In rural China, animal protein intake (for the same individual) averages only 7.1 g/day whereas Americans average a whopping 70 g/day. To put this into perspective, seven grams of animal protein is found in about three chicken nuggets from McDonald’s. We expected that when animal protein consumption and blood cholesterol levels were as low as they are in rural China, there would be no further association with the Western diseases. But we were wrong. Even these small amounts of animal-based food in rural China raised the risk for Western diseases.
