The China Study Review

The China Study changed the way the world views disease, and is inspiring an entire generation of health seekers to clean up their diets.

This groundbreaking book by T. Colin Campbell, an eminent professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, irrevocably shifts the field of responsibility for health from abstract causes to a model where individual lifestyle choices reign supreme.

People don't like to think what they shovel in their mouths matters much. They'd rather blame genetic fate for their diseases and rely on the treatment of doctors and a deluge of drugs to clean up the mess after the fact.

But this book points out the ignored link between the consumption of animal products and illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain diseases, macular degeneration and other problems.

The statistical underpinnings of the work came from the China Project, a survey of diets, death rates, and diseases for more than 880 million citizens of China.

I was conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years.

The evidence is pretty clear: Regardless of genetic background or geographic location, the Chinese that live like westerners and consumed large quantities of meat, dairy and eggs at the expense of whole plant foods suffered from the same diseases of affluence and cancer rates that we do.

Those who ate the majority of their calories from whole plant foods suffered from disease at a drastically reduced rate.

The Compelling Statistics In The China Study

The scientific rigour behind the book is so impressive that the New York Times calls it, "Grand Prix of Epidemiology".

The main study and other supportive statistics show that health improves as the amount of animal protein in the diet drops, even when it is reduced from 10 percent of calories to 0 percent of calories.

Plant foods, such as fruits and vegetables, protect the body from disease because they contain both large concentrations and a wide variety of antioxidants, which protect the body from damage caused by free radicals, Campbell explains.

Animal protein also increases the acidity of our blood and tissue so the body needs to strip calcium, an effective base, from bones to counteract this. Campbell explains that we're causing the osteoporosis we so fear with meat, diary, and eggs, which are ironically touted as bone builders.

High concentrations of calcium in the blood also inhibits the process by which the body changes vitamin D in the kidneys to a form that helps the body regulate the immune system.

Campbell describes the principles of health in The China Study:

• Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances working together, and cannot be managed through supplement pills.
• There are no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plant foods.
• Genes do no account for disease on their own, and nutrition helps determine which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
• Good nutrition can overcome the adverse effects of noxious chemicals
• Good nutrition can prevent diseases, and halt or reverse it at later stages.
• A diet that is beneficial for a particular chronic disease will support good health in all areas.
• Good nutrition creates health in all areas of life.

The China Study and Logical Conclusions

Campbell advocates for a vegan diet, but we need merely take his results showing that plant foods are best and add to it the knowledge that cooking damages food to realize that a good raw food diet is the best possible way to eat.

Campbell also stresses the need for a healthy lifestyle. and talks about getting enough sun exposure, which goes a long way towards improving health.

A Health Book For Everyone

I can't imagine a single person who would not benefit by reading of this book. It's hard to continue to harm yourself through diet when faced by such overwhelming evidence.

Do yourself a favor and get The China Study today.