FALSE!
Before saying anything I needed to scream at the cover of this book. Like most books, it is tattooed with blatantly false statements. Of course such things are par for the course in today’s world, where marketing and hype rule the day. In any case, why do I feel this is false?
If you didn’t know, this book is famous for having the largest data set in history – a very large portion of China’s population. All of the hype and ‘reputation’ is built upon that. But as you will see in my review here, that data is not very meaningful.
I actually found this book to be a pleasant read, with tons of great information, good flow, entertaining, and easy. Not technically easy, but well written so that reading it was a smooth experience. There is some good writing at play here. At the same time I was surprised to find that it is actually a vegan manifesto in disguise. It was very sad to see the data twisted to support some predetermined idea from the authors. It is ultimately vegan propaganda to me, and I was not expecting it to be that. There was a great irony for me here in that I enjoyed reading the book and was infuriated by his recommendations and conclusions. But I could laugh them off.
I would like to argue what is perhaps an obvious point, and that is that all of the vast source data used by Campbell (the author) is completely irrelevant to his conclusions in ‘The China Study’ about human health. When I say all of it, I mean not only the China data, but, as Campbell emphasizes, all the vast data of the last fifty years that influenced his conclusions in that book. My justifications will be based precisely on this data volume, and two critical temporal elements. Time changes everything.
Campbell establishes a context that is a very broad, all encompassing, definitive statement on the health of the human species; a species that has evolved over millions of years. And for this species he concludes unequivocally that a diet based on whole plant foods with zero cholesterol is what humans should eat. He is in fact on the very extreme end of the scale, claiming that humans should be vegans. Not vegetarians, but vegans. He doesn’t explicitly use the word vegan, but that is only because he says that accidental or occasional consumption of animal products is probably harmless. In Campbell’s (2006) own words:
“While I recommend that you not worry about small quantities of animal products in your food, I am not suggesting that you deliberately plan to incorporate small portions of meat into your daily diet. My recommendation is that you try to avoid all animal-based products.” (p. 244)
That conclusion is the key point that I am writing against. I contend that his data sources do not support this extreme recommendation. I will provide three specific justifications for my contention.
POINT #1: My first justification for claiming his data is irrelevant is a temporal one. He took a snapshot of a sliver of humanity, a snapshot that is so small it is insignificant on any scale. Keep in mind that he is making a judgement about what the human species should perpetually eat to survive. He is not simply proposing a diet for some specific disease, purpose, moment, and/or people. He looked at a moment of time that it is not even enough to judge a single life, let alone the evolution of a species. The words paleo, ancestors, ancestral never appear in the book once. Nor is there any mention of Dr. Weston A. Price. The word ‘ancient’ appears once in a questionable claim about the Greek Olympiads. He does have a chapter on history, and quotes many people over the last few thousand years, but there is no data or science from that history. All of his data comes from a fifty year window. Far worse than that, it is not a depth of fifty years, but small snapshots that might represent days, months, or some years at best of an individual life!
The crux of his data rests on three day visits and questionnaires. He does say that surveys from the World Bank suggest that the diets were similar years earlier, but again, this is still a small window of time. There is no genealogy, no historical personal health records or monitoring, and no attempt to understand the changing dietary needs of individuals in a changing world. Nor is there any real understanding about the actual nutrition in their diets (Masterjohn, 2007). There is breadth, but no depth to his study; a 2D rather than 3D view. Sure he had disease data for a staggering eight hundred eighty million people, but only tested sixty five hundred for three days, analyzing blood, urine, and food. Exceptions to this are in his tests that they conducted to show the impact of specific diets on tumor formation, but these research efforts do not comprise the bulk of the data that his conclusions are based on, and they are still very short windows of time.
Some years ago my body would have responded very well to any type of plant-based diet, be it vegan, vegetarian, or similar. But it only would have done so for a short time, and it would have done so because that could have served as a good detox program. At that moment in time, during that tiny sliver of my life, I could have been representative of Campbell’s conclusions. But only for a moment. Not for a lifetime, and not for any other points in my lifetime since, except again, when I need or want another detox, reset, etc. Diets similar to Campbell’s recommendations are good only as a tool, and cannot sustain an optimum human life.
What I am concerned about is that the people, their environments, and the food they consumed, are all confined within a split second in history, and are supporting definitive conclusions for humankind. My first point is that those people, those plant foods, and those animal foods are not representative of anything other than life at that moment.
How Long is a Vegan a Vegan?!
Not to belabor my point, but the average time that vegans spend as vegans is only about six or seven years (Leber, 2014). A tiny sliver of time. Arguably the most stubborn food zealots in history, most cannot even manage to spend ten percent of their lives as such. It should be noted that this is similar for all diets that attempt to restrict animal products. The vast majority of vegans spend over ninety percent of their lives eating animal products. Also note that at any given moment, at best, there is only about one percent of the population that even claim to be vegan. If that one percent of passionate zealots cannot succeed at being vegan, how can the other ninety nine percent do it? Campbell is oblivious to the reality of these tiny slivers of time. What he tests is too small a sliver of time, and what he concludes is not possible beyond a small sliver of time.
POINT #2: And this takes me to my second point. Are we, modern man, truly representative of our species? Campbell’s data only represents humans of the last fifty years are so. My second temporal point, which I would now like to discuss is concerned with the ‘when.’
His data represents only what the human species has become in the last fifty years. As Dr. Weston A. Price has shown us, we are not the same humans that we were a hundred years ago. Dramatic physical degeneration had already been occurring rapidly in recent centuries, and continuously for millennia, since the onset of agriculture. Although not fully expressed, our genetic potential is still there, as Price (1939), Pottenger (2009) with cats, and others have shown with their studies that span generations within families, tribes, etc.; however, Campbell does not consider any of this. He does not consider what is human, or what is the potential of our species. Even if my first temporal point was wrong, and Campbell did an exhaustive analysis to fully encapsulate the health of a modern human lifespan, he would still fail to support his conclusions because the humans he tested are not representative of our species. Humans could not have gotten to this point on a vegan diet. Here again we have the contrast of Price’s work, who thought to search for the humans that best represented our species, and within them found the secrets to health. None could be found that were vegan. Campbell made no such considerations.
Campbell was aware of ‘tradition’ and talks about it in the book; however, these traditions were already long since corrupted by the modern world, and had no resemblance to the wise traditions that Dr. Price found and studied. While Campbell thinks he discerned between healthy and unhealthy humans, all of his humans (with few statistically irrelevant exceptions) would likely fall into the unhealthy category within the Price studies. Yet Campbell remains oblivious to that fact. Campbell accepted the diseases of civilization as a natural part of the human condition, because that is what all the vast data showed him. Those humans of the twentieth century are not representative of our species. Disease is not a natural part of the human condition!
Weston A. Price’s work will likely stand forever as the last great work of its kind, as much of those peoples, cultures, and lands are forever gone, and cannot easily be restored or imitated. Even at the time of his research, the peoples, lands, and cultures had already been greatly compromised in many of the study groups. Indeed, it was his inclusion of countless generations, living, and in fossil records, that was one of the highlights of his research. The ‘when’ of Dr. Price’s work is incredibly significant, as it is in Campbell’s work.
To further emphasize the importance of the ‘when’ we can note that Campbell is fixated on a false concept of meat being a luxury of the rich – a concept that only comes into reality after you have civilizations and agriculture, which create economic divisions, and thus, the poor. This is not an issue in Price’s studies. Campbell fails to realize that again he is focused on an irrelevant point in time. Meat was never a luxury for any humans, anywhere on earth, at any point in time, for greater than 99% of their existence. Humans evolved for millions of years, spending most of that time as hunter-gatherers.4 Lierre Keith (2009) digs back even further in her book:
“Back before we were human, when we were tree dwellers, we ate mainly fruit, leaves, and insects. But from the moment we stood upright, we’ve been eating large ruminants. Four million years ago, Australopithecines, our species’ forerunners, ate meat.” (p. 140)
We have not evolved beyond that hunter-gatherer biology, and are thus still suited to that diet. However, in Campbell’s (2006) words:
“Instead, the false sense of rich luxury granted by being able to eat animals would only lead to a culture of sickness, disease, land disputes, lawyers and doctors. This is a pretty good description of some of the challenges faced by modern America!” (p. 345)
He disregards millions of years of history. He does venture back in time, in his chapter on history, where there is virtually no science. He is quoting philosophers who, understandably, are contemplating the nature of their existence, as this period of history (the Greeks) is famous for. Many of the opinions espoused then, and referenced by Campbell, are skewed by the same tunnel vision of civilization – they are looking at themselves as they exist within civilization – which we might say is an unnatural state. By contrast, many of the tribal people that Price studied had lived in harmony on the lands for thousands and thousands of years, and were still largely representative of those countless generations, being superb human specimens. If we want to be like them, we need to eat like them.
POINT #3: On to my final point, where I want to address the sheer magnitude of Campbell’s data. It is the incredible weight of this data, anchored by nearly a billion people, that gives him the credibility. The book does in fact call itself “The most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted” right on the cover. It is all about the volume of the numbers, the statistics. Yet, as Masterjohn (2006) points out, “Only 39 of 350 pages are actually devoted to the China Study.” So right from the start it seems to me that Campbell is misusing the idea of massive data. He has all that data but fails to cover many key issues with it. One huge oversight in my opinion is insects, which are never mentioned. There is so much that can be said about insects that they deserve their own paper, so I’ll only mention them here as another example of how his massive data is not all encompassing. On to more important data issues….
Is there any data about vegans? His conclusion is that humans should be vegans. And he emphasis such by adding that humans should consume zero cholesterol, which is not simply redundant, as incidental consumption of insects among vegans would violate his ‘zero cholesterol’ recommendations unless all the vegetation is sterilized. He is oblivious to this reality. Yet he claims that the data supports his conclusions. The staggering numbers that lend weight to his entire effort have nothing to do with vegans. He did talk about data from vegan and vegetarian studies, and does reference and discuss them, but even then he never considers what that data represents… and none of it represents lifelong vegans. Vegans compromise perhaps one percent of the population at best, at any given moment, and zero percentage of them are lifelong vegans. I say zero percent because no human has survived as a vegan from birth to my knowledge, and most vegans that begin in adulthood do not remain so until death. Most vegans are not vegans for any significant period of their lifespan at all. So again, I must repeat that vegans only remain vegan for about seven years of their lifetime on average.
Another grievous misuse of the data is almost everything that involves vegetarians. He references them personally and in studies, qualifies or quantifies them in various ways (‘junk-food’ vegetarians, distinctions on calorie consumption, and other details), compares them to each other, and uses them to support his argument. But the fact is that all vegetarians violate his conclusions, as they all consume significant amounts of animal products. It is quite easy for a vegetarian to consume more animal products than a ‘normal’ human, and he is aware of this in some cases through the course of the book. Yet he puts many of these people on a pedestal when it suits him, even though his conclusions and recommendations contradict the inclusion of vegetarians in his studies, and ultimately condemn any version of the diet. Campbell says avoid all cholesterol and all animal products, but he has not a single specimen that has lived a lifetime on that recommendation.
In my first two points about temporal issues I cannot exactly accuse him of deliberate misuse, but I can accuse him of making unjustified claims. However, my final point about the volume of data and how he used it seems very deliberate in my opinion. If he was recommending vegetarianism I would have to write a completely different paper, but his recommendation to avoid all animal products is to the extreme, and that is not supported by his data in any way. I am very confident in my conclusions, especially after reading his comments about Dr. Weston A. Price’s work and the people of WAPF. Campbell seems completely lost in the details of his efforts and fails to consider the big picture. He cannot see the forest for the trees.
AFTERWORD
I think that Campbell actually realizes the validity of Dr. Price’s work, but is too invested in the momentum of his own work to admit it. He seems to be to invested only in his family’s legacy, rather than the legacy of the human race. It was not the book itself, but Campbell’s rebuttals in blogposts, emails, etc., that demonstrated to me an utter contempt for WAPF and people associated with it. It seemed extreme, which for me, signaled fear. I cannot accept ignorance or arrogance, because he stated that he read Price’s book, and then denounced it as unscientific. That conclusion is simply not possible for a man of his education and intelligence. In my opinion, his comments on all things Weston Price are deliberate attempts at misdirection. I was outraged, but he made me want to compare him to Price’s work, and then the temporal issues were so obvious to me.
REFERENCES
- Campbell, T. Colin; Thomas M. Campbell II (2006-06-01). The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health (p. 244). BenBella Books, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
- Keith, L. (2009). The vegetarian myth: food, justice and sustainability (Kindle ed.). Crescent City, Ca.: Flashpoint Press.
- Animal Charity Evaluators. (2015, March 1). Vegetarian Recidivism. Retrieved June 20, 2017, from https://animalcharityevaluators.org/research/dietary-impacts/vegetarian-recidivism/
- Groeneveld, E. (2016, December 9). Prehistoric Hunter-gatherer Societies. Retrieved July 1, 2017, from http://www.ancient.eu/article/991/
- Campbell, T. Colin; Thomas M. Campbell II (2006-06-01). The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health (p. 345). BenBella Books, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
- Leber, J. (2014, September 9). The Vast Majority Of Vegetarians And Vegans Eventually Return To Meat. Retrieved June 15, 2017, from https://www.fastcompany.com/3039505/the-vast-majority-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-eventually-return-to-meat
- Masterjohn, C. (2006, April). The Truth About the China Study. Retrieved June 24, 2017, from http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
- Campbell, T. C. (2006, October 1). T. Colin Campbell’s Response to Questions Raised About the Book. Retrieved June 22, 2017, from http://www.vegsource.com/articles2/campbell_china_response.htm
- Masterjohn, C. (2007, March 4). Response to T. Colin Campbell. Retrieved June 25, 2017, from http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Campbell-Masterjohn.html#price
- Minger, D. (2010, July 17). The China Study: My Response to Campbell. Retrieved June 21, 2017, from https://deniseminger.com/2010/07/16/the-china-study-my-response-to-campbell/
- Price, W. A. (1939). Nutrition and physical degeneration: a comparison of primitive and modern diets and their effects. Redlands, CA: The author.
- Pottenger, F. M., Pottenger, E., & Pottenger, R. T. (2009). Pottengers cats: a study in nutrition. La Mesa, CA (P.O. Box 2614, La Mesa 92041): Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation.
