Wow. Wow-wow-wow.

For the past few days, I have been reading a book at a clip that I barely ever use. When I woke up, I wanted to read. In the bathtub, I would read. Before bed, I would try and read some more. I couldn’t get enough.

The book is the aforementioned The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, who started his life as the son of a dairy farmer, who went into research to try and help the meat industry grow larger animals to increase profits.

Ultimately, his research led him to find causal relations between animal protein and cancer promotion. So, he starts on a diary farm, working to help slaughter animals, kills probably thousands of mice and rats over the years in his studies, and his end result is now that people should eat a whole foods, plant-based diet.

To be clear, he is not saying to eat LESS meat and dairy. He is saying NOT to eat them. So, for me, this book was amazingly affirming, as I went vegan roughly six months ago.

My first instinct after reading this book was to go online, order a case of them, and send them to everyone I know. I mean, in some way, anyone around me who gets sick because they eat what we are told is good for us by so many sources… I’d still feel partially responsible is I hadn’t told them the risks.

And, this isn’t just about fat. One of the leading cancer promoting things in the American diet is casein, the protein in milk. And the same protein is in whole, skim, fat-free, and every other kind of milk on the market.

I’m trying to think of all of the other amazing stats in this book, but there are so many. It shows all of the problems with the food industry, the medical industry, the government, the research industry, and how they are all motivated to not say the truth. One example is that every diet you ever read says we need 30 percent of our diet to be protein. The reason? Going under 30 percent would mean not eating meat. So, health isn’t the top concern necessarily. The government funds farmers. The food industry, drug industry, and government fund nutrition research. There’s a lot of money being made, and the decisions aren’t always made in the best interest of the people whom they most affect.

Another example: The average level of blood cholesterol found in their research in China was 127, almost 100 points under the American average. Some counties in China had an average of only 94! The American range is usually around 170-290, and our doctors use that range as their guide. So, if you are under 200 or somesuch, your numbers are considered “good.” But they are only “good” by our standards. Our medical “industry” actually has said there might be dangers of having cholesterol levels under 150, but offer no proof to back this up. This route back around, though, to what you would have to do to get your cholesterol under 150 (read: not eat meat).

I’m not saying doctors are against you, just that most of them get their information from biased sources. Many medical schools are taught nutrition using information paid for and distributed by the dairy industry. So, basically, the people who sell the leading cancer promoting agent in the American diet help teach doctors nutrition?!

I should point out that I am not saying meat or dairy are carcinogenic. They do not cause cancer (to my knowledge, anyway). Acquiring cancer is still genetic or environmental, just as you’ve always heard. However, in lab experiments, whereby mice were given cancer, the ones who were given 20 percent of their diet from milk protein, the cancer grew. If they were given soy or other proteins, it not only didn’t grow, but it reversed.

In the book, Campbell said the three stages of cancer are like how you grow a lawn. There is an initiation stage, where you put the seed in the ground. There is then a promotion stage, where you add water and fertilizers and get the seed to grow. Then the third stage is when the grass takes over and is growing between the cracks in the sidewalk, basically out of control. The stage of this you cannot control is initiation. The stage of this that you help when you have animal proteins and dairy is promoting it. The rats that had been initiated with cancer, but never had dairy or animal protein to promote it?

They all lived.

This book is SO important. I can’t impress upon you enough how important I think this stuff is. It can literally save your life.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 5th, 2005 at 12:07 am and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.