T. Colin Campbell
T. Colin Campbell is a nutritionist at Cornell University, director of the China Project, and author of The China Project - a study of 6,500 rural Chinese that found a close correlation between meat consumption and the mortality rates for cancer and other 'Western'diseases. He has been a researcher, lecturer, and policy advisor in the field of diet and cancer for nearly 50 years.
In 2005, Campbell published, with his son Thomas, a trade book, titled "The China Study. Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health". To avoid confusion, the actual study referred to above is briefly called "The China Project", while the book is called "The China Study".
The book, "The China Study...." is described by the publisher, BenBella Books, Inc., as, "This exhaustive presentation of the findings from the China Study conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Referred to as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" by The New York Times, this study examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in 65 counties, representing 2,500 counties across rural China and Taiwan. While revealing that proper nutrition can have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as obesity, this text calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as certain high protein, high fat diets that enjoy widespread popularity in the West. The impact of the politics of nutrition and the efforts of special interest groups on the creation and dissemination of public information on nutrition are also discussed. [1]"
Campbell writes on the China Project, "Previous studies relating nutrition to degenerative disease have mostly been limited to consideration of single factors and single diseases. Yet even when large surveys have been taken, they have generally produced mixed results. This is because these studies have largely been conducted in the developed world, where everybody eats more or less the same thing.
The China Project offers a rare opportunity to study disease in a precise manner because of the unique conditions that exist in rural China. Approximately 90% of the people in rural China live their entire lives in the vicinity of their birth. Because of deeply held local traditions and the absence of viable food distribution, people consume diets composed primarily of locally produced foods. In addition, there are dramatic differences in the prevalence of disease from region to region. Various cardiovascular disease rates vary by a factor of about 20-fold from one place to another, while certain cancer rates may vary by several hundredfold.
These factors make rural China a "living laboratory" for the study of the complex relationship between nutrition and other lifestyle factors and degenerative diseases. As a result, the China Project is a major research study that examines diseases as they really are, multiple outcomes of many interrelated factors.[2]"
Publications
- The China Study : The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, 2005
- Muscling Out the Meat Myth (VSDC)
- Diet Study Indicts Fat and Meat - an early report on the China Study
- At the World Vegetarian Congress, Johnstown, USA 1996 - with other writers and researchers
- Second International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition, Washington DC in July 1992