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Book Reviews
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The China Study
by T. Colin Campbell, PhD
(Benbella, 2005, 417 pages, $24.95)
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Americans’ health is getting worse every year. We spend more on health care per capita than any other country, but obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer continues to rise. Children are starting down this road of bad health earlier and earlier. According to “The China Study,” this is all because of the food we eat.
T. Colin Campbell, PhD has been at the forefront of nutrition research for over 40 years. He has received numerous grants for research funding and has authored more than 300 research papers. “The China Study” is the culmination of a twenty-year partnership between Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. Campbell became interested in the relationship between food and cancer when he was working in the Philippines on a program dealing with malnutrition. Since it was thought that lack of protein was the main cause of malnutrition, peanuts were being grown and fed to the residents there. The peanuts, however, were often contaminated with a fungus-produced toxin called aflatoxin, and this was causing liver cancer in Philippine residents.
After further study, Campbell found that the families with the most money were the ones getting liver cancer – and the diets of those families were similar to American diets. At the same time, a study in India found that rats given aflatoxin and fed a diet containing 20% protein got liver cancer, while rats fed a 5% protein diet didn’t show any signs of cancer. With further study on rats, Campbell found that nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development. Still, this was in rats. Campbell knew more human studies were needed. When Chinese scientist Dr. Junshi Chen joined his team, the opportunity arose to study the role of nutrition, lifestyle, and disease in the most comprehensive manner ever undertaken in the history of medicine. This became known as the China Study.
A 1970 nationwide survey done in China showed massive differences in cancer rates in different counties, even when genetic backgrounds were similar. Campbell assembled a team of respected scientists to see if they could find out what was causing the disparity and hopefully shed some light on the causes. The group didn’t just focus on cancer. The study included 48 different kinds of disease including heart disease, individual cancers, and infections diseases. Geographically, the study covered 65 counties in rural China. Two groups of disease emerged from the study: diseases of affluence (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.) and disease of poverty (pneumonia, tuberculoses, parasitic disease, digestive disease, etc.). Diseases of affluence are also referred to as “Western” diseases since the majority of people in the U.S. and other Western countries die from these ailments. In the China Study, Campbell found that nutrition had a strong effect on these diseases. He found that animal-based foods were linked to higher cholesterol and Western diseases and plant-based diets and active lifestyles were linked to healthier weights and lower risk of cancer and heart disease.
So why are the majority of medical establishments reluctant to admit the link between animal foods and disease? Campbell explains that pressure from food and drug corporations corrupt scientific evidence even when their products have been linked to serious health problems. Since drug companies are funding most studies being done, the information given to the public is unreliable. He further claims that the government is turning a blind eye to our country’s health and is being influenced by industry. In 2002, the Food and Nutrition Board published its nutrient recommendations and actually raised the recommended intakes of protein, fat, and sugar. ”How did we get to a place where the companies that profit from our sickness are the ones telling us how to be healthy; where companies that profit from our food choices are the ones telling us what to eat; where the public’s hard-earned money is being spent by the government to boost the drug industry’s profits; where there is more distrust than trust of our government policies on foods, drugs and health?” Campbell asks.
This book is easy to follow despite the scientific nature of the information, and Campbell does a good job illustrating his points in laymen’s terms. He puts forth a compelling argument for reducing the amount of animal foods in our diets, citing hundreds of studies. This book is well worth the read to get an insider’s look at how research is done, who funds it, and what is done with the results of these studies.
Cathe Olson is a mom, freelance writer, and author of Simply Natural Baby Food and The Vegetarian Mother’s Cookbook. For more information or to contact Cathe, visit her website at www.simplynaturalbooks.com.
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