[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Study-Comprehensive-Implicat...

One very scientific book you can read is The China Study.

I will take a second look at the "in defense for food" book. Have you read "The China Study", and do the books agree?

Did you read any of the critisism though? Here are some

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html

http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/...

http://rawfoodsos.com/the-china-study/

You may also be interested to read the impressive critique of the China Study, which is based on Colin Campbell's own data:

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal...

which is what convinced me that my diet, which contains a fair amount of meat, poultry, eggs and seafood is the way to go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study_(book)

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal...

The central idea is that the china study showed correlations (sometimes), but not causation, and that it isn't supported by causal evidence.

I haven't read the China Study, or the critique in full, so I don't think I'm qualified to say more.

edit: Here are two critiques of The China Study:
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal...

I'd be quite interested if and how these criticisms of The China Study apply to this study.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurses%27_Health_Study

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-China-Study-Comprehensive-Implicat...

[2] "A Mediterranean-type diet reduces risk of incident CHD and stroke. Fish intake reduces risk of stroke. Nut and wholegrain consumption reduces risk of CHD. Refined carbohydrates and trans fats increase risk.", see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurses%27_Health_Study

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study#Reception

The only thing I'm skeptical about is all the meat in your diet. If you watch Forks Over Knives and read the China Study, it talks about meat and animal products directly leading to the growth of cancer cells. Have you heard about that and what's your take?

I'm really tired of this form of argument. The fact that you cited something doesn't necessitate its relevance, truth or your understanding of it.

You've also ignored the specific bit of your post I called out as more importantly inaccurate, so I'm really not interested in engaging any further.

I don't have a copy handy but I seem to recall the author of "The China Study" making this claim and then presenting his lab evidence to support it. The evidence includes the admission that the laboratory mice used are a specific breed chosen for their predisposition to certain types of cancers and that they are fed diets of protein far in excess of what they would normally choose to eat. With these two factors combined he was barely able to get a statistically significant signal regarding health effects related to the long-term ingestion of protein.

He summarizes that extrapolating his results to human scale would be the equivalent of a person eating something like 2,000 hot dogs a day which he admits is ridiculous. This isn't a one-time event but an ongoing level of protein intake which would result in potentially harmful future health outcomes. His conclusion is that despite all of this, protein is a great risk to human health and the consumption of meat and meat-based products should be reduced if not eliminated.

No evidence is ever given related to normal levels of protein intake in healthy mice or humans. No mention of confounding factors like smoking, exposure to environment, or simply other dietary factors like gut bacteria. The only controls are the fact that the mice used are genetically pure and therefore many of these variables have already been eliminated.

This book has been heralded as a great example of nutrition science and why things like vegetarianism and veganism are superior to omnivorous or carnivorous diets. It has been directly contrasted with Gary Taubes' work who has pages full of analysis on many fairly modern studies using reasoned arguments against the worries about cancer and health related to meat. The laboratory science in "The China Study" was at least 30 years old and did not incorporate new information.

For the record I have been hard-core ketogenic since 2013 and pretty much strictly eat dairy, meat, and meat by-products. I am at the healthiest I have ever been in my entire life by any standard you want to measure and even if I'm wrong I am perfectly willing to continue this way of life because it is higher quality than what I was doing before.

I suffered a clinical depression and by changing my diet, running and learning to breath correctly (most of us don't take in enough o2), I was able to recover without using drugs and have not suffered another depression even under extreme pressure etc.

Go first to your doctor and make sure you don't have anything wrong. If the Doc clears you, change your diet and do a bit of sports (even walking) and take a few singing classes or yoga classes (To learn how to breathe correctly)

I am currently reading The China Study which is a pretty good book about nutrition.. I know you probably don't have time to read, if you want more info just contact me and I will send you some links.

He is likely the foremost nutritional researcher, not only of our time, but of history. The work he and his team did in the decades-long China Study research has not been paralleled.

Some of the notable discoveries they made was that a particular protein found in dairy products, casein, enabled tumor growth. When removed from the diet, the tumors stopped.

A similar tumor on/off mechanism was found with regards to the percentage of calories from protein in the diet. When the protein went over a certain threshold, tumor growth was enabled, but not at the lower levels.

I've read another thick book advocating plant based diets and metaanalyzing lots of studies, The China Study. GC,BC is a bit thicker, though.

Taking a cursory glance at the cancer rates in different countries, it does seem to correlate with the amount of animal protein eaten:

http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-cancer-fre...

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/deaths-from-cancer.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons...

The only country that looks kinda odd is South Korea...

There also have been several studies on protein and IGF-1 (a growth hormone). The more protein you eat, the higher levels of IGF-1 you get:

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/11/11/1441.long

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10883675?dopt=Abstract

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1596498

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673798/

Just mentioning a few here, but there are even more studies on this.

Also, there are the people with the Laron syndrome. They have some error in their IGF-1 receptors, and have very low rates of cancer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laron_syndrome

Also, a diet high in animal protein might make you very fit but it is thought to be a cause for cardiovascular disease [2].
Actually, afaik, this is the reason why government still gives out these fat making, carbohydrate rich, diet recommendations [3].
They might make you obese, but on the other hand, if you might live a sportive life just to suddenly die of a heart attack.

[1] I can't recall if it was Diamond, Kevin Kelly in "What Technology Wants", Campbell in "The China Study" or someone else, who wrote about this. Can anyone back or correct this?
[2] This, Im sure you will find in "The China Study" by Campbell
[3] Lustig and also Taubes in "Good Calories, Bad Calories"

The body digests calories different depending on the source, e.g. eating an orange vs drinking orange juice. Going to the gym for an hour might burn a few hundred calories, which is about a snickers bar. These two combined means that adding the calories of your food vs the calories at the gym is a really bad way to lose weight.

Of course, I'm not a doctor and have no sources to back this up, other than reading the China Study 10 years ago. :)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Low-Carb-Fraud-Colin-Campbell/dp/1...

Campbell has multiple degrees in biochemistry and nutrition, and from what I can tell, seems to be pretty well respected in his field.

On the other hand, Gary Taube, who wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories, and who people here seem to hold up as some kind of nutritional guru - basically is a science writer, with no formal education in nutrition at all.

Campbell basically spends the first few chapters debunking many of Gary Taubes's conclusions, and then talking about the current low-carb fads.

Definitely a good read, and approachable.

I used to be totally in the bandwagon of "those annoying vegans trying to make people feel bad for eating meat". Now I agree - why shouldn't you shame someone for doing something bad? Buying and consuming animal products is bad for everyone involved: bad for the person eating them, the environment and the animals. We would shame corporations for polluting the environment and we would shame a person for abusing their pets in the way factory farming does animals, so why is it ok if they do it by proxy?

I read a nutrition book called "The China Study" about 6 months ago and it was the push I needed to seriously give veganism a try. I don't deny it, I love the taste of certain meats and at times I do miss them and I do occasionally still eat fish (sushi is my favourite food).

I'm feeling better in every sense. I was surprised to see that my body composition is actually better now, even though my protein intake is markedly lower (I was 95kg and ~14% body fat before and am 87kg and ~10% now, judging BF% with calipers so not exactly precise), my weightlifting strength is up, my cardio endurance is improved, my skin is _hugely_ clearer and I anecdotally seem to have more energy - I definitely feel less lethargic after eating. My biggest concern was loss of muscle mass given lower protein intake, somehow I am looking better and feeling stronger than before. I'm eating around 3-600g of carbs per day (!) which is all coming from whole fruit and veg, which seemed totally ridiculous to me before coming from a close-to-paleo high fat high protein diet.

FWIW I'm a 22 y/o male and consume around 3-4000 cals/day and work out 5-6 times per week so YMMV.

If you get a chance to read it, you'll find the studies of the effects of some animal proteins, specifically casein, on propensity to develop cancer when organisms are challenged by mutagens and carcinogens to be rigorous science and important for our daily lives.

The book encourages eating vegan, which is not hard, just different, and is a diet whose positive health effects are supported by large scale epidemiological studies.

Studies that look at meat consumption generally do not control for fiber, though they usually mention the correlation in many populations between increased meat consumption and less fiber consumption. Of course there are correlations with fiber and CAD and cholesterol. But we already knew that.

It's a rather significant confounding factor when anyone uses an extremely high-fiber test diet to argue for the health value of various other characteristics of said diet. This author does it all over the place. Frankly, a mere 12 pound loss over five years may not really be too impressive, depending on where they're starting. I imagine Mark Sisson could post better results than that. Similarly, I imagine the guy who wrote The China Study could post better results than that... most diets will!

What they've got statistically significant, but pretty much any diet that cuts out processed foods alone will show statistically significant changes...

The sole really impressive thing is the prostate cancer improvements: but there are too many confounding factors to determine what, precisely, is causing the improvements. Maybe there's some anticancer compound in a vegetable emphasized in the diet. Diindolylmethane comes to mind, or beta-caryophyllene.

The article (okay, I only read the summary at the end) suggests that, while the book has some legitimate points, much of it is very biased and selective reporting of the facts. Go figure.

tl;dr - Radical claims about nutrition are found to be somewhat exaggerated. Also, eating food causes cancer, so try not to do that.

(If anyone did actually read through the entire book and/or article, feel free to elaborate a bit)

Something is wrong with this picture. Not denying that exercise is good, but clearly, in this case, it is not enough.

I am confused - I have read several times that diabetes (the acquired type) can be controlled with the right diet, so that you don't have symptoms anymore and don't need medication (for example in Kurzweill's books, and in "The China Study"). So why are there still people like that? I don't think they are getting the right treatment, and they are kidding themselves with the 45 minutes exercise.

Still, he's eating a lot of refined sugar, so I'm pretty surprised. Then again, so am I (thanks Halloween!).

Avoid all foods with hydrogenated oils (promotes heart disease.)

Avoid homogenized milk (promotes blood vessel plaque, heart disease.)

Eliminate excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Substitute with agave nectar which is just as yummy and very low glycemic. (promotes diabetes and creates inconsistent blood glucose levels which promote obesity.)

Avoid refined carbohydrates, substituting whole grains, vegetables, sweet potatoes, nuts, legumes, berries, greens, etc. Substitute wheat for quinoa and teff. Substitute white rice for brown rice. (Refined carbs deplete B vitamins and promote glucose instability.)

Avoid all meat packed with sodium nitrate (promotes colon cancer). Look for "uncured" meats.

Avoid artificial sugars, flavors, colors. (Nearly all of them have unfortunate side effects.)

Try to get 90% of your protein from plant sources. (excess animal protein is associated with disease)

Go outside! (Sunshine promotes vitamin D which is critical for immune function, and vitamin D strongly prevents cancer.) While you're there, exercise! :)

Read: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Cancer-Gate by Dr. Samuel Epstein

Edit: I would also recommend reading The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, since Weston A. Price did not get everything right.

The problem is that it's very hard to conduct proper studies analysing this. 'Observational studies' are useless, because if I take a randomized group of meat-eaters versus vegans, of course the latter group will be significantly more healthy. Vegans are most likely more concerned about their health in general which means less smoking, less alcohol being consumed, healthier sleep, they buy higher quality food in general, due to lack of choice when out in public they cook more themselves (they won't stop at a fast food restaurant), et cetera ... and then there is the Placebo effect, which is very powerful and should not be under-estimated.

The scientific data is not as clear as one might think, and "nutritionists" in general are pseudo-scientists at their best since you can find a study for anything. If not with humans, then with mice, or maybe just some study with some cells. The same with internet sites by the way. And Atkins strictly speaking is not the same as the traditional Ketogenic Diet. Regarding books about nutrition for example, I happen to agree with this reviewer of "The China Study" (not the original one, you'll see) http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3UR35AKTEYW43/ref...

If anyone wants to find serious information about nutrition, you should search for meta-studies, for example by the Cochrane Collaboration, and then you should read the abstract very carefully and not insert your wishful thinking into it.

I guess the point was, it really depends. If you are already getting isoflavones from particular sources and you are controlling for that, then it might make sense to avoid other sources as strenuously as you can (avoid Soy). Which, for me, the only real source of them in my diet is chocolate. Plus not all isoflavones are created equally. Some have stronger estrogen-like effects than others.

In moderation some health benefits. Anyway, I was just pointing out if one of your dietary rules is to "avoid soy" then use a different chocolate bar. It is very difficult to use scientific evidence to build a diet as there is a lot of contradictory evidence the studies available for a given nutritional topic are often of dubious quality. For example, try and take something like the book from T. Colin Campbell, The China Study, and make an evidence based opinion on if he is correct or not. Then look at the work by folks like Ray Peat. You can find endless supporting and non-supporting evidence for virtually any food or compound in food and it becomes a real mess to develop any sort of evidence based diet that isn't "controversial" to some large chunk of reasonably well educated people.

http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/downloads/proteinD...
(I have no idea why Campbell chose not to cite any sources.)

and here is a simplified take by the excellent skeptic Harriet Hall:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/

As Hall notes:

>He criticizes conventional recommendations for a diet with 45-65% of calories from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat and 10-35% from protein, showing how the following menu satisfies those requirements:

>[example of an obviously unhealthy diet]

>But that’s a bit of a straw man argument. In reality, most current nutritional advice makes very much the same recommendations Campbell does except for his strict prohibition of animal protein. For instance, for cancer prevention the American Cancer Society recommends (http://www.cancer.org/docroot/MED/content/MED_2_1X_American_...) a diet high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes and low in red meat and alcohol, along with regular exercise and weight control.

In these (and other) debates, Campbell repeatedly shows, IMO, an unwillingness to take his critics seriously, instead always resorting to the broadside of "reductionist!". At first he seems to have a point, but when you read more of his responses to more people, you just find yourself hearing "reductionist! reductionist! reductionist!". This is particularly concerning since all atomistic theories (i.e. physicalist theories, i.e. the modern scientific view of reality) are ultimately reductionist in some way. Furthermore, his attack on the standard recommendations is extremely reductionist, as seen above (and a similar diet can easily be constructed with less protein and no animal foods!). I'm particularly glad to link the critique from Science-Based Medicine as they're equally critical (if not more) of the paleo milieu.

The solution to this problem, really is to eat less meat. There are many health benefits to eating less meat, in addition to the antibiotics problem. Two books that explain this well are The Enzyme Factor by Hiromi Shinya and The China Study by T. Colin Campbell.

This matches my own experience as well. I used to have a nasty acne problem. Cutting down on meat (and dairy) has made my skin much nicer. Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop is a great cookbook for (mostly) plant foods, by the way. It seems that the Chinese have been aware of the health benefits of a diet centered around plants, rather than meat and dairy, for a very long time.

I think it's worth reading b/c it could have a fairly drastic impact upon one's health.

And yes, the constant hubbub of opposite ideas is also frustrating. Sadly most of it is (in one way or another) intended to help sell a food product that someone hopes to make money on.

Yet I've cited the WHO and Dr. T. Colin Cambell, author of the China Study. Where's your evidence?

> Regarding protein, you get a broader amino acid profile from animals, but this doesn't really matter.

Completely incorrect. Soy and pea protein are very much complete proteins with balanced amino acid profiles.

How do you reconcile the environmental damage from your dietary preferences?

The glycemic index, to me, simply means how our bodies respond to foods based on the time in which the nutrients are metabolized. I'm very interested in how that process corresponds to mental functioning. and unfortunately there hasn't been enough work done in that area. The work I had heard of is the referenced the oatmeal/cap'n crunch study.

Denise is now a fairly central figure in the neo-paleo movement, so she may appear biased, but she started as a vegan whose particular inspection of the book played a big role in her conversion.

(On edit: yes, that link by Graeme.)

The China Study - by T. Colin Campbell :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Colin_Campbell

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - by Michael Pollan :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Defense_of_Food :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

The China Study is notably a retrospective of primary research on diet, nutrition, and disease spanning nearly a century. There are many breadcrumbs for further reading. Campbell was a top-tier government/academic researcher for several decades. The summary conclusion is that western diseases (e.g. diabetes, cancer, heart ...) are strongly correlated with increased ratio of animal product consumption, especially in presence of environmental toxins - a binary poison cocktail one might say. Genetics are a factor, he says, but not so pervasively as the other two.

Michael Pollan is iconically known for the phrase, "Eat Food, Mostly Plants, Not Too Much". A prolific author and journalist, he is on about many of the same things Campbell is: cautioning about a) over-reliance on reductive analysis of food nutrient components, and about b) over-indulgence in foodstuffs that passed through some industrial process on way from earth to earthling.

Edit: formatting

basically, all three writers/experts agree that a vegetarian diet consisting of unprocessed foods is the best (although not foolproof) way to ensure that you will lead a long and disease free life.

the modern food revolution is only about 60 odd years old at this point - human evolution cannot keep up with how quickly our food has changed and how quickly our caloric intake has increased. perhaps in 10,000 years we will be able to find a way to absorb nutrients from krispy kreme donuts and pizza but for now its best to stick low on the food chain and as michael pollan say - "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants".

Anyone looking for sources or more info i recommend the following:

The China Study - T Colin Campbell
The Food Revolution (Or Diet For a New America) - Tim Robbins
The Omnivore Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
Healthy At 100 - Tim Robbins

one last note - Diet for a new america was written in 1988!!! This information has been out there for decades - politics and misinformation has kept it relatively out of mainstream media and on the sidelines but the statistics and information is out there for those who take the time to look...

T. Colin Campbell has shown very persuasively that one of
the biggest problems with milk consumption is a particular
protein it contains, casein. The research described in his
book, "The China Study", links casein to cancer.

Also, a convincing resource to many, though at times
inflammatory, is Dr. Robert Cohen's site, http://notmilk.com
He is the author of "Milk: The Deadly Poison".

It is food for thought. We need to remember that if we
don't consume milk, to replace the Vitamin D that it is
fortified with (naturally, milk does not contain much
Vitamin D, so it has been fortified to help prevent
rickets) by adequate sunlight and/or supplementation.

For calcium, eating a healthy diet of enough calories will
provide an adequate amount. Also, a low sodium diet has
been shown to reduce calcium requirements.

As I said, I would tend to believe the "no causation" camp, but I also don't have 100% faith in doctors...

Recently I was in a heated discussion with a friend about "The China Study", which claims that animal protein causes most of the worst "civilization diseases" like cancer and heart disease. At face value it sounds absurd, because it seems as if people have always been eating lots of meat (not sure if they really have, 150 years ago). So my friend completely rejected the possibility. The book sounded convincing to me, though - but at the end of the day, it is just one guy... At least I tried to Google for articles debunking the book and found none, but there is still a nagging feeling that one might fall for yet another diet scam (although as I said, the book really made a very solid impression on me). Just saying it is a similar problem, who is one to believe?

As for losing weight, I remember that he writes that people with a mostly plant based diet tend to actually eat more calories than meat eaters, but stay slimmer nevertheless - the energy is used in a different way. He also criticizes some popular diets, for example while Atkins dieters lost weight in studies, what is less known is that they also lost critical amounts of calcium. Overall, Atkins is apparently very unhealthy.

Also, apparently people who switch to plants based diets also lose weight, without calories counting.

Of course I am not a health scientist, so I can't judge the book. But it sounded convincing to me, also because even before I read it I had a feeling I should try to avoid dairy products. I did some google searches but found no refutations of The China Study (it has a section on the grip of the food industry on the dieting market).

In fact, I would be interested in hearing other people's opinions.

From "The China Study" about high-protein diets:

"And yet these books are immensely popular. Why? Because people DO lose weight, at least in the short term.[...](about a study) The first sign that all is not rosy is that these obese subjects were severely restricting their calorie intake during the study (35% fewer calories). [...](list some problems) Additionally, they found that the dieters had a stunning 53% increase in the amount of calcium they excreted in their urine, which may spell disaster for their bone health. The weight loss, some of which is simply initial fluid loss, might come with a very high price. [...](from an Australion study:) 'Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet.'".

so maybe it's better to compare degree_rate and billionaire_rate ... if #degree-holders grow by 10%/annum while #billionaires grow by 2%/annum then college alone cannot possibly be responsible for billionaire

ok, i'll say it ... college is overrated, over time degrees worth less due to supply/demand

On the other hand, "The China Study", Dr. Campbell's best-selling popular book wherein he attempts to interpret the data causatively, has been absolutely demolished and debunked as egregiously bad science for some time now. Evgeny already linked to Denise Minger's notorious initial critique that got the ball rolling. Dr. Eades (of the grandparent post) wrote his own critique at:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cancer/the-china-study-vs...

"The web has been alive with commentary the past few weeks since Denise Minger lobbed her first cannonball of a critique across the bow of The China Study, the vessel T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. rode to fame and bestsellerdom. Seems like everyone is now jumping into the fray and gunning for poor Dr. Campbell, who early on in the fracas made a few halfhearted attempts to fight back but has now fled the scene. I've been laying low watching it all play out, and so now figured it's about time I add my two cents worth to the debate."

He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?

...so that answers half my question.

I'm about a third of the way through now. I found the chapters on animal protein and the China Study very interesting and well presented.

Thank you very much. I've read a bit online re: diets, nutrition and health, and Campbell presents a very compelling argument for vegetarianism, or at least very moderate consumption of meat.

It occurs to me that traditionally cured meats have a much stronger taste, and naturally lend themselves to lower levels of consumption--just a little for flavoring, the same way one would use blue cheese. I wonder if there's more to it.

I'm only in the introduction now, but something on page 4 struck me:

More than forty years ago, at the beginning of my career, I would have never guessed that food is so closely related to health problems.

Contrast that to a popular saying in Japan, 医食同源: medicine and food have the same origin. Compare that to the common refrain, that the difference between medicine and poison is the dose.

I find it hard to believe that Western societies have always overlooked the relationship between diet and health. Perhaps it is a recent phenomenon. When did we lose our wisdom?

Before you are two conflicting research papers. One says eggs are bad, the other that they are good. One paper came from The American Poultry Society, and the other from The Poultry Research Institute (those are made up names for the sake of argument). One of those organizations is full of industry shills, and the other is actually doing legitimate research. Every few years, they release papers which contradict the another, in an endless arms race.

The problem which the consumer is faced with is: which is which?

Although they go in opposite directions (Campbell advocates vegan, paleo meat), they seem to agree on at least one thing : unprocessed foods are better. Eat vegetables, fruits, whole grains and meat/fish, but avoid sauces/butter, sodas, white bread and various candies.