A Dark Secret...

While Dr. Campbell was working at Virginia Tech, he began coordinating technical assistance for a nationwide project in the Philippines working with malnourished children.

It is the springboard for Dr. Campbell's life work exploring the undeniable relationship between diet and disease.  He shares the story much more eloquently than I could ever... here's an excerpt from The China Study explaining the dark secret he uncovered among the children of the Philippines:

"Part of the project [in the Philippines] became an investigation of the unusually high prevalence of liver cancer, usually an adult disease, in Filipino children.  It was thought that high consumption of aflatoxin, a mold toxin found in peanuts and corn, caused this problem.  Aflatoxin has been called one of the most potent carcinogens [cancer causer] ever discovered.

For ten years our primary goal in the Philippines was to improve childhood malnutrition among the poor, a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.  Eventually, we established about 110 nutrition "self-help" education centers around the country.

The aim of these efforts in the Philippines was simple: make sure that children were getting as much protein as possible.  It was widely thought that much of the childhood malnutrition in the world was caused by a lack of protein, especially from animal-based foods.  Universities and governments around the world were working to alleviate a perceived "protein gap" in the developing world.

In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret.  Children who ate the highest-protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer!  They were the children of the wealthiest families... [they] were from the best-fed families. The families with the most money ate what we thought were the healthiest diets, the diets most like our own meaty American diets.  They consumed more protein than anyone else in the country (high quality animal protein) and yet they were the ones getting liver cancer!

How could this be?

I then noticed a research report from India that had some very provocative, relevant findings.  Indian researchers had studied two groups of rats.  In one group, they administered the cancer-causing aflatoxin, then fed a diet that was composed of 20% protein, a level near what many of us consume in the West.  In the other group, they administered the same amount of aflatoxin, but then fed a diet that was only composed of 5% protein.  Incredibly, every single animal that consumed the 20% protein diet had evidence of liver cancer, and every single animal that consumed a 5% protein diet avoided liver cancer.  It was a 100 to 0 score, leaving no doubt that nutrition trumped chemical carcinogens, even very potent carcinogens, in controlling cancer.

This information countered everything I had been taught.  It was heretical to say that protein wasn't healthy, let alone say it promoted cancer...

So, faced with a difficult decision, I decided to start an in-depth laboratory program that would investigate the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the development of cancer. My colleagues and I were cautious in framing our hpotheses, rigorous in our methodology, and conservative in interpreting our findings... By carefully following the rules of good science, I was able to study a provocative topic without provoking knee-jerk responses that arise with radical ideas...

What we found was shocking.  Low-protein diets inhibited the initiation of cancer by aflatoxin, regardless of how much of this carcinogen was adminstered to these animals.  After cancer initiation was completed, low-protein diets also dramatically blocked subsequent cancer growth.  In fact, dietary protein prove to be so powerful in its effect that we could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed...

But that's not all.  We found that not all proteins had this effect.  What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer?  Casein, which makes up 87% of cow's milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process.  What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake?  The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy.  As this picture came into view, it began to challenge and then to shatter some of my most cherished assumptions."

What followed is the Break-through Study that has turned what we know about nutrition on its ear, giving undeniable evidence of the power of a plant-based diet.

It's time to start re-thinking the connection between diet and disease!