Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (13 page)

O
ne day we hear that a high-fat diet causes cancer, and the next day a study shows that those on low-fat diets do not have lower cancer rates. The public is so confused and fed up that they just eat anything, and the number of overweight people continues to grow.

Fortunately, evidence from a massive series of scientific investigations has shed some light on the confusion. The China-Cornell-Oxford Project (also known as the China Project) is the most
comprehensive study on the connection between diet and disease in medical history. The
New York Times
called this investigation the “Grand Prix of all epidemiological studies” and “the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.”
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Spearheaded by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., of Cornell University, this study has made discoveries that have turned the nutritional community upside down. To the surprise of many, the China Project has revealed many so-called nutritional facts as demonstrably false. For example, the answer to all the nutrition quiz questions above is false.

China was an ideal testing ground for this comprehensive project because the people in one area of China ate a certain diet and the people just a few hundred miles away may have eaten a completely different diet. Unlike in the West, where we all eat very similarly, rural China was a “living laboratory” for studying the complex relationship between diet and disease.
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The China Project was valid because it studied populations with a
full range of dietary possibilities,
from a completely plant-food diet to diets that included a significant amount of animal foods. Adding small quantities of a variable is how scientists can best detect the risk or value of a dietary practice. It’s the same principle as comparing nonsmokers with those who smoke half a pack a day to best observe the dangers of smoking. Comparing a fifty-cigarette-per-day habit with a sixty-cigarette-per-day habit may not reveal much more additional damage from those last ten cigarettes.

In China, people lived their entire lives in the towns they were born in and rarely migrated, so the dietary effects that researchers looked at were present for the subjects’ entire lives. Furthermore, as a result of significant regional differences in the way people ate, there were dramatic differences in the prevalence of disease from region to region. Cardiovascular disease rates varied twentyfold from one place to another, and certain cancer rates varied by several hundredfold. In America, there is little difference in the way we eat; therefore, we do not see a hundredfold difference in cancer rates between one town and another.

Fascinating findings were made in this study. The data showed huge differences in disease rates based on the amount of plant foods eaten and the availability of animal products. Researchers found that as the amount of animal foods increased in the diet, even in relatively small increments, so did the emergence of the cancers that are common in the West. Most cancers occurred in direct proportion to the quantity of animal foods consumed.

In other words, as animal-food consumption approached zero, cancer rates fell. Areas of the country with an extremely low consumption of animal foods were virtually free of heart attacks and cancer. An analysis of the mortality data from 65 counties and 130 villages showed a significant association with animal protein intake (even at relatively low levels) and heart attacks, with a strong protective effect from the consumption of green vegetables.
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All animal products are low (or completely lacking) in the nutrients that protect us against cancer and heart attacks—fiber, antioxidants, phytochemicals, folate, vitamin E, and plant proteins. They are rich in substances that scientific investigations have shown to be associated with cancer and heart disease incidence: saturated fat, cholesterol, and arachidonic acid.
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Diets rich in animal protein are also associated with high blood levels of the hormone IGF-1, which is a known risk factor for several types of cancer.
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The China Project showed a strong correlation between cancer and the amount of animal protein, not just animal fat, consumed.
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Consumption of lean meats and poultry still showed a strong correlation with higher cancer incidence. These findings indicate that even low-fat animal foods such as skinless white-meat chicken are implicated in certain cancers.

There was also a relationship between animal protein and heart disease. For example, plasma apolipoprotein B is positively associated with animal-protein intake and inversely associated
(lowered) with vegetable-protein intake (e.g., legumes and greens). Apolipoprotein B levels correlate strongly with coronary heart disease.
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Unknown to many is that animal protein has a significant effect on raising cholesterol levels as well, while plant protein lowers it.
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Scientific studies provide evidence that animal protein’s effect on blood cholesterol may be significant. This is one of the reasons those switching to a low-fat diet do not experience the cholesterol lowering they expect unless they also remove the low-fat animal products as well. Surprising to most people is that yes, even low-fat dairy and skinless white-meat chicken raise cholesterol. I see this regularly in my practice. Many individuals do not see the dramatic drop in cholesterol levels unless they go all the way by cutting all animal protein from their diet.

Red meat is not the only problem. The consumption of chicken and fish is also linked to colon cancer. A large study examined the eating habits of 32,000 adults for six years and then watched the incidence of cancer for these subjects over the next six years. Those who avoided red meat but ate white meat regularly had a more than 300 percent increase over those who ate no white meat in colon cancer incidence.
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The same study showed that eating beans, peas, or lentils at least twice a week was associated with a 50 percent lower risk than never eating these foods.

Chicken has about the same amount of cholesterol as beef, and the production of those potent cancer-causing compounds called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) is even more concentrated in grilled chicken than in beef.
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Another study from New Zealand that investigated heterocyclic amines in meat, fish, and chicken found the greatest contributor of HCAs to cancer risk was chicken.
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Likewise, studies indicate that chicken is almost as
dangerous as red meat for the heart. Regarding cholesterol, there is no advantage to eating lean white instead of lean red meat.
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The best bet for overall health is to significantly limit or eliminate all types of meat—red and white. Dr. Campbell further explains his view that animal protein (in addition to animal fats) is implicated in disease causation:

I really believe that dietary protein—both the kind and the amount—is more significant, as far as cholesterol levels are concerned, than is saturated fat. Certainly it is more significant than dietary cholesterol. We do know that animal protein has a quick and major impact on enzymes involved in the metabolism of cholesterol. Whether it is the immune system, various enzyme systems, the uptake of carcinogens into the cells, or hormonal activities, animal protein generally only causes mischief.
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It may be impossible to extricate which component of animal food causes the most mischief. However, it is clear that while Americans struggle in vain to even marginally reduce the amount of fat in their diet, they still consume high levels of animal products and very little unrefined produce.

Remember, those countries and areas of China with extremely low rates of Western diseases did not achieve them merely because their diets were low in fat. It was because their diets were rich in unrefined plant products—they were not eating fat-free cheesecake and potato chips.

Never forget that coronary artery disease and its end result—heart attacks, the number one killer of all American men and women—are almost 100 percent avoidable. Poring over nation-by-nation mortality data collected by the World Health Organization,
I found that most of the poorer countries, which invariably consume small amounts of animal products, have less than 5 percent of the adult population dying of heart attacks.
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The China Project confirmed that there were virtually no heart attacks in populations that consume a lifelong near-vegetarian diet and almost no heart attacks in populations consuming a diet that is rich in natural plant foods and receives less than 10 percent of its calories from animal foods.

My observation of the worldwide data is supported by studies of American vegetarians and nonvegetarians.
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These studies show that the major risk factors associated with heart disease—smoking, physical inactivity, eating processed food, and animal-product consumption—are avoidable. Every heart attack death is even more of a tragedy because it likely could have been prevented.

The China Project data also helps explain findings from the Nurses’ Health Study in Boston, which showed that American women who reduced their fat intake surprisingly did not have a decreased risk of breast cancer.
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First of all, those on the lower-fat diet consumed 29 percent of their calories from fat. This is still a high-fat diet (by my standards) and even higher than the group with the highest fat intake in China. It’s like cutting back on smoking from three packs a day to two and expecting to get a significant decrease in lung cancer risk. By the way, the lowest-fat group in China, whose diet was almost entirely composed of plants, was getting 6 percent of their calories from fat, and the high-fat group in China consumed about 24 percent of their calories from fat.

Second, these women who reported eating less fat in the Nurses’ Health Study actually consumed just as much as or more calories from animal protein than those on the higher-fat diet, and the amount of unrefined plant produce did not increase. The
low-fat group in China was not eating anywhere near the quantity of processed foods that we do in America. Their cancer rates were so low not solely because the diet was low in fat and animal protein but also because, unlike Americans, they actually ate lots of vegetables.

Generally speaking, the reason the evidence from the China Project is so compelling is that results from population studies in the West are not very accurate. They generally study adults who have made some moderate dietary change later in life, and all subjects are past the age when dietary influence has the most effect. Certain cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer, are strongly influenced by how we eat earlier in life, especially right before and after puberty.

After studying multiple diseases, not just one type of cancer, the researchers involved in the China Project concluded: “There appears to be no threshold of plant-food enrichment or minimization of animal product intake beyond which further disease prevention does not occur. These findings suggest that even moderate intakes of foods of animal origin are associated with significant increases in plasma cholesterol concentration, which are associated, in turn, with significant increases in chronic degenerative disease mortality rates.”
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In other words, populations with very low cholesterol levels have not only low heart disease rates but low cancer rates as well.

The insight provided by the research is simple: As long as Americans continue to practice nutritional indifference, they will suffer the consequences. Don’t expect any significant protection from marginal changes.