The China Study

Heart disease wasn’t the inevitable result of old age, and even when a person had advanced disease, a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet could significantly prolong his or her life.

The unfortunate association of meat with physical ability, general manliness, sexual identity and economic wealth all cloud how the status quo scientists viewed food, regardless of the health evidence.

These doctors found that the patients who ate the lowfat, low-cholesterol diet died at a rate four times lower than patients who didn’t follow the diet. 23

he instructed fifty heart attack survivors to maintain their normal diet and fifty different heart attack survivors to consume an experimental diet.
In the experimental diet group he reduced the consumption of fat and cholesterol. One of his published sample menus allowed the patient to have only a small amount of meat two times a day: two ounces of “cold roast lamb, lean, with mint jelly” for lunch, and another two ounces of “lean meats” for dinner. 22 Even if you loved cold roast lamb with mint jelly, you weren’t allowed to eat much of it. In fact, the list of prohibited foods in the experimental diet was fairly long and included cream soups, pork, fat meats, animal fats, whole milk, cream, butter, egg yolks and breads and desserts made with butter, whole eggs and whole milk. 22
Did this progressive diet accomplish anything? After eight years, only twelve of fifty people eating their normal American diet were alive (24%). In the diet group, twenty-eight people were still alive (56%), almost two and one-half times the amount of survivors in the control group. After twelve years, every single patient in the control group was dead. In the diet group, however, nineteen people were still alive, a survival rate of 38%. 22 While it was unfortunate that so many people in the dietary group still died, it was clear that they were staving off their disease by eating moderately less animal foods and moderately more plant foods (see Chart 5.2)

American men died from heart disease at a rate almost seventeen times higher than their Chinese counterparts.

Researchers noted that men with cholesterol levels “over 244 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter) have more than three times the incidence of CHD (coronary heart disease) as do those with cholesterol levels less than 210 mg/dL.”

Framingham Heart Study developed the concept of risk factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, physical activity, cigarette smoking and obesity.

Malfunction of the heart and/or circulation system will kill 40% of Americans

I stopped eating meat fifteen years ago, and I stopped eating almost all animal-based foods, including dairy, within the past six to eight years, except on very rare occasions. My cholesterol has dropped, even as I’ve aged; I am more physically fit now than when I was twenty-five; and I am forty-five pounds lighter now than I was when I was thirty years old. I am now at an ideal weight for my height.

our idea of “normal” values (or ranges) only applies to Western subjects consuming the Western diet. It so happens, for example, that our “normal” cholesterol levels present a significant risk for heart disease. Sadly, it’s also “normal” to have heart disease in America.