Duke-
Paul, I recommend you read the 2004-released book, The China Study, which has detailed science behind it, and pretty much shows that meat protein is more health harmful than vegetable protein. (Not to mention, that the dairy protein, casein, representing 80% of dairy's protein, is a primary cause of cancer development.) Studies from all around the world are referenced, as well as the author's own extensive research for 25+ years.
Happily, I'm well familiar with that book and can refute it in detail. I don't, unfortunately, have it with me at the moment, though, so my apologies if I get some page numbers or other trivia wrong, but I'm checking everything I can online, so here goes.
On page 66, he says "
nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development.” (His emphasis.)
This, however, is after testing the effects of three isolated proteins on cancer — casein from dairy, and protein from wheat and soy — and initially acknowledging that the casein results cannot be generalized to all protein.
How does he justify the generalization from casein to all animal protein, let alone from one animal protein to all animal nutrients? How do you, as a proponent of his work, justify either generalization? Since you consume whey protein, I assume you're aware of its documented
anti-cancer and other beneficial effects, so the asserted pro-cancer effect of casein cannot even be generalized to other
DAIRY proteins, let alone to all animal proteins and animal nutrients!
Furthermore, Campbell completely fails to acknowledge or discuss the varying effects different means of processing have on casein proteins and therefore on their physiological impact. This study alone,
Changes in protein nutritional quality in fresh and recombined ultra high temperature treated milk during storage, demonstrates that there are significant physiological differences worth looking into. High-temperature spray drying, which I know is commonly used to prepare casein, is documented to form carcinogens in some proteins, though I'm not sure offhand whether it's documented to do so with casein. But what kind of casein did Campbell look at? We don't know.
But wait, there's more.
Much of Campbell's work involved protein isolates and/or concentrates. Protein assimilation and metabolism, as you may know, requires vitamin A (actual vitamin A, not carotenes). Consumption of large amounts of protein in isolate and/or concentrate form depletes vitamin A without providing necessary accompanying dietary vitamin A, and real vitamin A, perhaps not coincidentally, has many anti-cancer effects.
One of the serious faults of the actual epidemiological China Study (which is only one subject of many in Campbell's book) is that nutrient intakes were determined from standard food composition tables, not measurements of the foods themselves. There's overwhelming evidence that farming methods and soil quality dramatically affect the nutritional content and quality of foods. Price demonstrated it. Albrecht demonstrated it. Voisin demonstrated it. There are recent comparisons between organic and conventional produce demonstrating that organic produce tends to be more nutritious. Etc. etc. etc.
Furthermore, the food recall questionnaire didn't distinguish at all between categories like muscle meats and organ meats, shellfish and fish, despite the radically different nutritional profiles of those different kinds of foods. In fact, organ meats — powerhouses of nutrition — weren't mentioned at all, and neither were other traditional foods like insects. And despite deliberately seeking out rural towns to examine, no account of seasonal variation was made; responses were collected only in autumn.
And most importantly, the actual data doesn't resemble the reporting of it.
Here's a table of actual correlations between different macronutrients and cancer taken from the original China Study paper courtesy of
Chris Masterjohn's review of the book, from which I'm shamelessly cribbing.
Associations of Selected Variables with Mortality for All Cancers in the China StudyTotal Protein +12%
Animal Protein +3%
Fish Protein +7%
Plant Protein +12%
Total Lipids -6%
Carbohydrates +23%
Total Calories +16%
Fat % Calories -17%
Fiber +21%
Fat (questionnaire) -29%
The only statistically significant correlation on the entire list is the protective (i.e.
anti-cancer) effect of total fat intake!
Whoops!
Unfortunately, this sort of distortion is all too common. Abstracts and conclusions of studies — and the reporting thereof in the press — all too often say one thing while the actual data in the actual studies say another thing entirely.
Anyway...
On page 89 of his book, Campbell states that "Every single animal protein-related blood biomarker is significantly associated with the amount of cancer in a family". In the endnotes, on page 376, he identifies the biomarkers as "plasma copper, urea nitrogen, estradiol, prolactin, testosterone, and, inversely, sex hormone binding globulin, each of which has been known to be associated with animal protein intake from previous studies", but he doesn't identify the studies, so we don't know why, where, when, and in whom those biomarkers were correlated with animal protein intake. Without that information, the association he makes between these biomarkers and the food intake patterns of the Chinese people he studied is completely meaningless, because different groups of people have different patterns of food intake and therefore different correlations between biomarkers and their food consumption!
Why is he using those biomarkers instead of the actual food consumption data he himself collected, some of which are displayed above, when his own actual data contradicts the conclusion he draws from spurious and unspecified biomarker correlations? I won't speculate, but a few possible answers present themselves pretty readily.
Campbell also cites Ornish's program as proof that a vegetarian diet can reverse heart disease, but Ornish himself has been forced to concede that he can't prove any correlation between his results and the dietary component of his program, which includes many more elements, particularly stress management.
Another whoops.
He indicts casein without distinguishing between A1 and A2 casein (here's one study to get you started,
Health Implications of Milk Containing beta-Casein with the A(2) Genetic Variant) let alone the various different related proteins lumped together under the umbrella term "casein" and without acknowledging the non-trivial body of evidence that suggests that dairy consumption might actually
prevent diabetes (
Low-fat dairy foods may help reduce risk of type 2 diabetes) and he makes no mention of the role gluten may play in diabetes and autoimmune diseases (here's just one study of many:
Diabetes preventive gluten-free diet decreases the number of caecal bacteria in non-obese diabetic mice).
On page 220, he makes the spectacularly misleading assertion that "Folic acid is a compound derived exclusively from plant-based foods such as green and leafy vegetables" when even the most cursory stroll through available nutritional data demonstrates that many animal foods are very rich in folate. Raw beef liver, for example, contains
290mcg per 100g, and raw duck liver has
738mcg per 100g. Those numbers compare quite favorably with the
281mcg per 100g for wheat germ, crude, and the
658mcg per 100g for Yardlong beans, mature seeds, raw, the most folate-dense legume I
could find.
Perhaps he's not aware that folic acid is the synthetic form of folate which is added to supplements and fortified foods and that neither the animal nor the vegetable kingdoms have anything remotely resembling a monopoly on actual folate. Or perhaps he's being disingenuous. I won't bother trying to guess.
I could go on, but I think I've made my point pretty effectively, and Chris Masterjohn's
review goes into some of the subjects I've covered in greater depth anyway.
I used to buy into the meat diet, too, having read The Metabolic Diet (I'm a protein type), and many similar diet books. BTW, the Okinawans are the longest lived people on earth, and eat very little meat, mostly fish. And as the China Study showed, worldwide, it's the heaviest meat eaters (and/or dairy eaters) who die of cancer and heart disease the most often. And red meat is the worst offender (perhaps because of the iron content) -- and iron is a serious cancer starter (I take IP-6 every day to eliminate excess iron from my body).
Do you mean Wolcott's
The Metabolic Typing Diet? Because that's a crap book. It makes a million and one completely unsubstantiated statements and mischaracterizes some of the foundational research (e.g. Price's) that the author refers to. Utter garbage, though I guess as fiction it's a good read.
Incidentally, if you speak to the nutritionist who helped Wolcott write his book, you'll find that the
real MTD recommendations for many people actually include a lot more fat. A friend of mine, who just like you and me registers as a protein type, spoke with her and was told he should be getting at least 60% of his calories from fat. He had very much the same experience with Barry Sears and the Zone diet. A few years ago, he'd been following Sears, and when he developed trouble sticking to it he spoke to Sears' office and was told (you guessed it) to eat a lot more fat.
Quite interesting.
But back to the topic at hand. (DOWN, Tangent Man, DOWN!) The Okinawan diet is also widely mischaracterized. In addition to lots of seafood, the Okinawans traditionally consumed lots of fatty pork. Here's an excerpt from an article on
traditional Asian diets.
And what do Okinawans eat? The main meat of the diet is pork, and not the lean cuts only. Okinawan cuisine, according to gerontologist Kazuhiko Taira, "is very healthy—and very, very greasy," in a 1996 article that appeared in Health Magazine.19And the whole pig is eaten—everything from "tails to nails." Local menus offer boiled pigs feet, entrail soup and shredded ears. Pork is cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, kelp and small amounts of sugar, then sliced and chopped up for stir fry dishes. Okinawans eat about 100 grams of meat per day—compared to 70 in Japan and just over 20 in China—and at least an equal amount of fish, for a total of about 200 grams per day, compared to 280 grams per person per day of meat and fish in America. Lard—not vegetable oil—is used in cooking.
...
19. Deborah Franklyn, "Take a Lesson from the People of Okinawa," Health, September 1996, pp 57-63
So perhaps you should rethink the conclusions you draw from the Okinawan diet, not to mention your faith in Campbell's grossly erroneous book.
-Paul
