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The China Study
T. Colin Campbell PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II
Given the barrage of information (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.) that constantly discuss diet and health, are you confident that you know what you should be doing to improve your health? Even though information and opinions are plentiful, very few people truly know what they should be doing to improve their health. Real science has been buried beneath a clutter of irrelevant or even harmful information – junk science, fad diets, and food industry propaganda.
Here is a framework for understanding nutrition and health, a framework that eliminates confusion, prevents and treats disease, and allows you to live a more fulfilling life. We American taxpayers who pay for the research and health policy in this great country deserve to know that many of the common notions we’ve been told about food, health, and disease are wrong:
• Synthetic chemicals in the environment and in your food, as problematic as they may be, are not the main cause of cancer.
• The genes that you inherit from your parents are not the most important factors in determining whether you fall prey to any of the ten leading causes of death.
• The hope that genetic research will eventually lead to drug cures for diseases ignores more powerful solutions that can be employed today.
• Obsessively controlling your intake of any one nutrient, such as carbohydrates, fat, cholesterol or omega-3 fats, will not result in long-term health.
• Vitamins and nutrient supplements do not give you long-term protection against disease.
• Drugs and surgery don’t cure the diseases that kill most Americans.
• Your doctor probably does not know what you need to do to be the healthiest you can be.
Some of the findings, published in the most reputable scientific journals, show that:
• Dietary change can enable diabetic patients to go off their medication.
• Heart disease can be reversed with diet alone.
• Breast cancer is related to levels of female hormones in the blood, which are determined by the food we eat.
• Consuming dairy foods can increase the risk of prostate cancer.
• Antioxidants, found in fruits and vegetables, are linked to better mental performance in old age.
• Kidney stones can be prevented by a healthy diet.
• Type 1 diabetes, one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child, is convincingly linked to infant feeding practices.
These finding demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful weapon we have against disease and sickness. An understanding of this scientific evidence is not only important for improving health; it also has profound implications for our entire society. We must know why misinformation dominates our society and why we are grossly mistaken in how we investigate diet and disease, how we promote health and how we treat illness.
By any number of measures, America’s health is failing. We spend far more, per capita, on health care than any other society in the world, and yet two thirds of Americans are overweight, and over 15 million Americans have diabetes, a number that has been rising rapidly. We fall prey to heart disease as often as we did thirty years ago, and the War on Cancer, launched in the 1970’s, has been a miserable failure. Half of Americans have a health problem that requires taking a prescription drug every week, and over 100 million Americans have high cholesterol.
To make matters worse, we are leading our youth down a path of disease earlier and earlier in their lives. One third of the young people in this country are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. Increasingly, they are falling prey to a form of diabetes that used to be seen only in adults, and these young people now take more prescription drugs than ever before.
These issues all come down to three things: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Most of us live within cultural boundaries that define our food preferences and habits. Example: raised on a dairy farm where milk was central to our existence. Or beef farm where beef was central to our existence, or chicken, or hog, the list goes on. We were told in school, for example, that cow’s milk made strong, healthy bones and teeth. It was Nature’s most perfect food.
In a project with malnourished Filipino children, it was found that children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer. Indian researchers studied tow groups of rats. In one group, they administered the cancer-causing aflatoxin (a mold toxin found in peanuts and corn), then fed a diet that was composed of 20% protein, a level near what many of us consume in the West. In the other group, they administered the same amount of aflatoxin, but then fed a diet that was only composed of 5% protein. Incredibly, every single animal that consumed the 20% protein diet had evidence of liver cancer, and every single animal that consumed a 5% protein diet avoided liver cancer. It was a 100 to 0 score, leaving no doubt that nutrition trumped chemical carcinogens, even very potent carcinogens, in controlling cancer. Twenty seven years after this study, a study was funded mostly by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the American Institute for Cancer Research.
What was found was shocking. Low-protein diets inhibited the initiation of cancer by aflatoxin, regardless of how much of this carcinogen was administered to these animals. After cancer initiation was completed (already existed), low-protein diets also dramatically blocked subsequent cancer growth. In other words, the cancer-producing effects of this highly carcinogenic chemical were rendered insignificant by a low-protein diet. In fact, dietary protein proved to be so powerful in its effect that we could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed.
Furthermore, the amounts of protein being fed were those that we humans routinely consume. The levels used were not extraordinary as is often the case in carcinogen study.
It was found that not all proteins had this effect. What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer? Casein, which makes up 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy. As this picture came into view, it began to challenge and then to shatter some most cherished assumptions.
This study was taken from animal studies to human studies, jointly arranged through Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventative Medicine.
The study did not rest on animal studies and the massive human study in China. Findings of other researchers and clinicians also proved to be some of the most exciting findings of the past fifty years. There findings show that heart disease, diabetes, and obesity can be reversed by a healthy diet. Other research shows that various cancers, autoimmune diseases, bone health, kidney health, vision and brain disorders in old age (like cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer’s) are convincingly influenced by diet. Most importantly, the diet that has time and again been shown to reverse and/or prevent these diseases is the same whole foods, plant-based diet that was found to promote optimal health in the laboratory research and in the China Study. The findings are consistent.
Americans are confused. The answer has to do with how health information is generated and communicated and who controls such activities. The distinctions between government, industry, science and medicine have become blurred. The distinctions between making a profit and promoting health have become blurred. The problems with the system do not come in the form of Hollywood-style corruption. The problems are much more subtle, and yet much more dangerous. The result is massive amounts of misinformation, for which average American consumers pay twice. They provide the tax money to do the research, and then they provide the money for their health care to treat their largely preventable diseases.
