In case you’re wondering, The China Study is a book by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II. I have not read it, but from speaking to others about it and searching the related website it seems to be making the point that people who eat animals and animal products such as milk, cheese and eggs get cancer, diabetes, heart disease, are fat, and die. Whereas people who live in rural China and eat vegan diets (no animal products whatsoever) are healthy for life and live past a hundred.
It’s something like that anyway.
Again I have not read the book but I personally find the concept puzzling on two fronts: one is that I always thought that rural Chinese eat a heavily fish and rice based diet, and fish are animals, ergo rural Chinese folks are not vegan. And two, since humans are omnivores the idea of animal protein being deadly to us is kind of like someone saying that bamboo is deadly to a Panda Bear.
At any rate that isn’t my point, as I said I haven’t read the book so I cannot truly judge it, but it features heavily in today’s guest blog post so I wanted to provide a bit of info. Research it for yourselves here, its authors are PhD’s and make their case a lot better than I just did:
On to the guest blog!
********************
I already told you about my coworker who read The China Study. He pretty much became a vegan overnight. Again I say, good for him! I know veganism (a diet of no animal products what-so-ever) isn’t for me but I happily applaud people who have vegan diets.
He brought in a vegan dish today to share with the office. The man is an excellent cook, so imagine my surprise when the dish he brought in was barely edible. Seriously, this is the kind of dish that gives vegan food a very bad name.
I present to you, Chocolate Rice Pudding. First of all, it’s not pretty at all. A single serving in a cup with a sprig of mint would be far more appetizing. But as this was a dish brought to the office, I’ll let the look slide. Taste wise, it was amazingly flavorless. There was very little chocolate flavor, but there was a flavor of something citrusy like orange. It also left a sort of film in my mouth that was only fixed with a cup of hot tea.
After tasting this travesty to rice pudding, I’m determined to make my own vegan version. My first thought was of rice baked with coconut milk, some sort of sweetener and vanilla, then topped with mango. A quick Google search returned dozens of vegan coconut rice pudding recipes – I even have everything I need already in my pantry.
Look for my results later this week.
-Joanna
 |
| I love that Jo took a sneak attack photo of this stuff so we could see the horror for ourselves. Unfortunately, it really looks like something my cat might barf up. |
I'm thinking that the folks in rural China probably live longer and healthier because they live in rural, not industrialized (read polluted), China, ergo no polluted water, air or plant life = longer, healthier life. *shrugs* I, too, am a happy supporter, but will never be a partaker, of the vegan diet. A life without cheese and pork is simply a life not worth living. There, I said it. And that pudding...I'm a little scared now.
ReplyDeleteThat pudding looks even worse than refried beans or guacamole (both ugly foods I like).
ReplyDelete"The China Study" looks like a classic case of correlation does not equal causation. As Michele pointed out, there can be other factors. There have been lots of studies on other population groups who appear to live extremely long lives, many of them are not vegan and eat lots of protein (incl. people from Japan and parts of eastern Russia), and there doesn't seem to be anything they all have in common. One frequent thing is caloric restriction; except for the Japanese, they mostly barely get enough calories to stay alive and have slowed metabolisms as a result. In other words, they pretty literally die later because they live slower.