The China Study

This is a remarkable book given the decades-worth of scientific expertise that the author, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, applies towards highlighting what +8,000 statistically significant findings can teach us about the link between nutrition and disease. For further confidence that you should consider the less popular messages in The China Study, click on the video below and listen to former President Bill Clinton discuss his new diet, based partially on the counsel of the authors of The China Study.

READ WHAT LEADING SCIENTISTS AND DOCTORS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE CHINA STUDY…

“The China Study describes a monumental survey of diet and death rates from cancer in more than 2,400 Chinese counties and the equally monumental efforts to explore its significance and implications for nutrition and health. Dr. Campbell and his son, Thomas, have written a lovely, provocative and important book that deserves widespread attention.”

– Frank Rhodes, PhD

President (1978 – 1995) Emeritus, Cornell University

“Colin Campbell’s The China Study is an important book, and a highly readable one. With his son, Tom, Colin studies the relationship between diet and disease, and his conclusions are startling. The China Study is a story that needs to be heard.”

– Robert C. Richardson, PhD

Nobel Prize Winner, Professor of Physics and Vice Provost of Research, Cornell University

“The China Study is the account of a ground-breaking research study that provides the answers long sought by physicians, scientists and health-conscious readers. Based on painstaking investigations over many years, it unearths surprising answers to the most important nutritional questions of our time: What really causes cancer? How can we extend our lives? What will turn around the obesity epidemic? The China Study quickly and easily dispenses with fad diets, relying on solid and convincing evidence. Clearly and beautifully written by one of the world’s most respected nutrition authorities, The China Study represents a major turning point in our understanding of health.”

– Neal Barnard, M.D., President

Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine

“All concerned with the obesity epidemic, their own health, and the staggering environmental and social impacts of the Western diet will find wise and practical solutions in Dr. Campbell’s The China Study.”

– Robert Goodland, Lead Advisor on the Environment

The World Bank Group (1978 – 2001)

“Dr. Campbell’s book The China Study is a moving and insightful history of the struggle — still ongoing — to understand and explain the vital connection between our health and what we eat. Dr. Campbell knows this subject from the inside: he has pioneered the investigation of the diet – cancer link since the days of the seminal China Study, the NAS report, Diet, Nutrition and Cancer and AICR’s expert panel report, Food, Nutrition and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. Consequently, he is able to illuminate every aspect of this question. Today, AICR advocates a predominantly plant-based diet for lower cancer risk because of the great work Dr. Campbell and just a few other visionaries began twenty-five years ago.”

– Marilyn Gentry, President

American Institute for Cancer Research

“The China Study is extraordinarily helpful, superbly written and profoundly important. Dr. Campbell’s work is revolutionary in its implications and spectacular in its clarity. I learned an immense amount from this brave and wise book. If you want to eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and then take cholesterol-lowering medication, that’s your right. But it you want to truly take charge of your health, read The China Study and do it soon! If you heed the counsel of this outstanding guide, your body will thank you every day for the rest of your life.”

– John Robbins, Author of the Best-Selling Books

Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution

“The China Study gives critical, life-saving nutritional information for every health-seeker in America. But it is much more; Dr. Campbell’s expose of the research and medical establishment makes this book a fascinating read and one that could change the future for all of us. Every health care provider and researcher in the world must read it.”

– Joel Fuhrman, M.D.

Author of the Best-Selling Book, Eat to Live

From Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; pages 76 – 77

The largest and most impressive epidemiologic study was the China Project. The New York Times called this investigation the “Grand Prix of all epidemiologic studes” and “the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.

The reason this large undertaking, involving hundreds of researchers from Cornell and Oxford universities, produced such respected data is because China was the perfect test tube, “a living laboratory,” to detect the effects food has on the incidence of different cancers. The people in one small area of China eat a certain diet, while just 100 miles away they may eat a vastly different one. The investigators were able to study populations with a broad range of dietary differences. In addition, the Chinese individuals who were tested had lived their entire lives in the same town, and therefore the dietary effects were present for the subjects’ entire lives. In America, there is comparatively little difference in diet from one city to the next.

This project reported disease rates from towns that ate almost a complete plant-based diet and from other areas that ate a significant amount of animal products. The researchers found that as the amount of animal products increased in the diet, even in relatively small increments, so did the emergence of the types of cancers that are common in the West. The researchers noted that most cancers increased in direct proportion to the quantity of animal products eaten and decreased relative to the amount of fruits, vegetables, and beens consumed.

The more animal products in the diet, the greater the cancer occurrence.

The more fruits and vegetables in the diet, the less cancer they found.

Areas of China with exceptionally low intakes of animal products were virtually free of the cancers and heart disease that develop in most people living in Western countries. Even lean meats, chicken, eggs and wildly and naturally raised livestock (without hormones and antibiotics) were shown to increase the heart attack and cancer rates in proportion to the amount consumed by the population under study. Green vegetables consumption showed a protective effect.

From Dr. Campbell about his background:

“After leaving MIT and taking a faculty position at Virginia Tech, I began coordinating technical assistance for a nationwide project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. Part of the project became an investigation of the unusually high prevalence of liver cancer, usually an adult disease, in Filipino children. It was thought that high consumption of aflatoxin, a mold toxin found in peanuts and corn, caused this problem. Aflatoxin has been called one of the most potent carcinogens ever discovered.

For ten years our primary goal in the Philippines was to improve childhood malnutrition among the poor, a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Eventually, we established about 110 nutrition “self-help” education centers around the country.

The aim of these efforts in the Philippines was simple: make sure that children were getting as much protein as possible. It was widely thought that much of the childhood malnutrition in the world was caused by a lack of protein, especially from animal-based foods. Universities and governments around the world were working to alleviate a perceived “protein gap” in the developing world.

In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer! They were the children of the wealthiest families.

I then noticed a research report from India that had some very provocative, relevant findings. Indian researchers had studied two groups of rats. In one group, they administered the cancer-causing aflatoxin, 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.

This information countered everything I had been taught. It was heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy, let alone say it promoted cancer. It was a defining moment in my career.

… I decided to start an in-depth laboratory program that would investigate the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the development of cancer… Eventually, this research became handsomely funded for twenty-seven years by the best reviewed and most competitive funding sources (mostly the National Institute of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research). Then our results were reviewed (a second time) for publication in many of the best scientific journals.

What we 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, 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. We didn’t use extraordinary levels, as is so often the case in carcinogen studies.

But that’s not all. We 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.

– Dr. Campbell in The China Study; pages 5 – 6:

From his website:

“After a long career in research and policy-making, I have decided to step ‘out of the system.’ I have decided to disclose why Americans are so confused,” said Dr. Campbell. “As a taxpayer who foots the bill for research and health policy in America, you deserve to know that many of the common notions you have been told about food, health and disease are wrong.”

“I propose to do nothing less than redefine what we think of as good nutrition. You need to know the truth about food, and why eating the right way can save your life.”

Early in his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech, Dr. Campbell worked to promote better health by eating more meat, milk and eggs — “high-quality animal protein … It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world.”

He later was a researcher on a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. The project became an investigation for Dr. Campbell, as to why so many Filipino children were being diagnosed with liver cancer, predominately an adult disease. The primary goal of the project was to ensure that the children were getting as much protein as possible.

“In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer…” He began to review other reports from around the world that reflected the findings of his research in the Philippines.

Although it was “heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy,” he started an in-depth study into the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the cause of cancer.

The research project culminated in a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, “this project eventually produced more than 8000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease.”

The findings? “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,” said Dr. Campbell.

In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses. The China Study also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and irresponsible scientists.

The China Study is not a diet book. Consumers are bombarded with conflicting messages regarding health and nutrition; the market is flooded with popular titles like The Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet. The China Study cuts through the haze of misinformation and delivers an insightful message to anyone living with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and those concerned with the effects of aging. Additionally, he challenges the validity of these low-carb fad diets and issues a startling warning to their followers.

From Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, pages 69-70:

Spearheaded by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., of Cornell University, this study has made discoveries that have turned the nutritional community upside down. To the surprise of many, the China Project has revealed many so-called nutritional facts as demonstrably false.

For example, the answers to the Nutrition Quiz below are False:

We need milk to get enough calcium to protect us against osteoporosis.

A diet high in protein is healthy.

The best sources of protein is animal foods such as meat, chicken, eggs, fish and dairy.

Plant foods do not have complete protein.

To get adequate protein from a plant-based diet, you should combine certain foods to make sure you receive a complete complement of the necessary amino acids at each meal.

We can protect ourselves against cancer by switching to low-fat animal foods such as chicken, fish, and skim milk and by omitting red meat.

Fasting and Eating for Health; Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; page 33:

Dr. T. Colin Campbell, head of the China Study, predicts that in the next 10 to 15 years research will solidly establish that animal protein is one of the most toxic nutrients for humans.

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