“The China Study” Chapter Two: A House of Proteins

I am going to use the same outline that I did for chapter one but this time I will add a brief vocabulary section since that is more prevalent in this chapter:

Salient points:

·         Carl Voit (1831-1908) determined that man needed 48.5g of protein per day yet recommended 118g because of a cultural bias at the time.

·         In early 1900’s USDA (whose head studied under Voit) recommended 125g of protein per day which later dropped to 55g.

·         Protein is composed of chains of amino acids which are broken down to replace those that wear out naturally.

·         “…through enormously complex metabolic systems, the human body can derive all the essential amino acids from the natural variety of plant protein that we encounter every day.”

·         Peanuts are a good source of protein but can be contaminated with aflatoxin (a potent carcinogen).  Peanut butter is more likely to be contaminated than whole peanuts.

·         The foods most likely to be contaminated with aflatoxin are peanuts and corn.

·         In the Philippines the children most likely to have live cancer were those eating a diet high in animal protein (i.e. most similar to the US diet).

·         A research paper out of India also showed that lab rats exposed to aflatoxin when fed a diet of 20% protein all got liver cancer, 100%.  Rats fed a 5% protein diet did not get liver cancer, not one.

·         A problem with nutritional science is that you aren’t going to get absolute proof there are too many confounding factors.  However you can determine what is likely to be true using statistics.

Vocabulary:

Observational studies – means to simply record what is done and then record the outcome (the obvious example is the China Study or the Nurses’ Health Study)

Interventional studies – to intentionally intervene and measure the outcome (common examples of this would be clinical trials for medications)

Positively correlated – when one item increases so does the other (example increasing alcohol intake increases breast cancer incidence)

Inversely correlated – one item goes up and the other goes down (example as higher fiber diets are associated with a reduction in colon cancer)

Statistical significance – is attempting to measure whether the result is reliable/reproducible or due to chance, typically given as 95% confidence interval.

Mechanism of action – this simply means there is an underlying process that can explain why the particular outcome makes sense

Metanalysis – is the statistical grouping of many different studies that are then analyzes as a one data set

Observations:

I am definitely the sort of person that responds to scientific information. Knowing that Dr. Campbell was motivated by a desire to follow the evidence no matter where it took him was comforting to me.  I think it is very easy to develop a personal bias and miss things if any of us aren’t careful.  There are a few other doctors (Fuhrman, Barnard and Esselstyn) that I also believe followed the evidence which led them to become advocates for the vegan diet.  Whenever I am reading health information I always consider the source. For example I would do a lot more research to confirm something that was posted on PETA’s website than I would if I read it on Dr. Fuhrman’s.  Since Dr. Campbell’s career was built on research and his conclusions bucked the system personally I find him more credible.

It was extremely disturbing to me that protein requirements were based more on societal norms/expectations than science.  However we still see the same thing happening today.  I know many health conscious people who believe that they need to consume more protein to build muscle. Many people have been surprised to find that I am vegan because I am not a waif which is what most people expect vegans to be apparently.   In fact I had one person actually comment that “I looked healthy unlike most vegans" what that meant.  Needless to say I wasn’t sure how to take that be decided to consider it a compliment and keep going.  ;-)

When I took the Cornell program the “ah ha” moment for me was learning that breast milk was approximately 6% protein. Think about that for a minute. At a time in life where we are growing as rapidly as any other time we are designed to eat a diet that is 6% protein.  How can it be logical to eat a diet that is 20-30% protein when we are no longer growing?  It doesn’t make any sense and yet most people consume far more than 6% of their calories from protein.

Now I want to know what did you found interesting in this chapter?   I need to run out to take care of my Friday errands soon and stop by my parents.  But I can’t wait to read your comments when I get home.  Talk with you soon I hope.  :-)