[Vegas69]

The China Study

I promised to condense some thoughts once I dug into "The China Study". I'm now 230 pages deep and it's been a very enjoyable and enlightening read. Let me say that the more I study nutrition, the more I realize that it's similar to religion and politics. Everybody has an opinion and the dust will never settle. Much like other aspects of life, you have to determine what voices hold the most value.

They claim that this is the most comprehensive study on nutrition ever performed in the history of man kind. The basis of this book is that most Western diseases (Heart Disease, Cancers, Diabetes, Alzheimers, etc) are preventable with the right nutrition. That is a whole food, largely plant based diet.

Astonishing statistics in America:

A male has a 47% chance of cancer in his lifetime.
Over 30% of our population is obese.
Heart disease kills 1 in 3 Americans.
Diabetes has increased by 70% for the 30 something age group in the last 10 years.
Medical care is the 3rd leading cause of death.
America has almost double the health care cost per person of any other major country in the world.
It's estimated that only 2-3% of cancers are caused by GENETICS
And the list goes on and on....

They started out by testing their theory on Rats. They found that a diet of 20% dairy protein (Casein) would help cancer cells originate and grow. At only 5% of the diet, cancer didn't take hold. By switching to a plant based protein diet of 20%, the cancer cells would turn off and quit multiplying. Then switching back to a dairy protein (Casein) it would turn back on. The Western diet is extremely high in protein. They claim we only need about 10% of our diets to come from protein to sustain energy level and normal function. Magically, in the 10-12% range was where they determined an animal based protein diet to be relatively safe.

Once they had proved it in rats, they then went to mice and found the same results. To prove there theory, they studied 65 counties, 6500 people per county with blood tests, urine samples, and questionnaires. From poverty level to the wealthiest of the Chinese. What they found was astonishing. The poorest suffered from the least Western diseases because they were forced to eat a whole food, plant based diet. As they Chinese became wealthier, they adopted a more Western diet of animal proteins and they suffered the same fate of Western disease.

To be continued.....