Eat a carrot, save the world

Eat a carrot, save the world.

Book review – “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell PHD.

I noticed in what Dr. Campbell would call a ‘strong correlation’ that many of my virtual running friends and endurance athletes are vegans.  They silently have put up with my Spock jokes and pictures of juicy T-bones with good humor over the past few years.  I have a natural suspicion of people who claim to have all the answers, whether they are religious, philosophical, technical or nutritious.

(Spoiler alert: Even though this was a flawed book the points and research unequivocally demonstrate the ability of a plant based diet to solve most of our current health problems.)

A couple weeks ago I thought I owed it to my vegan friends to stop being jerk, (hard for me), and do a little cursory learning on the subject.  I asked “if you had to recommend one book on the topic, which would it be?” They recommended “the China Study”.  I ordered it.

The tome that arrived was a monster 417 pages with 70 odd pages of appendices and references.  It is densely written and packed with charts, diagrams and text.  I sighed, and thought to myself “Vegans must have excellent eyesight and solid attention spans.”  I’ve trudged through Virgil, Milton and a few 100 page contracts, so I lugged this monster onto the plane with me on my next trip.

I’m not going to lie to you; I started speed-reading about 50 pages in because the prose was not electrifying.  But, and this is the big but, (heh heh), the studies cited are mind blowing.  It’s not a weak kinda-sorta correlation, it’s a 100% correlation that rats and people who eat animal based food get all the horrible diseases at a much higher rate than those who eat plant based food.

These awful diseases include but are not limited to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, breast, prostate and large bowel cancers and autoimmune diseases.

What’s his proof?  Several animal-based clinical studies all properly run and peer reviewed that showed how consuming animal protein activates the cancer mechanisms in cells.  Conversely plant based diets do not activate and actually reverse the progression of the diseases.

The China Study refers to a study in China, of course.  China can get away with these large scale, big-brother studies.  The government cataloged all the deaths in China from all these diseases.

Dr. Campbell collected the vitals, cholesterol levels, urine, blood, etc. from the same population – which it turns out is perfect for this kind of large scale study because they are all the same Han ancestry and don’t move around a lot. And, Voila! There was the correlation.  Eat plants, don’t get cancer, eat animals, get cancer.  Or to simplify, plants good, animals bad.

The book reads like a cross between a paranoid’s manifesto and a lab report, but the science is, frankly, overwhelming.

If I was 21 years old I probably wouldn’t care but as a man getting close to 50, I do.  Nature never intended for us to live this long.  I’m out of warranty.  Statistically there is close to a 50% chance that there is some sort of cancer lurking on my body right now.  What can I do to not encourage that cancer?  Apparently it is as simple as a plant-based diet.

That’s it.  I’m sold.  When I stepped off that plane ride having read this book I decided to figure out how to eat a plat based diet.

Unfortunately this book has too many agendas besides the plant-based diet agenda.  Dr. Campbell devotes close to half of it in a rant against the government and big food, that apparently are out to get him for the being a plant-based-food apostate.  This may or may not be true but it dilutes and detracts from the useful message and hints at a God-complex.

(Hey Doc, since I’m sure you’re the type of guy that Googles yourself, sorry, but it’s my honest feedback.)

It is also a bit abrupt when we are led through the stunning data and left with a scant handful of pages on how to change to this lifestyle.  Instead we go off to attack the windmills of government and food-industrial complex.  I felt like screaming “That’s it? You tell me I’m going to die and then wander off?”

Would I recommend you read this book? No, not the whole thing, but I would recommend you read the first four chapters and any one of chapters 5-10.  That’s less than 100 pages of shocking science that may change your life.

If only we could get Christopher McDougal to rewrite this book.  He could call it “Born to Eat”.  A story about an interesting group of interesting vegans who go somewhere interesting and don’t get cancer. The message is so strong but in this form it is inaccessible to the people who need to hear it the most.