T. Colin Campbell Lecture: McDougall DVD Review
The fifth and final McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD review is on T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study. I’m a huge fan of The China Study, which is why I put this lecture last, sort of the dessert for my week of watching lectures. The first lecture on this DVD is “The China Study,” and the second one is “Hidden Hazards of Animal Protein.”
In “The China Study,” Campbell spends half of his hour-long lecture showing the results of his epidemiological work done in China over a more than 30-year period. In a nutshell, his team found that protein was linked to cancer promotion. It is important to point out that Campbell is very clear to use the word promotion, as there are three stages of cancer: initiation, promotion, and progression. Animal protein doesn’t necessarily cause cancers, although it can, but it is amazing fuel to grow a cancer.
In animal experiments whereby all of the subjects were given cancer, they found that diets consisting of five percent protein did not promote cancer growth, whereas 20 percent protein diets would promote growth. In fact, if they switched their diets back from 20 percent to five percent, it actually turned off the cancer promotion.
Further testing found the threshold to be at around 10 percent as to when the cancer promotion actually began. On the same diet over time, all of the animal subjects on the five percent protein survived 100 weeks, the normal lifecycle for a rat, whereas all of the subjects on the 20 percent protein were dead at 100 weeks.
The protein used in all of these experiments was casein, the main protein found in cow’s milk. They found that switching to soy or wheat protein didn’t promote cancer even at 20 percent.
These findings were found to hold up in human populations, as well, as the research team had unprecedented access to the population of China to perform these tests. Rather than experimentation, they based their research on areas where people couldn’t afford animal protein compared to areas where they could. Where the population was able to afford to increase their intake of animal protein, cancer in that region climbed as well.
In the second part of his lecture, Campbell is quick to point out that although his research might appear otherwise, he actually thinks reductionism is a “tragic consequence of Western medicine.” He specifically cited the recent studies attempting to link low-fat diets to cancer promotion, and that there is no way to isolate the fat from everything else a person eats.
Studying their research data, Campbell found that the people who were on the low-fat diets actually increased their animal protein consumption rather than eat more fruits and vegetables, specifically eating lower-fat meat and dairy products. If you factor that into the slide showing no correlations, and switch the criteria to people who consumed animal products (rather than fat or protein), it completely lines up to show an increase in animal product consumption lining up with increased cancer promotion. If you plot out the vegetable protein consumption, no correlation appears.
Campbell ends this lecture by noting how vegetarian diets aren’t new concepts and that books were written on the subject in Ancient Greek times, and by Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Isaac Newton, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and others. It is estimated in a book on the history of vegetarianism that there were over a thousand books by the 1700s on vegetarianism and how it relates to issues of health, which prompts Campbell to ask how that information got lost for so long.
He finishes by saying the information isn’t new, but now we are finally getting the scientific data to support claims that have been around for centuries.
In “Hidden Hazards of Animal Protein,” Campbell starts by giving a history of protein. Discovered in the 1850s, it is immediately heralded as the chief component of life. But by 1908, a researcher already made the connection between increased protein intake, which was primarily synonymous with meat at the time, and cancer.
In 1905, a Yale researcher did tests with the school’s ROTC program and put a group on a plant-based diet, and they reached the same fitness level as people who consumed animal protein and also had a high fitness level. Some people questioned his work as not factoring in the differing fitness levels, so he repeated the test on people who already had a high fitness level and they increased their level even further. But by 1922, this researcher was disparaged within his field and was never heard from.
Revisiting some more research he did before the China Study, he determined that excess dietary protein (especially animal) is more responsible for cancer than chemical carcinogens.
Campbell also goes into the problems with reductivism and public policy. He says we are overfixated on daily recommendations of specific nutrients, when all of this is regulated by our bodies. There is no need for us to micromanage all of the specific components of the food we eat to make sure we are getting everything our body needs if we are eating a healthy plant-based diet.
The only beneficiaries of reductivism are the food and pharmaceutical industries, both of which are adept at affecting public policy to support the nutritional breakdown of their products, such as 2002 government guidelines that recommend, amazingly enough for the prevention of chronic conditions, a diet that includes between 10 and 35 percent protein.
Campbell said the important thing is to think of nutrition as a symphony, whereas one person sitting at a piano and hitting one note over and over… that’s reductive science.
This lecture is part of the McDougall Advanced Study Series DVD set. The DVDs cost $20 each, but you can get all five new DVDs for $60 total, including additional lectures from Howard Lyman, John Abramson MD, Michael Greger MD, and Neal Barnard MD. You can order them from McDougall’s website.
