Myths and Truths about THE CHINA STUDY

Myths and Truths about The China Study
I wrote this assignment to complete a requirement for a master's level class at Hawthorn University. It is a brief critical review of The China Study, a book written by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. If you are vegan or vegetarian, I encourage you to keep an open mind, but you probably won't like what you read!

Assignment for WISE 103 - Hawthorn University:  Choose one China Study-related topic that holds special interest for you. Write a focused essay of about 1,500 words on a way or ways Dr. Campbell uses or misuses science to support his point of view about your chosen subject. Be sure to credit Masterjohn, Minger or any other reviewers who help you think this through.

General: This book is very much like many of the nutrition guidance books presently available on bookstore shelves (a scary concept in itself). It is set up to sell a philosophy and if the book were read out loud, it would sound like an infomercial. This book always disturbed me. My friends read it; one even gave presentations at our local Whole Foods Market about the book. I bought it but could never bring myself to open it. I am glad I didn’t because I don’t think I would have questioned Dr. Campbell. To someone not familiar with statistics, he poses a compelling story to eat only plant foods and uses scare tactics to discourage any dissenting opinions.

Statistical Review: I am not a statistician. I never took a statistics class and I don’t understand statistics. The statistics in this book seem perfectly fine to me. I can’t critique them. I don’t know if they are valid or not. I read Chris Masterjohn’s and Denise Minger’s critiques of his data. Their responses covering the statistics also sound valid.

Based solely on the statistical evaluations, i.e., Dr. Campbell’s compelling presentation of them, and Chris’ and Denise’s compelling reviews, I would lean towards Chris and Denise, simply because my belief system is closer to theirs. So I had to dig deeper to decide who tells the better story based solely on the statistical evidence. I had to side with Chris and Denise because of the responses that were presented from Dr. Campbell to Chris and Denise and their responses back to him.

Dr. Campbell’s response to Denise was long, boring and confusing. He used a lot of what looked like eloquent phrases. He slammed her as a nobody that had no business questioning him since he has had such a long, award winning career doing research. He writes a lot but says little and never really addresses the specific issues. He insists she is taking everything out of context and doesn’t know what she is doing.

Dr. Campbell’s response to Chris was easier to understand, however, he did not address any of the meat of Chris’ comments. He attacks Chris as a nobody that is affiliated with Weston A. Price, a Foundation that encourages eating lethal animal products. He has some limited praise for Dr. Price but questions his data and ability to do research on anything other than dentistry, which has no bearing on real medical research.

Chris and Denise both came back with responses to Dr. Campbell addressing his concerns item by item. Dr. Campbell never responded back to them as far as I can tell. Since Dr. Campbell provided very little defense of his conclusions, it is hard to continue to believe anything except he has a strong belief and uses every means to convince others to join him in his belief.

Questionable tactics and other discrepancies: Dr. Campbell uses many tactics to get people to believe in his story. For example,

·      Campbell’s theory is that animal products cause all the problems and that the wealthier you are, the more animal-based foods you eat. However, much work has been done showing processed foods and sodas, as well as CAFOS animal foods, the highly processed animal foods and PUFAs are causing much of the disease processes. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer strike rich and poor alike in the U.S. If it was strictly a disease of affluence, the affluent would all have the labels and the poor wouldn’t and this isn’t the case. While more affluent people may eat more animal foods, poor people consume more processed foods and probably fast foods as they do appear to be less expensive. Grocery stores target the cheap processed foods to poor people (as shown in Marion Nestle’s research) and this shows up in the health statistics.

·      I believe the purpose of “Why Haven’t You Heard This Before”, is to provide convincing evidence that if anyone disagrees with his work, they are being influenced by big business, big government and self-interested groups intent on spreading a message for financial gain. His voice is angry and righteous, pointing fingers and blame at people and organizations. The tone of voice and the topics may be new to some of his readers, but I believe they will appeal to most of his readers. Vegans/vegetarians as a group seem quite righteous and Dr. Campbell’s information in this section, right or wrong provides ammunition to defend the vegan/vegetarian agenda.

·      I believe he is hypocritical – stating how evil someone or some study is because it conflicts with his belief when he could be accused of the same thing. Some of the points include:

o   Organizations with a mission or a hidden agenda selectively pull the science they need to support their agenda (which can be true!). To quote Campbell “Institutions also are a part of the dark side of science. Committees like the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of view than debating scientific research with an open mind. (Page 267).” His belief that animal foods are dangerous, colors everything he is willing to consider. He condemns these organizations and people and yet has an agenda and promotes it at all cost. I agree that these organizations have names and apparent missions that strike charity and trust in people and may have a very dark side of misinformation and misuse of data – exactly like Dr. Campbell.

·      Campbell wants the reader to believe only him – “Only someone familiar with the inside of the system can distinguish between sincere positions based in science and insincere, self-serving positions. I was on the inside of the system for many years, working at the very top levels, and saw enough to be able to say that science is not always the honest search for truth that so many believe it to be. It far too often involves money, power, ego and protection of personal interest above the common good.”

·      Campbell talks about scientific reductionism and how harmful this can be but he focuses much of his information on protein – isn’t this reductionism?

·      He isn’t a fan of supplements but he recommends some for vegans.

·      He really slams Harvard and the Nurses’ Health Study and yet his China Study methods could be considered similar to this study. As a scientist he should be open to considering all sides, however he is quite convinced that animal products are so bad that he can’t conceive looking at a study like this.

These are just a few comments that could be discussed in depth from the book. The book is well-designed to create a fearful attitude and add fuel to the fire of vegan righteousness and the argument that animal products are evil.

More in-depth analysis of Part III – THE GOOD NUTRITION GUIDE

There are so many topics in this book that bother me and that I could discuss as holding a special interest for me, however the paper would become quite large! I am going to address a few of the topics in Part III – The Good Nutrition Guide. 

Introduction: Dr. Campbell introduces this subject by slamming the Atkins and South Beach Diets since these are diets high in animal products and low in carbohydrates – the opposite of his ideal diet. He equates the Atkins Diet to the “standard American diet, the toxic diet that has been shown to make us fat, give us heart disease, destroy our kidneys, make us blind and lead us to Alzheimer’s, cancer and a host of other medical problems.” This section is set up to be highly inflammatory. I object to this for many reasons, some of which are:

·      The Atkins Diet, if followed according to his book, would not necessarily include many of the highly processed foods causing problems in todays diet. It may not be ideal but could be way more beneficial than eating a vegan diet!

·      According to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, the Atkins Diet has not been shown to be harmful and may be beneficial in losing weight and keeping the weight off. It studies it has proven more beneficial than a low calorie or vegan diet!

·      A high carb diet, opposite of the Atkins Diet could also be considered a standard American diet, full of chemicals and inadequate nutrition that could be causing all the problems discussed by Campbell. This diet has been studied and shown to cause problems. While he says don’t eat processed foods, a high carb diet could be easily turned into a vegan diet fitting Campbell’s description and cause many health problems.

·      He ignores any data supporting a diet containing a large amount of animal foods such as Dr. Price’s research or the research done on the Masai nomads of Kenya or the mostly meat diet of many native populations such as the Aleuts. This research and the resulting vibrant health is worth considering as blowing a hole in Campbell’s hypothesis (or rigid belief).

·      He ignores the meat-eating county in The China Study (he gives a weak excuse why he excludes them).

·      I could go on and on!

Chapter 11 – Eating Right: Eight Principles of Food and Health. Dr. Campbell starts this chapter out using all the buzzwords people are looking for. It reminds me of a televangelist giving a sermon. Of course it is going to suck people in that want to be healthy and do the right thing. He tells them if they only change their ways by changing their diet, they can have vibrant health – basically guarantees it. I don’t believe anyone can provide this guarantee and it is a deceptive tactic.

Principle # 1 – Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substance. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

He explains, and I believe rightly so, that our food is complex and it is treated in the body much different when eaten as whole as possible, along with other foods during a meal than if we took supplements of each of the individual nutrients. He says “Our bodies have evolved with this infinitely complex network of reactions in order to derive maximal benefit from whole food, as they appear in nature. The misguided may trumpet the virtues of one specific nutrient or chemical, but this thinking is too simplistic. Our bodies have learned how to benefit from the chemicals in food as they are packaged together, discarding some and using others as they see fit. I cannot stress this enough, as it is the foundation of understanding what good nutrition means.” I agree with this, however, he uses this theory when it serves his purpose and discards it when it doesn’t.

He then shows a chart of the known nutrients in spinach. He doesn’t list the quantities of any of the nutrients, therefore making the chart look way more impressive than if you were to list the amount of these nutrients in the spinach. This is misleading. In addition, he doesn’t discuss the anti-nutrients in the spinach and how they would affect the absorption of minerals, or the fact that the spinach also has cellulose that can’t be digested by humans (he believes in large amounts of fiber so even if he did discuss the cellulose it would be in a positive light). He only uses spinach as a model, none of the other vegetables. I doubt that there are very many people that eat spinach daily, or even weekly!

Principle #2 – Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.

He states “Isolating nutrients and trying to get benefits equal to those of whole foods reveals an ignorance of how nutrition operates in the body.” So far, I can’t argue with this, however, Dr. Campbell doesn’t adhere to this in his actual diet recommendations.

Principle #3 – There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.

He presents the argument that plant-based foods are all similar to each other in their nutritional elements and animal-based foods are all similar to each other in their nutritional elements but animal-based foods and plant-based foods are very different nutritionally from each other. He then presents a table of a few well-selected nutritional elements and lists the nutrient composition of plant vs. animal-based foods based on 500 calories of energy.

This is highly misleading because:

·      Rather than list individual foods, the plant based food information is derived from equal parts of tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, peas and potatoes. The meat-based foods are equal parts of beef, pork, chicken and whole milk. Then he only looks at a handful of nutrients – nutrients that aren’t in large quantities in meat-based foods. This allows him to stack the deck so that the plant-based foods look amazing while the animal-based foods look incredibly weak. For example, beta-carotene in these plant-based foods is listed as 29,919 mcg while it is only 17 in the animal-based foods. He cites the US Nutrient Database for Standard Reference to obtain the  nutritional elements in this table but I could not recreate the numbers.

·      500 calories of plant-based foods is a huge amount of food where the animal based foods would be much smaller in quantity. Most people don’t sit down to eat 500 calories of just vegetables – especially on a low-fat diet – which is what he recommends. Eating 500 calories of vegetables with very little added fat would be boring and unfulfilling.

·      He has selected specific nutritional items and omitted others. For example, he doesn’t list Vitamin A, only beta-carotene. We know that there is a poor conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A in the body. All that beta-carotene may be useless while the vitamin A in the meat may be quite necessary.

·      He lists 33 grams of protein in the 500 calories of plant food and only 34 in the animal based foods – I can’t recreate this from the database. This doesn’t seem right. In addition, much of his research has centered around protein as being something we don’t need much of and it may cause cancer. He doesn’t talk about all the essential amino acids and how they are only present in animal-based foods. He does indicate the protein in animal food is unhealthy while the protein in plant foods is healthy – something I don’t think he can substantiate without manipulating data.

·      He doesn’t use organ meats. He doesn’t list vitamin K2. He doesn’t list vitamin B12. He doesn’t list vitamin D. He doesn’t list carnosine or CoQ10 or any of the other nutrients primarily found in animal foods (and ones we don’t even know about yet) and fats that are turning out to be quite necessary to vibrant health. He doesn’t address the need for fat for the fat-soluble vitamins to work effectively and to be able to absorb all the minerals, etc.

·      He talks about the fats and protein in nuts and seeds as being better than the fats in animal foods. The fats in nuts and seeds are primarily PUFAs and are not necessarily better. In addition, there are lots of anti-nutrients in nuts.

·      He defines essential nutrients (chemicals) as:

o   “The chemical is necessary for healthy human functioning

o   The chemical must be something our bodies cannot make on their own, and therefore must be obtained from an outside source”

·       “There are four nutrients which animal-based foods have that plant-based foods, for the most part, do not: cholesterol and vitamins A, D and B12. Three of these are nonessential nutrients. As discussed above, cholesterol is made by our bodies naturally. Vitamin A can be readily made by our bodies from beta-carotene, and vitamin D can be readily made by our bodies simply by exposing our skin to about fifteen minutes of sunshine every couple days. Both of these vitamins are toxic if they are consumed in high amounts. This is one more indication that it is better to rely on vitamin precursors, beta-carotene and sunshine, so that our bodies can readily control the timing and quantities of vitamins A and D that are needed.”  There are so many things wrong with this statement. Cholesterol is beneficial in so many ways and as far as more recent research indicates, dietary cholesterol has little to do with cholesterol levels in the blood. Vitamin A can’t be readily made by beta-carotene. The conversion is sloppy and inefficient and many people can’t convert it anyway. Most people don’t spend 15 minutes in the sun every couple of days with a lot of skin exposed so they can’t produce vitamin D. This isn’t even possible in many areas of the world that fall above or below a certain distance from the Equator. The conversion from sun exposure to vitamin D doesn’t happen that readily and requires cholesterol. It is rumored by the press and encouraged by studies showing there is a serious vitamin D shortage in the US so we clearly aren’t getting it and it isn’t in plant based foods. He just stated the body can handle nutrients in food and now he says the body can’t handle it if eaten in huge quantities. You can’t have it both ways. He just got done talking about the synchronicity of food and how important it is and now claims we can get too much vitamin A and D from foods. The studies that show toxicity are based on supplements and he isn’t a fan of supplements.

·      “Vitamin B12 is more problematic. Vitamin B12 is made by microorganisms found in the soil and by microorganisms in the intestines of animals, including our own. The amount made in our intestines is not adequately absorbed, so it is recommended that we consume B12 in food. Research has convincingly shown that plants grown in healthy soil that has a good concentration of vitamin B12 will readily absorb this nutrient.” This was news to me so I did some research. I read some of the paper that this information came from and googled as much information about this as I could. I found that the research was completed on spinach, barley and soybeans. The soil used was amended with cow manure. The plants grown in the amended soil did indeed have a lot more vitamin B12 measured. However, it could not be determined if the B12 was an analogue or not. There were no studies done that I could find to see if humans could utilize this B12 in the plants. In addition, a human would have to consume the food raw or sprouted. One website www.beyondveg.com ran some numbers to indicate a person would have to consume roughly 5 to 10 pounds of soybean sprouts per day, or roughly 1 to 3 pounds of unhulled barley per day or roughly 3 to 7 pounds of raw spinach per day to obtain the daily requirements of 2 mcg of B12. In addition to this, it appears that amending the soil with a fertilizer high in active B12 would be very expensive. I can’t substantiate any of this, but I believe if this were all possible and we could obtain useable B12 from plants, it would be an active practice right now since it would be economically beneficial to the vegan agenda, the medical agenda and the engineered food manufacturers.

·      Dr. Campbell recommends taking a B12 supplement and potentially a vitamin D supplement. He slams supplements in his book in several locations and then recommends taking 2 of them. I don’t think either vitamin supplement work well for many people. Most of the commercially available supplements are so highly processed they aren’t readily bio-available.

 I am not going to cover the rest of his “Principles” as some of what he says makes sense with other things I have studied, some if it is presented quite simplistically and some of it doesn’t agree with other theories from respected scientists, however the overall intent is to convince people that diet matters.

I would like to comment on his list of recommended foods. My comments are as follows (I could provide extensive discussion so I’m only hitting the highlights!):

·      “Flowers” – more and more information is coming out about incorporating a lot of brassica vegetables into the diet including cauliflower and broccoli.

·      There is nothing said about raw or cooked. In just glancing at his diet, many of his recommendations would do well to be well-cooked and loaded with butter!

·      “Stems and leaves” – Many of these vegetables are high in anti-nutrients and cellulose. They need to be properly prepared.

·      “Legumes” – These all need to be properly prepared by soaking and cooking for a long time. These can be difficult to digest. Soybeans are included and these are quite toxic and harmful. Peanuts are included and can cause major problems, are highly sprayed and high on the list of common allergies.

·      “Nuts” – These can be difficult to digest and contain anti-nutrients. They primarily contain PUFAs and if eaten in excess can cause damage. They are also difficult to digest and are a common cause of allergies.

·       Whole grains (in breads, pastas, etc.) – grains need to be properly prepared and are rarely properly prepared! Wheat is causing major issues to growing numbers of people. Breads and pastas are highly processed and I believe are causing harm – I know I can’t eat most of these unless properly prepared. Also, on a vegan diet, grains are usually the filler for the diet and eaten in highly processed states and large quantities.

·      He recommends minimizing corn oil, peanut oil, and olive oil and doesn’t mention any fats in the recommended foods. Lard is included in the foods to avoid. Butter isn’t listed but all dairy is listed in foods to avoid. He encourages eating whatever you want from the approved category, limiting refined carbs the mentioned vegetable oils and limiting salmon, tuna and cod. He doesn’t list shell fish.

·      My interpretation of this is to eat as many vegetables, grains and fruit as I want to, eating very little added oils (dry salad vs. salad dressing, steamed or raw veggies without added fats, etc.). This eliminates all of the densely nutritious foods and the foods that are soothing and soul-satisfying. The diet eliminates most of the fat-soluble activators. It would affect the body’s ability to absorb and utilize nutrients. It could cause thyroid damage. And the list goes on! Basically he recommends eating the diet that Lierre Keith ate while practicing the vegan agenda. This is flat out wrong!

Conclusion. The biggest problems I have with his recommendations and this book are:

·      Prior to the invention of supplements, our ancestors could not have eaten a diet based almost exclusively on plant-based foods and thrived. They weren’t able to supplement B12 or vitamin D.

·      Banning any foods from a healthy diet that contain ESSENTIAL nutrients claiming they are bad for human consumption and cause all the dread diseases of our modern times is downright silly and makes no scientific sense. How can an entire food category be bad if they are the only foods containing essential nutrients? It doesn’t make sense no matter if you believe in intelligent design or evolution. If you believe in intelligent design – what intelligent “god” would put an essential nutrient in a potential food and then declare it evil to eat requiring the use of supplements? It doesn’t make sense in the evolutionary theory either. Evolution is basically a story of the human race getting better and smarter at what we do. Banning an entire food source that is the only source of an essential nutrient would mean disease suffering and death until at least some of the population developed the ability to live without that nutrient and this could take tens of thousands of years!

·      If animal foods cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, auto-immune diseases, Alzheimer’s, etc., and our ancestors ate animal foods (and we have lots of evidence that they did), why are these diseases only showing up in the last 100 or so years and only now becoming epidemic in numbers? Why are so many of these diseases unheard of in history? Why did Dr. Price not find these diseases in populations eating lots of animal products? There is no evidence to suggest that these types of diseases showed up or were a major problem in the hunter-gatherer societies or most societies up until modern times.

·      Finally – Dr. Campbell should know better. He prides himself on first and foremost being a scientific researcher that is supposed to question everything and be open to formulating new hypotheses. In practice he does none of this and openly criticizes other respected researchers. He has the potential to affect millions of people. I have to believe that he believes so strongly in his conviction that a vegan/vegetarian diet is the absolute answer to all of our problems that he can’t see any data that doesn’t support his belief (as it isn’t a hypothesis to him) and manipulates data to be able to baptize everyone else into his one-sided “religion” of the vegan agenda.