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Why I'm Going Vegan, Mostly
For the past year, I have kept running into people who tell me to read the book, The China Study. It’s written by T. Colin Campbell, a biologist from Cornell, about research he did in rural and developing China on peoples’ diets and the role played by protein. The book also relies on a, “survey of death rates for 12 different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96 percent) of their citizens.”
What he found was that people whose diet has a lot of animal protein, from cow’s milk or meat, specifically, are likelier to get illnesses like cancer than those whose don’t. If your diet has more than 10 percent of its calories coming from animal protein, which is the Recommended Daily Allowance by the FDA, your chances shoot up astronomically. The book also debunks a lot of misconceptions people have about whether it’s possible to get enough protein on a vegan diet (yes, it is.)
I suspect that in a few years, veganism will be very mainstream the way that vegetarianism is now. As much as I love salty cured meats and taleggio, after reading this book I am viewing meat and dairy the way I view drinking martinis: only once in a while, or suffer the consequences.
Posted by | Friday, October 10, 2008 at 12:30pm | 15 comments
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"If your diet has more than 10% of its calories coming from animal protein, which is the Recommended Daily Allowance by the FDA, your chances shoot up astronomically"
Can you tell me what "astronomically" means here exactly? 10% more likely? 10 fold increase in risk?
Please try to convert as many people as possible to your veganism, and I will enjoy lower-priced prosciuttio.
I have to agree, but unfortunately i like eating meat and eggs,milk but as little and lean as possible.You are correct. All health to you.
I hope the author explains why Europeans, Americans, Australians and Canadians all have a much longer Life expectancy at birth than the Chinese then. If the western diet was so detrimental to us, I'd expect a different result.
More than likely, the occurence of chronic disease is just a factor in living longer. If citizens are more likely to die before the age of 60, a country is less likely to have a high occurence of cancer and heart disease.
Some of the comments seem to indicate trouble understanding what's being said here. The author is pointing out increased rates of cancer in people who eat animal protein, he's not saying anything about life expectancy. It's obvious that if you live in a place like China, there are a number of other factors besides diet that could negatively impact your life expectancy.
Totally agree with the above for several reasons--and after finding out he was diabetic in Jan., my husband started taking my dietary suggestions more seriously and has lost 30 lbs with minimal pain--it's more about the saturated fat than the sugar.. when you realize too, how much land and water it takes to raise cattle you see the scarcity of resources benefiting fewer people than a plant-based diet can do.
We aren't vegan but do enjoy fish or very lean turkey, and in much smaller portions--and we eat all we want of veggies raw or cooked. Now if we eat a meal with red meat or anything fried we are sick! Try reading the old classic "Diet for a Small Planet." It's an eye-opener. I love soy milk too so we use that a lot more.
Watch some of those videos of factory farming on YouTube and that'll give enough reason to try to eat as little meat as possible! Yikes! And the world's fisheries are dead and dying. Dare I mention whale slaughter and Patagonian Toothfish AKA "Chilean Sea Bass"?
I rarely eat meat for those sorts of considerations, not because I don't like the taste. But, being a vegetarian with the very occasional lapse (3x a year?) means I keep very trim with little effort. And I still make the best gravy in the family -- hey, the fat is there because they wanted a roast, gravy tastes good and doesn't mess up the internal flora that has changed because of being veggie, and waste is bad.
I wish I could be more vegan, but what dairy I buy is researched, and as often as possible properly cruelty-free. No, nothing is perfect, but it's better than chowing at Mickey D's three times a week.
I've been a vegan for 11 years now. I didn't mean to become one, but I read Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (he's that poor man who was sued for simply talking about his personal story of illness and recovery on the Oprah Winfrey show) and somewhere around the middle of the book I realized that I no longer wished to eat any animal products at all.
By the way, for the person who made the snarky comment about converting people, it isn't about conversion. There are some vegetarians who want to stop the pain and cruelty of the meat industry, and think that if they can just show others how awful it all is, those others will change their ways. This is a bit naive, but one would hope that most people would wish to stop the cruelty nonetheless.
What I've come to see is that there are people who just don't care. They don't want to see it and nothing that anyone, vegetarian or otherwise, says, is going to change their minds. Health isn't usually a great reason for change, either, because those who won't look at the cruelty done on their behalf aren't going to look at the possibility that at some point long down the road, an unhealthy diet may come back and bite them.
The need to keep the blinders on causes such people to lash out defensively at any vegetarian who talks about their life or diet at all, even the original poster in this thread who is so clearly not proselytizing, but merely sharing their story.
So, carnivores, enjoy that prosciutto! Snap up all the cholesterol and animal hormones, not to mention chemical curing agents, that you can devour. Then check back with us when your body starts to break down and tell us if it was worth it.
Sooooo ... there is no response to the request for clarification? Do the blog writers ever read these comments? What is the difference in cancer rates?
Typetiv: Whatever answer they provide is going to be heavily skewed due to demographic differences between our societies. Comparing cancer rates between countries with signifciantly different infant mortality rates and overall life expectancies is going to be very difficult, particularly if you can't differentiate different environmental cancers (ie cancer caused by industrial pollution sources vs cancer supposedly caused by foods). Moreover the author of this study happens to own vegan biotic company, so he's got a vested interest in swaying people to veganism. Take it for what its worth...
ArizonaJim,
The author of this study did not work in a vacuum. He is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, not some slimeball falsifying data to sell supplements. If you're going to cast aspersions on someone's character, it would be wise to do a little fact checking before making negative suggestions and allegations.
The study itself took 20 years and was conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. This is an academically conducted, peer-reviewed study, not some back-room compendium of factoids or slipshod polling of a self-selected or manipulated population by financially interested parties. There are plenty of those that are devised as sales tools, but the differences are fairly obvious.
Folks, if you want to criticize the study, you really ought to read it first and find out a thing or two about how it was conducted. Of course if you belong to an industry that the study would harm, or if you hold deep-rooted beliefs that it threatens, you don't care about facts and are hoping to cast doubt upon its authenticity regardless of the truth. Luckily, for those of us with brains enough to even contemplate changing our habits or diets for the benefit of either our health, the environment or animal welfare, that kind of slanted attack is also fairly obvious.
BBettinaB - Since you seem informed about this book and its contents, can you tell me what "astronomical" means in terms of the cancer risk difference between vegans and omnivores? I can't find any reference to it on the website or the excerpt.
Hey typetive,
I did try to find that reference to send in, but in the limited time I had couldn't track it down. I'm in organic chemistry this semester and time is at a premium. I will suggest that interested people go to Amazon and browse the book in the online reader you can get there. You can search for specific terms so you may be able to find it. I cannot do it now, I'm behind the 8-ball as it is.
I will say that I know that the differences are very great between people with various dietary practices in a number of disease processes, not only from this source but from many. I suggest that people also check out the Framingham Heart Study which shows interesting and related data.
The work of Dr. Dean Ornish also supports what Dr. Campbell is saying. In fact, there are major insurance companies who will pay for patients to undergo an intensive version of Dr. Ornish's protocols. These companies believe that it has been proven that diet and other lifestyle choices make a huge difference to outcome of various diagnoses. Doctors need to begin realizing that when patients actually believe they will benefit, they WILL change their diet and other habits. (It has long been believed that patients are weak-willed creatures who are addicted to unhealthy foods and practices. Of course, a doctor who believes such things will rely much more upon medical interventions instead of patient proaction.)
Anyway, you should be able to find the data you are looking for in the book on Amazon if you dont' want to buy and read it. Also most libraries should have it. Good luck! Please post it here if you do find it.
BBettinaB: I'll admit I'm a dairy farmer, as has every generation of my family been for at least 250 years, so I suppose I do have an interest in these studies. I find your ad hominem attacks rather telling, but I'll still counter.
The China Study referred to by Campbell was not 'his' study, but a larger undertaking published academically as "Diet, life-style, and mortality in China: A study of the characteristics of 65 Chinese counties". Campbell essentially hand-picked his results from this wider work, as he's been an anti-meat and dairy activist before this study was even started. The actual results of the work show that there is no statistical correlation between milk intake, fiber, cereal grains, legumes, and vegetables and longevity. Egg consumption showed a statistically positive correlation with longevity, as did overall protein intake.
For cancer specifically, animal protein, fish protein, plant protein, eggs and milk all showed no correlation with increased cancer rates for the 65 counties studied. Within that larger group there were a handful of populations which Campbell picked to focus on, while ignoring the larger statistically significant group. It also should be noted that the study showed a statistical significance between alcohol use and decreased cancer rates, a rather anomalous result that often occurs in epidemiology. Take that for what its worth.
I’m sure I’ll now be dismissed as an agent of ‘industrial agriculture’ or some such non-sense, but I do know a little about what I’m talking about.
I gave up dairy about 2 years ago in an attempt to relieve chronic sinus problems. It was advice that I, a hard-core dairy lover, dismissed as new-age claptrap. After a couple weeks I decided, what the hey? and gave it a shot. Sadly for my love of cheese, my results were significant. This clairitin-a-day guy has not taken one in over a year and a half, and my quarterly encounters with sinusitis have been erased. This led me to do some reading, which in turn led me, over time, to a near-vegan diet. My choice was not driven by animal welfare per-se, but was rather an ongoing self-experiment. Did giving up item "a" result in any sort of positive change? In my case, it often did.
I'm surprised to find myself posting here, because as a devoted chowhound and food lover, I have pretty much stopped talking about what's been happening to me with anyone. I'm surely dismissed as an agent of new-age hippie agriculture, or some such nonsense, and I'm tired of being hounded, chastised, and made fun of for it.
I'm not completely fascistic about my choices, in any event. When I was in Argentina this year, for example, I happily tried out the free-range, grass-fed beef that my hosts offered me. That's an experience I want to have, and I'm glad I did. And every 3-4 months, I get a craving for a steak and red wine. What can I say? When it happens though, I skip the grocery store stuff, raised on corn, antibiotics and growth hormone and opt for my local farmer's grass-fed hormone-free product...or his next door neighbor's free-range bison. Then we'll split a single steak and enjoy it, but we won't really feel like any again for months. And the gap between those events widens as time goes on.