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Every doctor, teacher and parent needs to read this book! Jan 26, 2005 (1000 of 1124 found this helpful)
T. Colin Campbell has made a career of challenging the conventional wisdom around nutrition, and this book is the culmination of his work. His integrity, brilliance, and unflinching courage shine through every page.
The main point of this book is that most nutritional studies that we hear about in the media are poorly constructed because of what the author terms "scientific reductionism." That is, they attempt to pin down the effects of a single nutrient in isolation from all other aspects of diet and lifestyle.
While this is the "gold standard" for clinical trials in the pharmaceutical world, it just doesn't work when it comes to nutrition. Given that the Western diet is extremely high fat and high protein compared to most of the rest of the world, studies that examine slight variations in this diet (i.e., adding a few grams of fiber or substituting skim milk for full fat milk) are like comparing the mortality rates of people who smoke five packs of cigarettes a day vs. people who smoke only 97 cigarettes a day.
Campbell's research, which he describes in a very accessible and engaging fashion, has two tremendous advantages over the typical nutritional study. First, there is the China Study itself - a massive series of snapshots of the relationship between diet and disease in over 100 villages all over China. The rates of disease differ greatly from region to region, and Campbell and his research partners (including some of the most distinguished scholars and epidemiologists in the world) carefully correlated these differences with the varying diets of the communities.
It's not lazy "survey research" either - the researchers don't rely on their subjects' memory to determine what they ate and drank. The researchers also observed shopping patterns and took blood samples to cross-validate all the data.
The second amazing part of Campbell's research method is his refusal to accept any finding without taking it back to his lab and finding out how exactly it works. In other words, we discover in The China Study not only in what way, but precisely how, the foods we eat can either promote or compromise our health.
The book is part intellectual biography / hero's journey (although Campbell is always wonderfully humble - there's no trace of self-congratulation, just a deep gratitude for what he has experienced), part nutrition guide (the most honest and unflinching one you'll ever read), and part expose. The final section leaves no sacred cow standing, and names names! From the food industry, to the government, to academia, Campbell calmly reports on a coverup of nutritional truth so widespread and insidious that all citizens should be enraged.
I have a PhD in health education and a Masters in Public Health - and I can honestly say that no book has shaken my worldview like this one. Anyone interested in health - their own, or that of their family, friends, or community - must read this book and share it. Campbell has started a revolution. Skip this work at your own peril.
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China Study Review Sep 23, 2007 (296 of 385 found this helpful)
When I began reading this book, I couldn't put it down. In the first section, when Dr. Campbell described his own experiments on the effect of milk protein on liver cancer in rats, I just poured through page after page, thinking, "What great science"!
At that point in the book he reported his experiments, their rather dramatic results, was careful to point out the limitations and did not extrapolate. So far, very good.
In the next section he describes the China Study itself. There is also an addendum at the back, which gives more detail about the structure of the study. The foundation for the study was a database collected by the Chinese government during the 1970's. It listed the age and causes of death in each of China's provinces over a certain time period. For the follow-up study ten years later, they chose 67 rural villages and gathered data on details about diet, several markers from blood samples and other factors, on approximately 6000 individuals. He claims to have data on about 350 variables. However, only 57 of the 417 pages in the book are devoted to discussion of The China Study.
The purpose of the study was to try to relate diet and other factors, with the diseases that caused death, especially cancers. His particular interest was about the effect of a purely vegetarian diet. It bothered me that he had undertaken leadership of that follow-up study, with a pre-conceived notion of what he wanted it to show.
At this point in the book, Dr. Campbell began to make very broad statements about the Chinese diet and the benefits of a diet that was devoid of animal protein. This is where I really began to have trouble, because I felt that either the study itself or his description of it fell short of supporting the broad claims he was making.
There's no discussion of things like smoking, environmental pollution and sanitation, all of which plague China.... Even rural China.
Another thing that bothered me was his description of the Chinese diet. It flies in the face of my own observations and experiences during many trips to China and other parts of Asia, over the course of about 35 years.
Meat and seafood are a major staple of the Asian diet. They eat quite a bit of pork, chicken, duck, pigeons, fish, eggs and even snakes, organs and sea creatures that Americans would not eat. They do eat much less animal protein than Americans and always accompany it with lots of rice and vegetables. In that sense, their diet is much better than ours. But it is not vegetarian. Although much of their food is stir-fried in a wok, it is done with vegetable oils. Until very recently, junk food has not been available and it is rare to find beef. So it is a much better-balanced diet than ours.
In years past, during trips to Taiwan, I've been to markets where live chickens & ducks were laid on the ground with their feet tied together. People would either buy them live, or have the merchant slaughter & clean them before their eyes. In one market I saw a vendor selling the blood from snakes he had killed & drained as the people watched. Next day, my hosts took me to a snake-meat restaurant for lunch! (Not much meat & lots of bones.) In back alleys of Taipei, I saw families raising pigeons for food.
Just last year at a Shanghai food market in a very old and traditional neighborhood, the emphasis was on meat and fish. There was a section that sold vegetables & rice, but around the fringes of the central meat market. The displays were open and there was no refrigeration!
As the book proceeded through other chapters, making incessant claims about the preventative and curative effects of an all-vegetable diet, he begins to sound like a 19th century "Snake oil" merchant.
He's a zealot on a soap box. Mind you, HE MAY BE RIGHT. Most of what he says about nutrition has been heard before an
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A Shake-up Oct 12, 2006 (252 of 264 found this helpful)
This is a very good book full of very useful, well researched information. A big volume dealing with extensive study of the way nutrition influences our health and longevity. It should be read by anyone who desires to be healthy, especially by all the followers of the many fad diets ...
The China Study is the account of an enormous and the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted. The study results in answering some of the most important questions of today societies:
- what is the main culprit of cancer?
- How to deal with obesity epidemic
- How long can we live?
China Study also unveils behind-the-scene manipulation of big food business with no regard for consumer health. The authors make a big step forward in honest consumer education, as their integrity and scientific approach is beyond any doubt. Another no-hype volume with down-to-earth, commonsense approach to health and longevity is "Can We Live 150 Year?" It is a perfect addition to this great volume.
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Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics! Jun 29, 2005 (145 of 252 found this helpful)
Back in the 1980s, T. Colin Campbell and a team of researchers traveled to China to survey the dietary habits of 6,500 adults in 130 rural villages. Although they gathered data on a whopping 367 food variables,they somehow neglected to note how much soy people were eating. Yet soy is widely reputed to be a "miracle food" and the reason that the Chinese have lower rates of some cancers and other chronic diseases. So it's "startling" indeed to find that ALL legume consumption came to a grand total of only 12 grams per day, which is NOT very much. However, what's truly "startling" about this book is not the researchers' failure to be "comprehensive" -- they gathered plenty of good data though readers will have to go to earlier publications to get it -- but the many ways Campbell massages, misuses and misreports that data. Although he clearly thinks that it's all for a good cause, this is a textbook case of "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics." I recommend that the publisher follow up with a sequel -- a companion volume in which researchers without any dietary agenda take the same data and reach statistically justified conclusions. Now that would give readers food for thought!
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Well intentioned but terribly misguided Dec 2, 2005 (89 of 167 found this helpful)
Veganism is a wonderful diet, for some people. I was a strict follower of vegetarianism for 10 years and vegan for an extra two years. It was the sickest period of my life. I suffered from physical weakness, acute depression and would suffer colds about 5 times a year. I started a lot of world travelling and found myself needing to eat meat on occasion. I gradually started to introduce meat back into my diet. Suprisingly my health skyrocketed. I rarely feel sad, I have not had a cold in 3 years, and I am stronger and more energetic now at 36 than I was at 26. I know that this comes from eating meat again.
I have learned first hand that one persons perfect diet is another persons recipe for misery. Mr. Campbell should go to Thailand and try to explain why an entire population which consumes a large amount of meat with fresh vegetables remains thin. When I am there I see maybe one out of a thousand people who are overweight. In America it is more like 1 out of 3. The big mistake that these diet books make regardless if it is a vegan book or a meat eaters diet book is that there is no single healthy diet that you can recommend for everybody at all! Different people require different individualized diets. Which would mean that everybody needs their own unique diet book. That is the ultimate truth.