If you rome around this weblog long enough you'll notice something strange afoot. You'll notice strange food concoctions like green smoothies and raw lasagna. This is because for one hellish year of my life I was a vegan. Not a freedom fry eating lunatic vegan like you usually see, but a mostly raw, no sugar, anxiety driven vegan.
It is important to note that during this vegan evolution I knew nothing about hormones or how the body worked. Like a lot of people I naturally thought that eating less meat and animal products would make me a healthier young man. As I embraced this way of eating I found myself constantly reinforcing my vegan ideals with terrible research by Dr. Neil Barnard as well as T. Colin Campbell author of The China Study (More info on The China Study below).
My diet consisted mostly of fresh produce and fruit. I consumed no sugar, stayed away from refined grains, and even for one reason or another embraced the low sodium mantra. I started my day off with a large green smoothie, packed with cherries, mango, and kale. Lunch would usually be guacamole with some beans I got from Trader Joe's. While dinner was an exotic blend of vegetables, stir fried or raw.
Over the months I noticed that my anxiety and hunger went through the roof. Irritability was a new trait of mine that was not endearing to any of my friends or family. It was almost like I couldn't wait to start an argument, I was always looking for something I disapproved of. If my anxiety wasn't bad enough my friends were consistently commenting on how sickly I looked. When it turned from work friends to family it started to really drag me down. It was during this time, while recording the record, that I pretty much had a total mental breakdown. The stress from recording and my low calorie vegan diet had jump kicked me in the face. I was a total basket case.
Luckily this story ends on a good note. Shortly after my hellish year, I flew to Michigan were I met a doctor who told me to "Rethink my food choices". I got home and diligently started researching what a correct human diet looked like. I started doing Paleo, transitioned to Keto then eventually fell into the loving arms of Zero Carb. The hardest part was apologizing to my friends and denouncing a lifestyle that I had embraced so militantly. I'm nowhere near the end of my journey and still have a lot to learn, but this experience has taught me much. I only hope that by sharing this others can avoid mistakes that I have made.
So what about the China Study itself?
Despite it's title, only a small portion of The China Study is actually devoted to discussing the giant epidemiological study of the same name; the rest of the book simply reads like an extended sales brochure for veganism.
Beginning in the early eighties, Campbell was part of a group of Chinese, British and US researchers that presided over the massive epidemiological study known as the China Project, or China Study. The New York Times dubbed it "the Grand Prix of epidemiology", and it gathered data on 367 variables across sixty-five counties and 6,500 adults. After the study data was compiled, the researchers had calculated "more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease variables."
According to Campbell, the China Study data showed that: "People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. . . . People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease."[p. 7]
In reality, the China Study showed nothing of the sort.
The China Study does not contain the actual data gathered from its namesake study. So when Campbell claims that the China Study found a consistent relationship between animal foods and various diseases, readers have no way of verifying this information for themselves.
Unless of course, they get up off their butts and go retrieve the actual China Study data for themselves. To do this, they will need to check their local libraries (university libraries are the best bet) for a book titled Diet, life-style, and mortality in China: A study of the characteristics of 65 Chinese counties[Chen J]. Once readers have this book in their possession, they will quickly discover that there is a galaxy-sized gap between the actual findings of the China Study and the claims made by Campbell in his popular book version.
-Anthony Coulpo (Entire article: http://tinyurl.com/ct2hwa)
Monday, June 1, 2009 at 1:54AM 
Since I'm still working on this weeks post, I wanted to share a link with you that's been hiding in my bookmarks. Written by the always controversial low carb advocate Anthony Colpo, the article focuses on the legitamcy of The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. While the article is full of good info, Colpo is unfortunately obsessed with attacking the author.
