The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health

by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II

Book Overview

9781932100662 Features: -Title: The china study. -Sub title: The most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted and the startling implications for diet, weight loss and long-term health. -General subject: Health and fitness. -Subject: Health and fitness / Nutrition. -Language: English. -ISBN: 1932100660. Subject: -Health & Fitness. Country of Manufacture: -United States. Age Group: -Adults. Dimensions: Overall Height - Top to Bottom: -1". Overall...

Customer Reviews

Chinese diet advice for all Americans

This Sino-American two decades study gives sound and practical advice for all Americans who suffered the modern western diet. The rich diet does not keep all of us healthy! Fast food is cheap but we pay a high price in our health in terms of diseases and other ills. This long study verifies the Tao of yin and yang on diet! Too much of good will sow the seed of bad! This Fast Food Nation causes healthcare crisis. Readers will find this book interesting and follow the ancient Chinese wisdom to staying healthy! Take his advice of diet of fruits and vegetables and exercise with meditation and no more medication, amen!

Flimsy Science

I watched a debate between the author and another scientist and Campbell said his research and science was not complete and that a lot of assumptions were made.

This is an Amazing book. I have changed many people's lives and health by gifting it. For those who actually read it, listened to my health changes and implemented it themselves it has made a Phenomenal difference. I would never go back to eating innocent animals and their by products=dairy. My body is NOT a walking graveyard. Dairy is poison to the human body. I feel Amazing and I eat lots and lots of great tasting vegan food and my body is still improving daily. I wake up with no aches and pains. This Book is A Life Changer-for the Better! "The Starch Solution" by Dr John Mcdougall and "How Not to die" by Dr. Michael Gregger are great books to follow reading after reading The China Study.

Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill?

I love juicy steaks, delicious cheese, and big bowls of ice cream. I love to eat out at nice restaurants. And I really like eating without thinking about the operations and consequences of our dietary industrial complex. But I don't get to enjoy these things any more because I read the China Study. Like Neo in the movie the Matrix, you have a choice, take the blue pill and believe what you want to believe, take the red pill and you will be exposed to the reality of the world we live in. The China Study is the red pill. This is a fascinating book on the capitalism, politics, and human behavior that drives the food industry. It is also frighteningly insightful into the health consequences of an affluent societies' diet. I am not a scientist so I don't know if this is good science. But I did work ten years ago as a government attorney on the USDA dietary guidelines and was surprised by the political influence and acceptance of what the author would call scientific reductionism. I also worked for a man who lived and worked until he was 100 years old, and he had a dietary regime very similar to that recommended by the China Study: not vegan nor vegetarian, but largely based on plants and whole foods rather than animal based foods. So I found this book very persuasive - in fact, too persuasive. It scared me straight so I eat healthy now and that's good for the long term...but I don't enjoy it like I used to.

Invaluable Information about nutrition, food & drug industries and medical profession

It's about nutrition and chronicle diseases (heart, cancer, diabetes, etc.). A highly readable book, from the medical angle as well as from societal angle. Here is shock #1: Protein in milk promotes cancer. Unbelievable? It's proven in animal trials and observed in human population study. The book presents findings of many researchers, including a large scale study on nutrition and chronicle disease done in China by Dr. Campbell (hence the title China study). The author grew up on a farm (milking cows when he was a boy), became a well-trained, well respected and well funded research scientist at Cornell and participated in national-level nutrition policy making. He found convincing evidence through decades of research (funded by NIH, etc.) that switching to a plant-based food can reduce risk of top killers in the U.S. (heart diseases, cancer, etc.) and even stop and reverse them!. Ha! So basically he calls for veggie diet (the whole-foods type, not the pasta, sugar and cookie type). This is not a big news to many people. But I was really surprised by how readable his book is and how reasonable he is, addressing all possible suspicious aroused by his stunning conclusions. He was suspicious himself in the beginning and cautious in conducting his research. He asked "Am I crazy?" after he discovered the protein intake positively correlated with liver cancer in children in the Philippines, where he went to promote "good nutrition" by adding more protein in their diet. He then explained the solid follow-up research he conducted (all peer reviewed and funded by NIH and other reputable organizations). He also spends maybe 50% of the text on powerful influences from industry as well as the medical profession itself that prevent research results like this to reach the public. For example, in Cleveland Clinic, the renowned heart-disease treatment center, some senior staff doctors and trustees, having heart problems themselves, go to see Dr. Esselstyn. Dr. Esselstyn was a top-ranked surgeon in the world. However these patients went to see Dr. Esselstyn not for his surgical skills, but for his plant-based nutrition treatment. Dr. Esselstyn, despite all awards he got during his successful career (in fact top earner in department of general surgery for over ten years!), he came to realize that without a change in diet, all the surgery and drugs didn't prolong patients lives, didn't reduce their chances of heart problem after these treatments. So he conducted a study of 18 patients following a low-fat, plant-based diet. Their heart diseases were reversed! Yet he couldn't get the Clinic to use his program to treat heart patients. So he had to set up his own practice. Then words get out and apparently the senior staff doctor and trustees KNEW this is a better option than surgery - many of them seeked help from Dr. Esselstyn. YET THEY STILL DON'T ALLOW DR. Esselstyn''s program to enter the Cleveland Clinic!!! Wow! That's something, huh? But

My Personal Experience

On January 21, 2006, the day I started eating according to guidelines given in The China Study, I was 63 years old, 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, weighed 213 pounds and with a BMI of 130 was on the first rung of being obese, even though I did not look it. The first week I lost 5 pounds, the 2nd 5 pounds, the 3rd five pounds, the 4th 4 pounds, then 3, 2, 1, until I lost 35 pounds in about 3 months and then stabilized at about 178 pounds. My blood pressure went from an average of 141 over 91 to an average of 120 over 81. My total cholesterol went from over 200 to 127. I no longer feel that I am on a slow decline from 50 years onward, but feel happy and alive now. Much like when I was a kid. Today is August 22, 2006 and I know that this will be the way I eat and live for the duration. For me it's a matter of survival, physically and spiritually. I have given over 20 copies of the book to people I care about, including a waitress at an Outback Steakhouse in Virginia. It was May; she was worrying about her dad and wanted to get him something for Father's Day. By the way steakhouses are a great place to get real yummy vegetables. This is my true story. By the way, thank you Dr. Campbell and Thomas Campbell.

Fantastic!

This is a fantastic book that's loaded with so much eye opening information, it's the kind of book that I'll read again. I feel if you don't convert to a whole food plant based diet after reading this book, I don't think anything in the world will convince you....the evidence is just overwhelming. As for my story, I was on statins for high cholesterol for over 6 years....and a moderate to high dose at that. Over the years, my cholesterol kept rising gradually and my total cholesterol was just over 300 and a triglyceride level in the mid 200's without statins. The moderate/high dose statin brought my cholesterol down to the range of high 190's to low 200's. Over the years, I tried to get off the medication and I was told to try to eat a low fat diet, don't eat shrimp, lobster, etc. I went off the statins, tried this diet for several months and none of this helped....actually my cholesterol went higher....I was told it's hereditary, there's nothing you can do, and I should take the statin and that I would be on them indefinitely. Well, after reading the book "The China Study", there's a few paragraphs tucked in this great book mentioning that the major factor causing high cholesterol is eating any animal protein. The only meat I ate at the time was fish and chicken and small portions of it....and maybe beef a few times a year, if that. I have to say I was skeptical and figured what do I have to lose, so I went on a whole food plant based diet (vegan diet)as Dr. Campbell in the book suggests. I started that last November (same time I stopped taking the statins), and I had my cholesterol checked this past summer and was stunned at the result....my total cholesterol went from over 300 without statins, high 190's/low 200's on moderate/high does statin, to 175 without statins on Vegan diet, with good LDL and HDL. I'm guessing next time it's checked it will be even lower. Also, my triglycerides went from the mid 200's to 64! All as a result of just giving up animal products....amazing. Now I wonder....why wasn't I ever given this option by the doctor's I've seen over the years? Even if a person doesn't want to give up animal products completely as I have, why isn't this advice offered as at least an option to a patient.....and let the patient decide? What a concept! Of course, I feel my cholesterol and triglycerides levels are just the tip of the iceberg on how my health has improved on a plant based diet....the only regret?....I wish I started the vegan diet earlier....I never have had so much energy and just downright have never felt so good....seriously...this is not an overstatement. As to all the doubters out there with harsh reviews, I say to each is own but ignore the evidence at your own risk. I've seen many of my friends and family sick by what I feel this book has proven by many studies to be nothing more than a bad diet for the most part and most of them are looking for a magic pill to save them....and the old standby argument that it's a

Every doctor, teacher and parent needs to read this book!

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 revolu