Will the "real" China study please stand up

By Dr. Hoffman

(as first published Mind Body Green http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-11224/you-dont-need-to-be-a-perfect-vegan-to-be-healthy.html)

I have a vegetarian relative who comes to town from time to time to visit. It's always a hassle negotiating a restaurant because he insists on vegan, and I prefer a place offering at least fish.

Recently we settled on Greek, and met at a nice restaurant in Midtown. I ordered the whole fish and a big Greek salad with fresh olive oil. He scanned the menu skeptically, uttered a sigh, and issued precise instructions to the waiter:

"Bring me a large salad-skip the feta cheese, NO dressing, just fresh lemon, and I'll have a side of garbanzos, no oil please, and some saut?ed spinach, but make it steamed instead, and a plate of rice, also without oil or butter."

I glanced over at him, and hoped the conversation would begin with the weather, politics, recently-seen movies, family gossip-ANYTHING but diet, which I knew to be his favorite subject.

A retired dentist, talented gardener and vegetarian chef, he's a diet devotee. Although I'm a professional nutritionist, my relative always seems to want to pick a food fight with me.

"How can you ignore the evidence?", he salvoed. "Haven't you read The China Study by Professor Campbell? He's a top nutrition scientist, and his research clearly shows that meat and fat are causing the epidemic of degenerative diseases that we see in the West."

What he's referring to is a popular book by Colin Campbell, a Ph.D researcher, Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and champion of vegetarian diets.

Actually, the China Study is not a "study" at all, but an exhaustive compilation of patterns of diet and disease made over the course of decades in China and Taiwan. It has been lauded as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" by The New York Times.

What it suggests-admittedly quite persuasively-is that there has been a dramatic uptick in degenerative diseases in China, and that the increase is highly correlated with adoption of a Western diet. Cancer, heart disease and diabetes rates are convincingly shown to soar with escalating dairy and meat intake. Charts, tables, and graphs abound.

The China Study is revered as the Rosetta Stone of the vegan creed, oft-cited as prima facie evidence for the superiority of a meat- and dairy-free diet.

But what if there were a new "China Study" that contradicted Colin Campbell's previous conclusions?

Well, as of this month, there is. It appears in the October edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, entitled "Meat intake and cause-specific mortality: a pooled analysis of Asian prospective cohort studies."

The article concludes: There is NO association between meat intake and risk of death due to any cause in all the Asian countries studied (including, of course, China).

The researchers acknowledge the undeniable fact that deaths due to degenerative diseases are skyrocketing in newly-prosperous Asian countries.

Many have gone from predominantly-rural societies to urbanized industrial powerhouses in the span of a few decades. With this have come the new specters of obesity, sedentary lifestyle, stress, and environmental pollution. Yes, there appears to be a correlation between the animal food that Asians are increasingly able to afford and higher disease rates, but does it reflect causation?

When confronted with that question, not only could the researchers not find evidence of higher risk of death with total meat intake, they found the reverse! There was a lower risk of death for Asians who consumed more red meat, poultry, and fish/seafood; specifically, men who ate more red meat had less heart disease, and women had less risk of cancer!

The authors admit that studies like this are hard to do, and that more access to meat might simply be a marker of better overall health status or affluence, confounding the results. They also note that what might apply to Asians-who still consume far less meat than North Americans-might not be applicable in the West.

And finally, while vindicating meats overall, this study does not address the question of safety of processed meats, whose harmful effects do show up in some diet studies.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Does this give us license to eat red meat three times a day? Should we all hop on the Paleo bandwagon? Well, not so fast, hunter-gatherer wannabes! It merely means we can shed the guilt about not being vegan and go "Gangnam Style" like the average Asian, with reasonable portions of lean meat, fish or poultry 3 or 4 times a week.

There was an awkward silence as I paused for a moment and looked at my relative: "Soooo . . . " I ventured tentatively, "It's pretty weird not having the Yankees in the playoffs this year, dontcha think?

Have a comment on this article? Send it.


 

Back to...

Health conditions and concerns

More in this group...

Vitamin c / atherosclerosis scare

Functional food science

Is your diet making you sick?

Drugs that steal

Iron: deficiency and toxicity

12 drugs you should never take (part 2 of 3)

12 supplements you should NEVER take

"Death by food pyramid": a review

"Don't take your vitamins"? So not!

"Fed Up": A movie review

Intelligent Medicine Bone Health Protocol available now!

Intelligent Medicine Health News Review

10 "Duh!" health and nutrition stories

10 simple hacks to improve your diet

10 ways the foods you eat can affect your sex life

11 reasons why you should be using extra virgin olive oil

11 things worth trying if you suffer from tinnitus

12 drugs you should never take (part 1 of 3)

12 drugs you should never take (part 3 of 3)

12 supplements you should NEVER take

13 tips for surviving the holidays (part one)

13 tips for surviving the holidays (part two)

16 reasons to go nuts for nuts

5 easy Paleo diet hacks

6 new products that I'm excited about in 2015

A nerd in the kitchen: My review of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji Lo

American Heart Association doubles down on outmoded saturated fat recommendations

Are "paleo snacks" an oxymoron?

Are fruit and veggie pills really as effective as they claim?

Are fruit and veggie pills really as effective as they claim?

Are vegetarians healthier than meat-eaters? So NOT, according to shocking new studies

Can a low-salt diet actually be BAD for you?

Can what you eat really damage your thyroid?

Clinical Focus: Nicotinamide Riboside

Confessions of an EX-vegan

Could a vegetarian diet undermine your mental health?

Could a vegetarian diet undermine your mental health?

Could Big Sugar become the next Big Tobacco?

Death by Food Pyramid? by Denise Minger: A Review

Defensive Eating: Taming your addiction to food

Detox in a box

Dispatches from the front lines of nutrition-what you need to know about the latest health headlines

Do you have SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth)?

Do you really need to eat breakfast?

Frontline gets it wrong about supplements

GMO non-browning apples: A risky solution to a non-problem

Happy one millionth podcast! Let's review the best of 2015 so far

How a raw foods diet can make you sick

ICYMI: Dr. Hoffman's Store now available through Fullscript!

Iron: Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?

Is fructose really that bad for you?

Is the "pandemic" of vitamin D deficiency exaggerated?

Is the way to a (wo)man's heart through his(her) stomach?

Is the Whole30 diet right for you? (part one)

Is the Whole30 diet right for you? (part two)

Is your grill killing you? Your personal anti-AGEing program

More good news about olive leaf extract

Organic produce trumps conventional: Here's why!

Paleo pitfalls

Paleo Pitfalls

Pro-vegan website outs apostate meat-eaters

Repeat after me: "Hunger is my friend!"

Rethinking Super Size Me: Is it a Big Whopper?

Rethinking breakfast

Revisiting salt intake - are you eating too much or too little?

Sorry vegans, but humans were designed to eat (some) meat

Supplements that I take

The artificial sweetener controversy: who should you believe?

The Whole30: A review

The WORST health and nutrition stories of 2015

There's no "one-size-fits-all" diet, according to new research

To juice or not to juice?

Top 10 "duh!" health and nutrition stories of 2016

Vitamins can cause cancer-REALLY??

What do Bill Gates, eggs, and soylent green have in common?

What week is it, kiddies? Why, it's National Folic Acid Week!

Why I liberally indulge in high-test chocolate

Why you don't have to feel guilty about those Valentine's Day chocolates

Why you should keep taking your supplements

Will the "real" China study please stand up

Yet more reasons to go gluten-free