Health & Fitness
The China Project Shatters Assumptions About Diet
Everytime you turn around you hear something different about what you should or should not eat, so what is the truth? The China Project is a good start in establishing the truth once and for all.
It is all to common to hear on the news that one food is bad for you, and then a completely different story just a few months later. What are we to believe? Who is right, and what are we to do? This is why many Americans just eat whatever they want, and the obesity problem in America continues to grow.
Take this nutrition quiz: True or False?
1. A high protein diet is healthier then other dieting methods.
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2. Milk supplies our bodies with the calcium that we need to prevent osteoporosis.
3. Meat, fish, eggs, chicken and milk provide the best sources of dietary protein.
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4. If you are a vegetarian you need to include other sources of foods to make sure
that you have an adequate supply of protein at each meal.
5. Fruits and vegetables do not have enough proteins.
6. We can prevent cancer by avoiding red meat, and eating fish or chicken, and by
using skim milk instead of regular of reduced fat.
In answering these questions, I came across a study that is hard to ignore. According to The China Study, a book published in 2005 that has sold more than 500,000 copies, a whole
food, plant-based diet, also called a high-nutrient dense diet, can help reverse the effects of chronic disease brought on by years of eating a traditional, protein-heavy Western diet of meat, dairy and eggs. This book, written by T. Colin Campbell, Ph. D. and his son Thomas M. Campbell II, challenges conventional belief and the claims of pop culture diets, such as Atkins and South Beach that stresses low-carbohydrate, high-protein foods.
Traditional nutrition focuses on the effects of isolated nutrients, i.e. vitamins and mineral supplements on specific outcomes whereas Campbell’s study argues, “optimum nutrition is best achieved by consuming high-nutrient dense whole foods. This study is the most detailed medical study to date on the connection between diet and disease.
To the surprise of many nutritional authorities the "China Project" revealed many so-called nutritional facts as false. In fact, all the answers to the above quiz questions are false.
Rural China is an ideal country to study relationship between diet and disease. Unlike the West where we all eat very similar foods, people of rural China have very diverse diets and it is a perfect life laboratory for studying the complicated relationship between diet and disease.
The "China Project" can be validated because it studied and compared populations which have a compete range of dietary possibilities. Diets ranged from completely plant-based to those which consumed large amounts of animal based foods. Scientists can accurately determine the risk factors of a diet by adding small quantities of a variable. Therefore they were able to determine the disease patterns of the population which ate no animal-based foods vs. those who mostly all animal based foods.
People who live in China live their entire life in the town where they were born and very seldom do they move, so the diseases that resulted from their diets were present for their entire life. There was also a marked difference of disease from region to region, due to the large variation in the different diets. Cardiovascular disease rates varied 20 times from one region to another, and some specific cancer varied several hundred times. In America there is very little difference in the way we eat so we do not see large variations in cancer rates from one town to another.
Very interesting findings were documented in this study. The disease rates showed a direct correlation of disease to the consumption of animal-based food. Scientists found that as the amount of animal-based food increased in the diet, even in small amounts, so did the cancers that are so common in our society here in the West. They found that the more animal-based food that was consumed, the higher the cancer rate.
Therefore as animal food consumption decreased, cancer rates also decreased. Areas of China that consumed mostly plant-based diets were virtually free of heart disease and cancer. A study of the mortality rates from 65 counties and 130 villages demonstrated a direct correlation to heart attacks and the increase of animal protein in the diet, and an increased protection from heart attack with increased consumption of green vegetables.
All animal-based foods are very low or absent in the nutrients which protect our bodies from cancer and heart disease, including fiber, antioxidants, phytochemicals, folate, vitamin E, and plant proteins. Animal source foods are elevated in saturated fat, cholesterol, and arachidonic acid, which have all been shown scientific research to be associated with cancer and heart disease. Animal protein rich diets are also associated with elevated levels of hormone IGF-1, which is a know risk factor for cancer.
The "China Project" changed the way many nutritionist look at dietary recommendations. It showed a strong relationship between the amount of animal protein and animal source foods and cancer rates. Even consumption of lean meats and chicken correlated with high cancer rates.