to arrest and reverse coronary artery disease: a 5-year longitudinal study of a single physician’s practice.” J. Family Practice 41, pp 560-568. Esselstyn CB, (1998): “Introduction: more than coronary artery disease.” Am. J. Cardiol. 82, 5T-9T. www.dadtalk.com.