TheChinaStudy

I recently read The China Study: Revised and Expanded Edition by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell (2016). 

The original edition of this book was published in 2006. The book is the culminating work of 60 years worth of research by Dr. T.C. Campbell; Dr. T.M. Campbell is his son, who is a physician.

Interestingly, the research conducted and reported by the authors led TCC down a path he never expected.  He was raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, never expecting that his life work of research around nutrition and health would lead him to the conclusions he eventually deduced.

Some of my biggest takeaways:

Ø  A Whole Food, Plant-Based (WFPB) diet is that which seems to optimize the health prospects for humans.

Ø  The more evidence I find/hear/read, the more convinced I am that my health and wellbeing (particularly in the last 1/3 of my life) will be the direct result of the nutritional choices I make.

Ø  Our health and wellbeing is not a primary concern of government.

Ø  Our health and wellbeing is not a primary concern of academia.

Ø  Our health and wellbeing is not a primary concern of corporate entities (in this case, those of healthcare, pharma, agriculture, food distributors,…).

Ø  To think of health in disaggregated forms such as only physical or mental or emotional or spiritual is similar to thinking of an automobile as being only nuts-n-bolts or only drive systems or only body parts or only electronics.  The integrated WHOLE makes it what it is.

Don’t read this book if you’re already decided on topics of health optimization, the integrity of academia, the trustworthiness of government and industry.

Do read this book if you’re willing to have some assumptions challenged, to consider some pretty expansive and compelling research evidence about health and nutrition, to entertain the prospect that if we are to take charge of our own health and wellbeing then WE are the ones that will need to do so (can’t be outsourced).

This book is a superb work, worth every minute of time you spend with it.