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

People who consume more plant-based foods, thus more dietary fiber, also consume more iron,III all of which results in statistically significant higher levels of hemoglobin.

The results showed that high-fiber intake was consistently associated with lower rates of cancers of the rectum and colon.

foods such as beans, leafy vegetables and whole grains are all high in fiber.

The colors of fruits and vegetables are derived from a variety of chemicals called antioxidants. These chemicals are almost exclusively found in plants. They are only present in animal-based foods to the extent that animals eat them and store a small amount in their own tissues.

Antioxidants are usually colored because the same chemical property that sponges up excess electrons also creates visible colors. Some of these antioxidants are called carotenoids, of which there are hundreds. They vary in color from the yellow color of beta-carotene (squash), to the red color of lycopene (tomatoes), to the orange color of the odd-sounding cryptoxanthins (oranges). Other antioxidants may be colorless and these include chemicals such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and vitamin E, which act as antioxidants in other parts of plants that need to be protected from the hazards of wayward electrons.

Free radicals are nasty. They can cause our tissues to become rigid and limited in their function. It is a bit like old age, when our bodies become creaky and stiff. To a great extent, this is what aging is. This uncontrolled free radical damage also is part of the processes that give rise to cataracts, to hardening of the arteries, to cancer, to emphysema, to arthritis and many other ailments that become more common with age. But here’s the kicker: we do not naturally build shields to protect ourselves against free radicals. As we are not plants, we do not carry out photosynthesis and therefore do not produce any of our own antioxidants. Fortunately the antioxidants in plants work in our bodies the same way they work in plants. It is a wonderful harmony. The plants make the antioxidant shields, and at the same time make them look incredibly appealing with beautiful, appetizing colors. Then we animals, in turn, are attracted to the plants and eat them and borrow their antioxidant shields for our own health.

In the China Study, we assessed antioxidant status by recording the intakes of vitamin C and beta-carotene and measuring the blood levels of vitamin C, vitamin E and carotenoids. Among these antioxidant bio-markers, vitamin C provided the most impressive evidence. The most significant vitamin C association with cancer was its relationship with the number of cancer-prone families in each area.42 When levels of vitamin C in the blood were low, these families were more likely to have a high incidence of cancer.III Low vitamin C was prominently associated with higher risk for esophageal cancer,III for leukemia and cancers of the nasopharynx, breast, stomach, liver, rectum, colon and lung.

Cancer rates were five to eight times higher for areas where fruit intake was lowest. The same vitamin C effect existing for these cancers also existed for coronary heart disease, hypertensive heart disease and stroke.II Vitamin C intake from fruits clearly showed a powerful protective effect against a variety of diseases.

The triumph of health lies not in the individual nutrients, but in the whole foods that contain those nutrients: plant-based foods. In a bowl of spinach salad, for example, we have fiber, antioxidants and countless other nutrients that are orchestrating a wondrous symphony of health as they work in concert within our bodies. The message could not be simpler: eat as many whole fruits, vegetables and whole grains as you can, and you will probably derive all of the benefits noted above as well as many others.

People are notoriously unsuccessful at significantly restricting their energy intake over any long period of time, and that is why there has yet to be a long-term study that shows success with the “low-carb” diets. This, however, is only the beginning of the problems.

I have heard one doctor call high-protein, high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets “make-yourself-sick” diets, and I think that’s an appropriate moniker. You can also lose weight by undergoing chemotherapy or starting a heroin addiction, but I wouldn’t recommend those, either.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CARBOHYDRATES

there is a mountain of scientific evidence to show that the healthiest diet you can possibly consume is a high-carbohydrate diet. It has been shown to reverse heart disease, reverse diabetes, prevent a plethora of chronic diseases, and yes, it has been shown many times to cause significant weight loss. But it’s not quite as simple as that.

When these foods are consumed in the unprocessed, unrefined and natural state, a large proportion of the carbohydrates are in the so-called “complex” form. This means that they are broken down in a controlled, regulated manner during digestion.

Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are the healthiest foods you can consume, and they are primarily made of carbohydrates.

Typical simple carbohydrates are found in foods like white bread, processed snack items including crackers and chips made with white flour, sweets including pastries and candy bars and sugar-laden soft drinks. These highly refined carbohydrates originate from grains or sugar plants, like sugar cane or the sugar beet. They are readily broken down during digestion to the simplest form of the carbohydrates, which are absorbed into the body to give blood sugar, or glucose.

In experimental research, the health benefits of a high-carbohydrate diet come from eating the complex carbohydrates found in whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Eat an apple, a zucchini or a plate of brown rice topped with beans and other vegetables.

Average calorie intake, per kilogram of body weight, was 30% higher among the least active Chinese than among average Americans. Yet, body weight was 20% lower (Chart 4.11). How can it be that even the least active Chinese consume more calories yet have no overweight problems? What is their secret?

Consuming diets high in protein and fat transfers calories away from their conversion into body heat to their storage form—as body fat (unless severe calorie restriction is causing weight loss). In contrast, diets low in protein and fat cause calories to be “lost” as body heat. In research, we say that storing more calories as fat and losing less as heat means being more efficient. I bet that you would rather be a little more inefficient and convert it into body heat rather than body fat, right? Well, simply consuming a diet lower in fat and protein can do this. This is what our China Study data show. Chinese consume more calories both because they are more physically active and because their consumption of low-fat, low-protein diets shifts conversion of these calories away from body fat to body heat. This is true even for the least physically active Chinese. Remember, it takes very little, only fifty calories a day, to change our storage of body fat and thus change our body weight.58 We saw the same phenomenon in our experimental animals fed the low-protein diets. They routinely consumed slightly more calories, gained less weight, disposed of the extra calories as body heat59 and voluntarily exercised more,60 while still having far less cancer than animals on standard diets. We found that calories were “burned” at a faster rate and transformed into body heat as more oxygen was consumed.59 Understanding that diet can cause small shifts in calorie metabolism that lead to bi...

DIET AND BODY SIZE

Protein for muscle s

We now know that eating a low-fat, low-protein diet high in complex carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables will help you lose weight. ...

There is, however, a problem with the idea that consuming animal-based foods is a good way of becoming bigger. The people who eat the most animal protein have the most heart disease, cancer and diabetes. In the China Study, for example, animal protein consumption was associated with taller and heavierI people, but was also associated with higher levels of total and bad cholesterol.II Furthermore, body weight, associated with animal protein intake,I was associated with more cancerII–III and more coronary heart disease.II It seems that being bigger, and presumably better, comes with very high costs.

Greater plant protein intake was closely linked to greater heightII and body weight.II Body growth is linked to protein in general and both animal and plant proteins are effective!

So why is it that people in developing nations, who consume little or no animal-based foods, are consistently smaller than Western people? This is because plant-based diets in poor areas of the world usually have insufficient variety, inadequate quantity and quality and are associated with poor public health conditions

The finding: casein, and very likely all animal proteins, may be the most relevant cancer-causing substances that we consume. Adjusting the amount of dietary casein has the power to turn on and turn off cancer growth, and to override the cancer-producing effects of aflatoxin, a very potent Class IA carcinogen, but even though these findings were substantially confirmed, they still applied to experimental animals. It was therefore with great anticipation that I looked to the China Study for evidence on the causes of liver cancer in humans.62

The virus provides the gun, and bad nutrition pulls the trigger.

Everything in food works together to create health or disease.

In fact, some in the scientific and medical communities considered cholesterol levels lower than 150 mg/dL to be dangerous. In fact, my own cholesterol was 260 mg/dL in the late 1970s, not unlike other members of my immediate family. The doctor told me it was “fine, just average.” But when we measured the blood cholesterol levels in China, we were shocked. They ranged from 70-170 mg/dL! Their high was our low, and their low was off the chart you might find in your doctor’s office! It became obvious that our idea of “normal” values (or ranges) only applies to Western subjects consuming the Western diet.

The results of this study, in addition to a mountain of supporting research, some of it my own and some of it from other scientists, convinced me to turn my dietary lifestyle around. I stopped eating meat fifteen years ago, and I stopped eating almost all animal-based foods, including dairy, within the past six to eight years, except on very rare occasions. My cholesterol has dropped, even as I’ve aged; I am more physically fit now than when I was twenty-five; and I am forty-five pounds lighter now than I was when I was thirty years old. I am now at an ideal weight for my height. My family has also adopted this way of eating, thanks in large part to my wife Karen, who has managed to create an entire new dietary lifestyle that is attractive, tasty and healthy. This has all been done for health reasons, the result of my research findings telling me to wake up.

HERE IN AMERICA, we are affluent, and we die certain deaths because of it. We eat like feasting kings and queens every day of the week, and it kills us.

All of these diseases, and others, spring forth from the same influence: an unhealthy, largely toxic diet and lifestyle that has an excess of sickness-promoting factors and a deficiency of health-promoting factors. In other words, the Western diet. Conversely, there is one diet to counteract all of these diseases: a whole foods, plant-based diet.

Malfunction of the heart and/or circulation system will kill 40% of Americans,3 more than those killed by any other injury or ailment, including cancer.

Women’s death rate from heart disease is eight times higher than their death rate from breast cancer.5, 6

the research clearly demonstrated that heart disease develops over an entire lifetime.

if the plaque on the inner wall of the artery accumulates slowly over several years, blood flow has time to adjust. Think of blood flowing through your artery as a raging river. If you put a few stones on the sides of a river every day over a period of years, like plaque accumulating on the walls of the artery, the water will find another way to get to where it wants to be.

too much plaque buildup can cause severe blood restriction, and debilitating chest pain, or angina, can result. But this buildup only rarely leads to heart attacks.9, 10 So what leads to heart attacks? It turns out that it’s the less severe accumulations of plaque, blocking under 50% of the artery, that often cause heart attacks.

We now know that the small to medium accumulation of plaque, the plaque that blocks less than 50% of the artery, is the most deadly.

American men died from heart disease at a rate almost seventeen times higher than their Chinese counterparts.

The cultures that have lower heart disease rates eat less saturated fat and animal protein and more whole grains, fruits and vegetables. In other words, they subsist mostly on plant foods while we subsist mostly on animal foods.

The researchers pointed to diet, writing that blood cholesterol increased “with dietary intake of saturated fat, animal protein and dietary cholesterol.” On the flip side, blood cholesterol “was negatively associated with complex carbohydrate intake….”20 In simple terms, animal foods were linked to higher blood cholesterol; plant foods were linked to lower blood cholesterol.