The China Study
I recently became a vegan, not for ideological reasons, just because I heard the switch can make you lose a bit of weight. Plus, to be honest, I thought it would make me seem trendier. A few people suggested that I might become malnourished or miss out on some key vitamins or minerals, so I did a bit of googling and found out I was fine. But in my searching I came across a book called The China Study by T Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University (argument from authority anyone?).
It discusses the health benefits of eating a diet with no animal products or processed food, which as well as a healthy weight range also included lower rates of certain cancers and autoimmune diseases. At first I was a bit concerned that this was some alarmist craziness, especially when the author appeared on Bill Maher's show, but the book makes reference to both correlative and causative studies from which these conclusions were made.
From listening to Skeptoid it seems Brian doesn't believe that diet (presuming you stick within the RDA and calorie limits) is much of a factor in health so I'd be interested to see an episode on this, or just generally on 'plant based, whole foods diets' as the book calls them.
If you want to know the basic claims and have an hour or so to kill, there's a new documentary out called 'Forks over Knives' which is based on this book. It doesn't really explain any of the evidence behind the claims though so it kind of comes off as just another alarmist "everything you know is wrong and you're going to die" film.
I know Brian is paid off by the big pharmaceuticals companies so he might want to keep this quiet, but then again he is also paid off by the reptile aliens from episode #46, and they'd want to keep us healthy and servile, so who knows?
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