That is nice of you to post, Evan.
I'm wondering if anyone here thinks being vegan or vegetarian affects the quality of people's skin? A lot of people actually do comment on my skin and wonder if it is my diet.
Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
43 posts • Page 2 of 3 • 1, 2, 3
by AlisonCole on Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:25 am
I think that staying out of the sun has a lot to do with preserving skin quality.
Here is an excerpt from an article by Bruce Freidrich about how vegetarian diets help skin health:
The second major advantage vegetarians enjoy is increased
skin health. In addition to consuming larger quantities
of nuts (which contain healthful oils), vegetarians tend
to consume more fruit and vegetables, which are rich in
essential vitamins, including A and E, which are linked
to good skin health.
Fruits and vegetables also contain high amounts of fiber,
which helps flush toxins out of the body, further
contributing to better skin health.
The whole article can be found here: http://brucefriedrich.org/Three_Health_Advantages.html
Here is an excerpt from an article by Bruce Freidrich about how vegetarian diets help skin health:
The second major advantage vegetarians enjoy is increased
skin health. In addition to consuming larger quantities
of nuts (which contain healthful oils), vegetarians tend
to consume more fruit and vegetables, which are rich in
essential vitamins, including A and E, which are linked
to good skin health.
Fruits and vegetables also contain high amounts of fiber,
which helps flush toxins out of the body, further
contributing to better skin health.
The whole article can be found here: http://brucefriedrich.org/Three_Health_Advantages.html
- AlisonCole
- Posts: 3067
- Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:42 pm
- Location: Vancouver
by dsteele on Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:52 pm
There is an amazingly good editorial in the Sept. issue of the world's pre-eminent public health journal. For research and education purposes, here it is:
The American Journal of Public Health September 2007
Vol. 97, Issue 9
Editorial
The Chickens Come Home to Roost.
By: David Benatar
As the number of human deaths from avian influenza grows and as the disease spreads geographically, fears of a 21st century influenza epidemic or pandemic mount. Even if the disease does not reach epidemic proportions imminently, the fears are nonetheless well-founded. Inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that an influenza epidemic will arise, as such epidemics have arisen many times before, including 3 times during the 20th century. The relevant questions, therefore, are when the next one will emerge and how bad it will be.[ 1]
Avian influenza is just one of dozens of zoonotic diseases that have caused and will cause considerable human fear, suffering, and death. (Indeed, some have suggested that "[a]ll human viral infections were initially zoonotic in origin,"[ 2](p6) although the precise animal source and route of transmission to humans is often a matter of some dispute.) I cannot mention all of these diseases; thus, only some well-known examples are provided, along with the probable source. There is at least some evidence that, similar to avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome arose in the live-animal (i.e., "wet") markets of China.[ 3] Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease probably arose from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).[ 4][ 5] And the source of HIV, which causes AIDS, is widely thought to be the simian immunodeficiency virus that is found in nonhuman primates.[ 6][ 7]
Although some zoonoses are probably unavoidable, much human suffering resulting from zoonotic diseases could probably have been avoided had humans treated animals better. Consider, for example, the wet markets from which an influenza or severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic may be launched. In these markets, live animals of diverse kinds are kept in large numbers and in cruelly close quarters ready for sale and fresh slaughter. The concentration of animals, their overlapping sojourns in the markets (allowing disease to spread through vast numbers of animals), and their interactions with humans (facilitating human infection) make these markets ripe for zoonoses.[ 8] Once an epidemic starts among animals, it can spread to animals reared in less cruel conditions.
If humans did not eat wet market animals, there would be fewer of them (because fewer would be bred), the animals would not suffer from being housed in close quarters, and they would not be slaughtered. Consequently, the risk of zoonoses would be greatly diminished. In the case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, humans would not have become infected had some humans not killed or eaten cows infected with BSE. Moreover, BSE would not spread among cattle if humans did not process offal, including neural matter from BSE-infected cattle, to produce feed for other cattle, a practice prompted by the volume of cattle humans eat. If the plausible hypothesis that HIV resulted from simian immunodeficiency virus is indeed true, then the most likely causal route of transmission was through infected simian blood during the butchering of these animals. The butchering itself was most likely for the purposes of providing nonhuman primate meat ("bushmeat") for human consumption, a practice that continues today.
It is unlikely, of course, that those who make use of animals in the above ways will recognize their treatment of animals as maltreatment. However, there is good reason for characterizing it as such. There is now an ample body of philosophical literature that compellingly demonstrates that the ways in which most humans treat animals is wrong.[ 9-12] Almost all humans can now not only survive but also thrive without consuming animal flesh or using animal skins and furs. Thus those who persist in these practices treat the most important animal interests - interests in continued life and the avoidance of suffering - as less important than very trivial human interests, including carnivorous gastronomic experiences.[ 13] Even those who deny that there is anything wrong with treating animals in this way should now recognize that thwarting important animal interests sometimes causes considerable harm to humans, even if some minor human interests are satisfied along the way.
It is curious, therefore, that changing the way humans treat animals - most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten - is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and from killing them for food. Yet humanity does not consider this option. Insofar as the focus is not on cures for the resultant diseases, attention is only given to lesser preventive measures. Some of these, such as slaughtering animals before they are brought to markets, may bring modest improvements to the treatment of animals. However, other preventive measures, such as developing a vaccine, do not require humans to improve their treatment of animals at all.
Indeed, the curative and many of the preventive measures on which humans focus are ones that often involve further suffering and death for animals. For example, because humans have contracted diseases from maltreating animals, others then experiment on animals in a bid to find either a vaccine or a cure for the diseases that result from the maltreatment. Although these medical interventions are being developed, millions of animals are culled, often painfully, in the hope of preventing imminent disease or epidemic in humans. Even those who think that experimenting on animals for human medical benefit is not wrong should be at least somewhat troubled by such experimentation when the ailment it seeks to fix could have been prevented. They should be even more troubled when the relevant prevention would have been to take animal interests more seriously. In response, it may be said that even if current diseases could have been prevented, they were not, and thus scientists must do what they can now to minimize human suffering and death. Whether or not one agrees with this argument, it cannot justify failing to take the preventive measures now that would obviate the need for employing them repeatedly in the future. Failure to think ahead cannot repeatedly be excused.
Humanity's continued consumption of animals is not only morally problematic but also highly imprudent. Preventive action that focuses exclusively on the proximate causes of disease and plague is more risky than long-term preventive action that attends to equally crucial upstream causal factors. To rely on neutralizing a proximate cause leaves little or no room for error. The longer view, by contrast, enables one to prevent a threat before it becomes imminent. Thus, there are many more opportunities for prevention.
Humans have suffered a great deal as a result of the mistreatment of animals, but that does not make the human suffering a punishment for the mistreatment; it is merely a consequence. Speaking of a causal connection does not imply an intentional agent administering the consequent as retribution for the antecedent. In any event, those humans who suffer are not just the ones responsible for animal mistreatment. Innocents are often adversely affected. When the (infected) chickens come home to roost, it may be another person, possibly from the next generation, who suffers or dies from avian influenza. Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet.
To switch avian images, it is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species.
References
1. Osterholm MT. Preparing for the next pandemic. N Engl J Med. 2005; 352:1839-1842.
2. Weber J. Alcorn K. Origins of HIV and the AIDS epidemic. MedGenMed. 2000;2(4): 1-6.
3. Guan Y, Zheng BJ. He YQ, et al. Isolation and characterization of viruses related to the SARS coronavirus from animals in Southern China. Science. 2003;302:276-278.
4. Will RG, Ironside JW, Zeidler M, el al. A new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the UK. Lancet. 1996;347: 921-925.
5. Scott MR, Will RG, Ironside J, et al. Compelling transgenic evidence for transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy prions to humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1999;96: 15137-15142.
6. Gao F, Bailes E, Robertson DL, et al. Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes. Nature 1999;397:436-441.
7. Sharp P, Bailes E, Chaudhuri RP, Rodenburg CM, Santiago MO, Hahn BH. The origins of acquired immune deficiency syndrome viruses: where and when? Philos Trans R Soc Land B Biol Sci. 2001;356:067-676.
8. Webster RG. Wet markets - a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza? Lancet. 2004;365:234-236.
9. Singer P. Animal Liberation. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Random House Trade; 1990.
10. Reagan T. The Case for Animal Right. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1983.
11. DeGrazia D. Taking Animals Seriously. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press; 1996.
12. Rowlands M. Animals Like Us London, England: Verso; 2002.
13. Benatar D. Duty and the beast; animal experimentation and neglected interests. QJM. 2000;93:831-835.
The American Journal of Public Health September 2007
Vol. 97, Issue 9
Editorial
The Chickens Come Home to Roost.
By: David Benatar
As the number of human deaths from avian influenza grows and as the disease spreads geographically, fears of a 21st century influenza epidemic or pandemic mount. Even if the disease does not reach epidemic proportions imminently, the fears are nonetheless well-founded. Inductive reasoning leads to the conclusion that an influenza epidemic will arise, as such epidemics have arisen many times before, including 3 times during the 20th century. The relevant questions, therefore, are when the next one will emerge and how bad it will be.[ 1]
Avian influenza is just one of dozens of zoonotic diseases that have caused and will cause considerable human fear, suffering, and death. (Indeed, some have suggested that "[a]ll human viral infections were initially zoonotic in origin,"[ 2](p6) although the precise animal source and route of transmission to humans is often a matter of some dispute.) I cannot mention all of these diseases; thus, only some well-known examples are provided, along with the probable source. There is at least some evidence that, similar to avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome arose in the live-animal (i.e., "wet") markets of China.[ 3] Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease probably arose from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).[ 4][ 5] And the source of HIV, which causes AIDS, is widely thought to be the simian immunodeficiency virus that is found in nonhuman primates.[ 6][ 7]
Although some zoonoses are probably unavoidable, much human suffering resulting from zoonotic diseases could probably have been avoided had humans treated animals better. Consider, for example, the wet markets from which an influenza or severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic may be launched. In these markets, live animals of diverse kinds are kept in large numbers and in cruelly close quarters ready for sale and fresh slaughter. The concentration of animals, their overlapping sojourns in the markets (allowing disease to spread through vast numbers of animals), and their interactions with humans (facilitating human infection) make these markets ripe for zoonoses.[ 8] Once an epidemic starts among animals, it can spread to animals reared in less cruel conditions.
If humans did not eat wet market animals, there would be fewer of them (because fewer would be bred), the animals would not suffer from being housed in close quarters, and they would not be slaughtered. Consequently, the risk of zoonoses would be greatly diminished. In the case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, humans would not have become infected had some humans not killed or eaten cows infected with BSE. Moreover, BSE would not spread among cattle if humans did not process offal, including neural matter from BSE-infected cattle, to produce feed for other cattle, a practice prompted by the volume of cattle humans eat. If the plausible hypothesis that HIV resulted from simian immunodeficiency virus is indeed true, then the most likely causal route of transmission was through infected simian blood during the butchering of these animals. The butchering itself was most likely for the purposes of providing nonhuman primate meat ("bushmeat") for human consumption, a practice that continues today.
It is unlikely, of course, that those who make use of animals in the above ways will recognize their treatment of animals as maltreatment. However, there is good reason for characterizing it as such. There is now an ample body of philosophical literature that compellingly demonstrates that the ways in which most humans treat animals is wrong.[ 9-12] Almost all humans can now not only survive but also thrive without consuming animal flesh or using animal skins and furs. Thus those who persist in these practices treat the most important animal interests - interests in continued life and the avoidance of suffering - as less important than very trivial human interests, including carnivorous gastronomic experiences.[ 13] Even those who deny that there is anything wrong with treating animals in this way should now recognize that thwarting important animal interests sometimes causes considerable harm to humans, even if some minor human interests are satisfied along the way.
It is curious, therefore, that changing the way humans treat animals - most basically, ceasing to eat them or, at the very least, radically limiting the quantity of them that are eaten - is largely off the radar as a significant preventive measure. Such a change, if sufficiently adopted or imposed, could still reduce the chances of the much-feared influenza epidemic. It would be even more likely to prevent unknown future diseases that, in the absence of this change, may result from farming animals intensively and from killing them for food. Yet humanity does not consider this option. Insofar as the focus is not on cures for the resultant diseases, attention is only given to lesser preventive measures. Some of these, such as slaughtering animals before they are brought to markets, may bring modest improvements to the treatment of animals. However, other preventive measures, such as developing a vaccine, do not require humans to improve their treatment of animals at all.
Indeed, the curative and many of the preventive measures on which humans focus are ones that often involve further suffering and death for animals. For example, because humans have contracted diseases from maltreating animals, others then experiment on animals in a bid to find either a vaccine or a cure for the diseases that result from the maltreatment. Although these medical interventions are being developed, millions of animals are culled, often painfully, in the hope of preventing imminent disease or epidemic in humans. Even those who think that experimenting on animals for human medical benefit is not wrong should be at least somewhat troubled by such experimentation when the ailment it seeks to fix could have been prevented. They should be even more troubled when the relevant prevention would have been to take animal interests more seriously. In response, it may be said that even if current diseases could have been prevented, they were not, and thus scientists must do what they can now to minimize human suffering and death. Whether or not one agrees with this argument, it cannot justify failing to take the preventive measures now that would obviate the need for employing them repeatedly in the future. Failure to think ahead cannot repeatedly be excused.
Humanity's continued consumption of animals is not only morally problematic but also highly imprudent. Preventive action that focuses exclusively on the proximate causes of disease and plague is more risky than long-term preventive action that attends to equally crucial upstream causal factors. To rely on neutralizing a proximate cause leaves little or no room for error. The longer view, by contrast, enables one to prevent a threat before it becomes imminent. Thus, there are many more opportunities for prevention.
Humans have suffered a great deal as a result of the mistreatment of animals, but that does not make the human suffering a punishment for the mistreatment; it is merely a consequence. Speaking of a causal connection does not imply an intentional agent administering the consequent as retribution for the antecedent. In any event, those humans who suffer are not just the ones responsible for animal mistreatment. Innocents are often adversely affected. When the (infected) chickens come home to roost, it may be another person, possibly from the next generation, who suffers or dies from avian influenza. Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet.
To switch avian images, it is time for humans to remove their heads from the sand and recognize the risk to themselves that can arise from their maltreatment of other species.
References
1. Osterholm MT. Preparing for the next pandemic. N Engl J Med. 2005; 352:1839-1842.
2. Weber J. Alcorn K. Origins of HIV and the AIDS epidemic. MedGenMed. 2000;2(4): 1-6.
3. Guan Y, Zheng BJ. He YQ, et al. Isolation and characterization of viruses related to the SARS coronavirus from animals in Southern China. Science. 2003;302:276-278.
4. Will RG, Ironside JW, Zeidler M, el al. A new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the UK. Lancet. 1996;347: 921-925.
5. Scott MR, Will RG, Ironside J, et al. Compelling transgenic evidence for transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy prions to humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1999;96: 15137-15142.
6. Gao F, Bailes E, Robertson DL, et al. Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes. Nature 1999;397:436-441.
7. Sharp P, Bailes E, Chaudhuri RP, Rodenburg CM, Santiago MO, Hahn BH. The origins of acquired immune deficiency syndrome viruses: where and when? Philos Trans R Soc Land B Biol Sci. 2001;356:067-676.
8. Webster RG. Wet markets - a continuing source of severe acute respiratory syndrome and influenza? Lancet. 2004;365:234-236.
9. Singer P. Animal Liberation. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Random House Trade; 1990.
10. Reagan T. The Case for Animal Right. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1983.
11. DeGrazia D. Taking Animals Seriously. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press; 1996.
12. Rowlands M. Animals Like Us London, England: Verso; 2002.
13. Benatar D. Duty and the beast; animal experimentation and neglected interests. QJM. 2000;93:831-835.
- dsteele
- Posts: 1859
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver
by John on Sat Sep 15, 2007 10:15 am
Those who consume animals not only harm those animals and endanger themselves, but they also threaten the well-being of other humans who currently or will later inhabit the planet.
Beautiful.
Thanks Dave
- John
- Posts: 434
- Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:21 pm
- Location: Surrey, BC
by AlisonCole on Sat Sep 15, 2007 11:37 am
Well written. I take it that the author of this article is a vegetarian.
- AlisonCole
- Posts: 3067
- Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:42 pm
- Location: Vancouver
by dsteele on Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:58 pm
Huge meta study links meat to substantially higher cancer risk.
CBC News October 31, 2007
http://www.cbc.ca/story/health/national ... study.html
"The experts say bacon, ham, sausage and luncheon meats should be avoided completely, and that every 48 grams of these processed products consumed per day bumps up the risk of colorectal cancer by 21 per cent."
The full report is available (free online and in print for a price) at http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/
The advice for protein sources is myopic, though.
CBC News October 31, 2007
http://www.cbc.ca/story/health/national ... study.html
"The experts say bacon, ham, sausage and luncheon meats should be avoided completely, and that every 48 grams of these processed products consumed per day bumps up the risk of colorectal cancer by 21 per cent."
The full report is available (free online and in print for a price) at http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/
The advice for protein sources is myopic, though.
- dsteele
- Posts: 1859
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver
by dsteele on Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:57 pm
Atkins' diet linked to high cholesterol, atherosclerosis; Ornish diet to dramatically reduced cholesterol ...
"The Atkins Diet raised the study subjects' bad cholesterol by an average of 16 points, and brought on symptoms of hardening of the arteries, a precursor to strokes or heart attacks.
The subjects had better lab tests on the other two diets. The Ornish Diet lowered their bad cholesterol by 25 points, while the South Beach Diet lowered it by 10 points. The conditions of their arteries also improved on both diets.
"It really is the Atkins Diet that is the worst," said Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
He was surprised by how quickly the Atkins Diet brought on signs of inflamed arteries, a heart-disease factor.
"Some markers of inflammation were increased by as much as 30 to 40 percent" by the Atkins Diet, Miller said. By contrast, the South Beach and Ornish diets either left the markers of inflamed arteries unchanged, or cut them by 15 to 20 percent."
Full story at:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11072007/ne ... 206649.htm
"The Atkins Diet raised the study subjects' bad cholesterol by an average of 16 points, and brought on symptoms of hardening of the arteries, a precursor to strokes or heart attacks.
The subjects had better lab tests on the other two diets. The Ornish Diet lowered their bad cholesterol by 25 points, while the South Beach Diet lowered it by 10 points. The conditions of their arteries also improved on both diets.
"It really is the Atkins Diet that is the worst," said Dr. Michael Miller, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
He was surprised by how quickly the Atkins Diet brought on signs of inflamed arteries, a heart-disease factor.
"Some markers of inflammation were increased by as much as 30 to 40 percent" by the Atkins Diet, Miller said. By contrast, the South Beach and Ornish diets either left the markers of inflamed arteries unchanged, or cut them by 15 to 20 percent."
Full story at:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11072007/ne ... 206649.htm
- dsteele
- Posts: 1859
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver
Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:46 am
This one has got it right on both 'detox's' and vegan diets. The former is a scam, although sometimes a useful scam; the latter, done right, is very good for us - and, indirectly and in so many ways, for a lot of other creatures in the world.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/new ... d=10551301
Experts dispel detox myths
By Nicola Shepheard
As the sylph-like Gwyneth Paltrow blogs about her post-binge purge, detox kits are disappearing from the shelves of health shops.
But before you shell out, listen to the experts: the detox drugs don't work - at least, not in the way they promise.
Auckland dietitian Angela Berrill has clients who take detox supplements for the holiday season.
"They all come back saying they feel great," she said. "But the reason they're feeling great is they're on a healthier diet and incorporating exercise rather than the fact they've been taking the supplements."
Frank Caruso, spokesman for popular Australia-made Quick Cleanse detox kits, admitted people could get similar health benefits free by following the programme's strict, mostly vegan, diet using lemons and brown rice.
"They can, but humans don't. I ran a healthfood store for years. I would write out an exercise and diet programme for them and they'd never do it."
He claimed the herbs helped remove waste from the body and said constipated people, in particular, benefited from the naturally laxative herbs.
North Shore GP Peter Boot dismissed claims about supplements' cleansing powers as "a total sales gimmick".
"[They] do not assist in the body in any way in terms of ridding it of metabolic byproducts and waste materials. However, if a person pays good money for something, they're more likely to take it seriously and adhere to a programme."
Our livers and kidneys were "amazingly efficient" natural detoxifiers, he said.
To feel better in the long-term, the advice is boringly familiar: eat plenty of wholefoods, lay off the fat, sugar, salt and alcohol, and take regular exercise.
"Like anything you've got to stick with, the minute you start going back to your old ways - stopping exercise and returning to your takeaways and alcohol - then of course any of the good is going to be undone," said Berrill.
"It's about lifelong changes rather than a quick fix for two weeks and resorting back to what you were doing before."
There is evidence post-binge health kicks don't boost the body's natural detoxification. A 2007 study at Imperial College London compared the recovery of two groups of women who had partied at a rock festival.
One group gave up processed food, soft drinks, alcohol, salt, sugar, caffeine, wheat, red meat and dairy, and the others followed their normal diet. After seven days, toxicologists found no difference in their liver and kidney functions or vitamin levels.
A report last week from British research body Voice of Young Science dismissed the word "detox" as meaningless.
Researchers examined detox claims for products ranging from foot patches to hair straighteners, and found manufacturers could not provide reliable evidence or even a consistent definition of "detox".
Extreme detox diets can be dangerous. Last year, British woman Dawn Page received more than NZ$2.05m in an out-of-court settlement after a high-water, low-salt diet left her with epilepsy and a brain injury affecting her memory, concentration and ability to speak normally.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/new ... d=10551301
Experts dispel detox myths
By Nicola Shepheard
As the sylph-like Gwyneth Paltrow blogs about her post-binge purge, detox kits are disappearing from the shelves of health shops.
But before you shell out, listen to the experts: the detox drugs don't work - at least, not in the way they promise.
Auckland dietitian Angela Berrill has clients who take detox supplements for the holiday season.
"They all come back saying they feel great," she said. "But the reason they're feeling great is they're on a healthier diet and incorporating exercise rather than the fact they've been taking the supplements."
Frank Caruso, spokesman for popular Australia-made Quick Cleanse detox kits, admitted people could get similar health benefits free by following the programme's strict, mostly vegan, diet using lemons and brown rice.
"They can, but humans don't. I ran a healthfood store for years. I would write out an exercise and diet programme for them and they'd never do it."
He claimed the herbs helped remove waste from the body and said constipated people, in particular, benefited from the naturally laxative herbs.
North Shore GP Peter Boot dismissed claims about supplements' cleansing powers as "a total sales gimmick".
"[They] do not assist in the body in any way in terms of ridding it of metabolic byproducts and waste materials. However, if a person pays good money for something, they're more likely to take it seriously and adhere to a programme."
Our livers and kidneys were "amazingly efficient" natural detoxifiers, he said.
To feel better in the long-term, the advice is boringly familiar: eat plenty of wholefoods, lay off the fat, sugar, salt and alcohol, and take regular exercise.
"Like anything you've got to stick with, the minute you start going back to your old ways - stopping exercise and returning to your takeaways and alcohol - then of course any of the good is going to be undone," said Berrill.
"It's about lifelong changes rather than a quick fix for two weeks and resorting back to what you were doing before."
There is evidence post-binge health kicks don't boost the body's natural detoxification. A 2007 study at Imperial College London compared the recovery of two groups of women who had partied at a rock festival.
One group gave up processed food, soft drinks, alcohol, salt, sugar, caffeine, wheat, red meat and dairy, and the others followed their normal diet. After seven days, toxicologists found no difference in their liver and kidney functions or vitamin levels.
A report last week from British research body Voice of Young Science dismissed the word "detox" as meaningless.
Researchers examined detox claims for products ranging from foot patches to hair straighteners, and found manufacturers could not provide reliable evidence or even a consistent definition of "detox".
Extreme detox diets can be dangerous. Last year, British woman Dawn Page received more than NZ$2.05m in an out-of-court settlement after a high-water, low-salt diet left her with epilepsy and a brain injury affecting her memory, concentration and ability to speak normally.
- dsteele
- Posts: 1859
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver
Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:29 pm
The Globe and Mail has this pleasant tidbit in it today:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... columnists
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: STUDY: TYPE 2 DIABETES
Vegan diet has surprising stick-to-it-iveness
A meat-free menu is easier to maintain and lowers blood sugar better than a traditional diabetes food plan, according to a new study
By LESLIE BECK
Is a vegan diet the new "non-diet"?
The question isn't if a diet works, but if it's sustainable. Any number of diets can lower blood sugar, reduce cholesterol or promote weight loss over its initial three months. But the real winner is the one that can accomplish these tasks over the long term.
Enter the vegan diet - a low-fat eating plan that shuns all animal foods including meat, poultry, dairy and eggs. Such a diet has been shown to improve blood sugar in people with diabetes, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, promote weight loss and even help reverse heart disease.
In the study, researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the George Washington University and the University of Toronto assigned 99 people with Type 2 diabetes to follow either a low-fat vegan diet or a conventional diabetes diet for 18 months.
The conventional diabetes diet, based on guidelines from the American Diabetes Association, controlled calories, carbohydrates and monounsaturated fat (e.g. olive oil, canola oil, avocado) according to each participant's need to lose weight and lower blood cholesterol. The diet was low in saturated (animal) fat and cholesterol.
The low-fat vegan diet avoided animal products and fatty foods and favoured foods low on the glycemic index such as sweet potatoes, legumes and green vegetables. (Low-GI foods are digested more slowly and, as a result, don't produce large spikes in blood sugar.) There were no restrictions on calories, carbohydrate intake or portion size. In fact, the vegan diet followers consumed more of their daily calories - 75 per cent worth - from carbohydrate-rich foods than did folks on the diabetes diet.
Each group met with a registered dietitian for one hour to establish a meal plan and then attended weekly meetings for nutrition and cooking lessons for 22 weeks. This was followed by optional biweekly nutrition sessions for a year.
The vegan diet dramatically cut consumption of cholesterol, fat and saturated fat and increased fibre intake compared to the conventional diabetes diet.
People on the vegan diet lost weight, lowered their blood sugar and LDL cholesterol, and reduced the need for diabetes medication. Among people whose diabetes medications remained unchanged, those following a vegan diet achieved better blood-sugar control as indicated by bigger improvement in a blood test that measures hemoglobin A1c.
The fact that people assigned to the vegan diet ate as much as they wanted, increased their daily carbohydrate intake and still experienced favourable blood-sugar and weight-loss results may seem surprising. Researchers believe that a low-fat, plant-based diet improves how the body uses insulin. And because vegan diets are low in fat and high in fibre, they're typically lower in calories, which can facilitate weight loss and result in better blood-sugar control.
Sounds good so far, provided you can follow such a plan for the long term. According to this study, you can. While the vegan diet initially required a little more effort in meal preparation, this complaint was no longer heard at 18 months. In contrast, those following the standard diabetic diet reported more discomfort with restrictions such as watching calories and limiting portions of carbohydrate and fat.
While neither diet triggered increased cravings for fatty foods, the vegan diet followers were less likely to crave such foods after 22 weeks on their diet.
Other studies have also reported the acceptability of a vegetarian diet.
In a study of 250 young women who had tried both calorie-controlled weight-loss diets and vegetarian diets, most abandoned their calorie-restricted diet after four months but were able to stick with a vegetarian diet for two years.
A vegetarian diet has the advantages of being lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and higher in fibre and low-GI carbohydrates, but it does require planning (and supplementation) to ensure you meet daily requirements for protein, vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D and iodine.
If you've considered going vegetarian, but don't want to give up all animal foods, consider moving toward a plant-based diet - one that emphasizes grains, vegetables and legumes rather than meat, poultry and dairy. When you do eat meat or poultry, eat a smaller portion.
Start by replacing animal foods with meatless protein sources at three meals a week and build from there. Vegetarian protein foods include fortified soy beverages, tofu, soy burgers, tofu dogs, veggie ground round, tempeh, legumes and lentils.
Other types of vegetarian diets limit - but don't exclude - all animal foods. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products along with plant-based foods.
Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat eggs, dairy products and plant-based foods.
While these diets may not lower your blood sugar or cholesterol to the same extent as a vegan diet, if planned properly they still have the advantage of being lower in saturated fat and higher in fibre.
One final note: If you have diabetes, consult your dietitian or doctor before making any changes to your diet. Do not stop taking your diabetes medication without checking with your doctor.
*****
Going vegan
If you adopt a vegan diet, the following foods and supplements will help you meet daily nutrient needs:
Protein
Tofu, soy products, tempeh, legumes, lentils, nuts, seeds, soy beverages.
Calcium
Fortified soy beverages (about 300 milligrams per 250 millilitre), tofu made with calcium, almonds, dark green vegetables. To meet calcium requirements of 1,000 milligrams (aged 19 to 50) or 1,500 milligrams (50+), a supplement is likely needed.
Vitamin B12
Fortified soy products, nutritional yeast, multivitamin with 5 to 10 micrograms of B12.
Vitamin D
Fortified soy beverages supply 100 international units of vitamin D per 250 millilitres. To get the recommended 1,000 IU per day you need to take a supplement.
Iron
Legumes, lentils, nuts, whole grains, enriched cereals, leafy green vegetables. To help absorb plant sources of iron, eat foods rich in vitamin C (citrus, strawberries, broccoli, red pepper) with iron-rich foods.
- Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based dietitian at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV's Canada AM every Wednesday. Her website is lesliebeck.com.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... columnists
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: STUDY: TYPE 2 DIABETES
Vegan diet has surprising stick-to-it-iveness
A meat-free menu is easier to maintain and lowers blood sugar better than a traditional diabetes food plan, according to a new study
By LESLIE BECK
Is a vegan diet the new "non-diet"?
The question isn't if a diet works, but if it's sustainable. Any number of diets can lower blood sugar, reduce cholesterol or promote weight loss over its initial three months. But the real winner is the one that can accomplish these tasks over the long term.
Enter the vegan diet - a low-fat eating plan that shuns all animal foods including meat, poultry, dairy and eggs. Such a diet has been shown to improve blood sugar in people with diabetes, lower LDL (bad) cholesterol, promote weight loss and even help reverse heart disease.
In the study, researchers from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the George Washington University and the University of Toronto assigned 99 people with Type 2 diabetes to follow either a low-fat vegan diet or a conventional diabetes diet for 18 months.
The conventional diabetes diet, based on guidelines from the American Diabetes Association, controlled calories, carbohydrates and monounsaturated fat (e.g. olive oil, canola oil, avocado) according to each participant's need to lose weight and lower blood cholesterol. The diet was low in saturated (animal) fat and cholesterol.
The low-fat vegan diet avoided animal products and fatty foods and favoured foods low on the glycemic index such as sweet potatoes, legumes and green vegetables. (Low-GI foods are digested more slowly and, as a result, don't produce large spikes in blood sugar.) There were no restrictions on calories, carbohydrate intake or portion size. In fact, the vegan diet followers consumed more of their daily calories - 75 per cent worth - from carbohydrate-rich foods than did folks on the diabetes diet.
Each group met with a registered dietitian for one hour to establish a meal plan and then attended weekly meetings for nutrition and cooking lessons for 22 weeks. This was followed by optional biweekly nutrition sessions for a year.
The vegan diet dramatically cut consumption of cholesterol, fat and saturated fat and increased fibre intake compared to the conventional diabetes diet.
People on the vegan diet lost weight, lowered their blood sugar and LDL cholesterol, and reduced the need for diabetes medication. Among people whose diabetes medications remained unchanged, those following a vegan diet achieved better blood-sugar control as indicated by bigger improvement in a blood test that measures hemoglobin A1c.
The fact that people assigned to the vegan diet ate as much as they wanted, increased their daily carbohydrate intake and still experienced favourable blood-sugar and weight-loss results may seem surprising. Researchers believe that a low-fat, plant-based diet improves how the body uses insulin. And because vegan diets are low in fat and high in fibre, they're typically lower in calories, which can facilitate weight loss and result in better blood-sugar control.
Sounds good so far, provided you can follow such a plan for the long term. According to this study, you can. While the vegan diet initially required a little more effort in meal preparation, this complaint was no longer heard at 18 months. In contrast, those following the standard diabetic diet reported more discomfort with restrictions such as watching calories and limiting portions of carbohydrate and fat.
While neither diet triggered increased cravings for fatty foods, the vegan diet followers were less likely to crave such foods after 22 weeks on their diet.
Other studies have also reported the acceptability of a vegetarian diet.
In a study of 250 young women who had tried both calorie-controlled weight-loss diets and vegetarian diets, most abandoned their calorie-restricted diet after four months but were able to stick with a vegetarian diet for two years.
A vegetarian diet has the advantages of being lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and higher in fibre and low-GI carbohydrates, but it does require planning (and supplementation) to ensure you meet daily requirements for protein, vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D and iodine.
If you've considered going vegetarian, but don't want to give up all animal foods, consider moving toward a plant-based diet - one that emphasizes grains, vegetables and legumes rather than meat, poultry and dairy. When you do eat meat or poultry, eat a smaller portion.
Start by replacing animal foods with meatless protein sources at three meals a week and build from there. Vegetarian protein foods include fortified soy beverages, tofu, soy burgers, tofu dogs, veggie ground round, tempeh, legumes and lentils.
Other types of vegetarian diets limit - but don't exclude - all animal foods. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products along with plant-based foods.
Lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat eggs, dairy products and plant-based foods.
While these diets may not lower your blood sugar or cholesterol to the same extent as a vegan diet, if planned properly they still have the advantage of being lower in saturated fat and higher in fibre.
One final note: If you have diabetes, consult your dietitian or doctor before making any changes to your diet. Do not stop taking your diabetes medication without checking with your doctor.
*****
Going vegan
If you adopt a vegan diet, the following foods and supplements will help you meet daily nutrient needs:
Protein
Tofu, soy products, tempeh, legumes, lentils, nuts, seeds, soy beverages.
Calcium
Fortified soy beverages (about 300 milligrams per 250 millilitre), tofu made with calcium, almonds, dark green vegetables. To meet calcium requirements of 1,000 milligrams (aged 19 to 50) or 1,500 milligrams (50+), a supplement is likely needed.
Vitamin B12
Fortified soy products, nutritional yeast, multivitamin with 5 to 10 micrograms of B12.
Vitamin D
Fortified soy beverages supply 100 international units of vitamin D per 250 millilitres. To get the recommended 1,000 IU per day you need to take a supplement.
Iron
Legumes, lentils, nuts, whole grains, enriched cereals, leafy green vegetables. To help absorb plant sources of iron, eat foods rich in vitamin C (citrus, strawberries, broccoli, red pepper) with iron-rich foods.
- Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based dietitian at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV's Canada AM every Wednesday. Her website is lesliebeck.com.
- dsteele
- Posts: 1859
- Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:34 pm
- Location: Vancouver
Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by denise on Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:20 pm
Another review of Mark Bittman's book Food Matters
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/oregon ... xml&coll=7
Bring awareness, moderation to diet, author says
Mark Bittman, author of "Food Matters," says we can change our relationship to food, and to the world
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
JOHN FOYSTON
The Oregonian Staff
Our carnivorous ways imperil the planet, food writer Mark Bittman says, especially as the rest of the world begins to eat more meat.
Most people in the world eat much less meat than do we in the industrialized nations, where the daily average is a half-pound per person, but rates are rising. To meet that demand, Bittman writes in his new book, "Food Matters, a Guide to Conscious Eating," livestock production would have to double in the next 20 or 30 years. We'd run out of land and other resources before then, and the 60 billion livestock animals now raised every year already account for 20 percent of greenhouse gases -- more than is generated by transportation.
There's more: The first chapters of "Food Matters" list a litany of the problems and consequences of America's system of industrial food production, distribution and consumption. For example: A list of the top five sources of calories that Americans consume begins with soda -- 7 percent of the total -- and includes pastries, hamburgers, pizza and potato chips.
We've heard the doom and gloom before: how our sugar- and carb-heavy diet of factory foods has created the American plague of obesity and so-called lifestyle diseases; how diets don't work; how fundamental changes will be required to shrink our waistlines and divert modern agriculture from the precipice.
Michael Pollan said it most simply on the cover of his "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" -- "eat food: not too much, mostly plants." (Pollan's definition of food, by the way, excludes much of what's found in supermarket aisles and freezers.)
New York Times columnist Bittman is known for demystifying cooking with such best-selling books as "How to Cook Everything." In "Food Matters" he tells you how to follow that deceptively simple suggestion to "eat food" by providing meal plans, recipes and shopping and cooking strategies that help nudge your diet from American industrial to one rich in whole grains and vegetables.
"If I told you that the same lifestyle change could help you lose weight," he writes, "reduce your risk of many long-term or chronic diseases and help stop global warming, I imagine you'd be intrigued."
Bittman can vouch for all of the above, because looming health issues were among the reasons he began thinking about the "Food Matters" diet. He suffered from sleep apnea, high blood sugar, elevated cholesterol and had gained extra pounds over the years. When I met him recently during a swing through Portland, he had said goodbye to all that; he'd lost 35 pounds and looked a slim and healthy 58.
"It's been two years now and I've stuck to it," he said. "I own it now, though it isn't always easy. I was in San Francisco for 18 hours and I didn't go out to eat, if you can believe it. Instead I went to the supermarket and bought bags of cut-up vegetables." Because he does better with rules, Bittman is stricter with himself than he recommends in "Food Matters:" He eats like a vegan during the day, then allows himself just about anything -- white bread, a few glasses of wine, a meat entree -- in the evening.
"I'm not in favor of vegetarianism, really, because if you replace half a pound of meat with half a pound of cheese, you haven't done anything. And I'd like a better term than 'flexitarian,' " he said, using the relatively recent coinage describing a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. "Perhaps 'less-meatatarian' is the best way to describe it."
He may not cotton to the word flexitarian, but Bittman and his recipes are marvels of flexibility -- he often includes several variations with different ingredients and spicing. His recipes in "Food Matters" are as expansive, and it's an easygoing book. For instance, he doesn't ban meat, but asks us to rethink its place. "I want people to think of meat as the treasure, like it is in Chinese dishes," he said. "I want people to use meat like a condiment."
He doesn't ask you to cut out anything completely; even over-processed junk food is OK occasionally, just not as a routine. He loves crusty white bread with dinner, but for breakfast, he eats a salad or a bowl of whole grains -- oatmeal, wheat berries or quinoa, one of his favorites -- or leftover sauteed vegetables from the night before. Snacks are a part of life, so Bittman includes several recipes and suggestions, as he does for desserts. Cheating? No such thing, he says. If you mess up one day, you've got the rest of your life to get it right.
People seem to be hearing the "Food Matters" message, because Bittman's crowds on this book tour are much bigger than he's used to for his cookbooks. And people are asking him, "Where do we go from here?"
"That's a question I haven't given a lot of thought to, because I don't see myself as the leader of a movement," he said. "I guess you go home and start cooking some of these recipes. I'm not trying to sell you on the way I eat -- I'm asking you to think about the food you eat.
"This is one of the places where individuals can make a change," he said. "If Americans now get 80 or 90 percent of their calories from meat, dairy and processed foods and 20 percent or less from vegetables -- if we can change that to 70/30 or 60/40, and enough people do it, then our food system will change."
John Foyston: 503-221-8368; johnfoyston@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/oregon ... xml&coll=7
Bring awareness, moderation to diet, author says
Mark Bittman, author of "Food Matters," says we can change our relationship to food, and to the world
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
JOHN FOYSTON
The Oregonian Staff
Our carnivorous ways imperil the planet, food writer Mark Bittman says, especially as the rest of the world begins to eat more meat.
Most people in the world eat much less meat than do we in the industrialized nations, where the daily average is a half-pound per person, but rates are rising. To meet that demand, Bittman writes in his new book, "Food Matters, a Guide to Conscious Eating," livestock production would have to double in the next 20 or 30 years. We'd run out of land and other resources before then, and the 60 billion livestock animals now raised every year already account for 20 percent of greenhouse gases -- more than is generated by transportation.
There's more: The first chapters of "Food Matters" list a litany of the problems and consequences of America's system of industrial food production, distribution and consumption. For example: A list of the top five sources of calories that Americans consume begins with soda -- 7 percent of the total -- and includes pastries, hamburgers, pizza and potato chips.
We've heard the doom and gloom before: how our sugar- and carb-heavy diet of factory foods has created the American plague of obesity and so-called lifestyle diseases; how diets don't work; how fundamental changes will be required to shrink our waistlines and divert modern agriculture from the precipice.
Michael Pollan said it most simply on the cover of his "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" -- "eat food: not too much, mostly plants." (Pollan's definition of food, by the way, excludes much of what's found in supermarket aisles and freezers.)
New York Times columnist Bittman is known for demystifying cooking with such best-selling books as "How to Cook Everything." In "Food Matters" he tells you how to follow that deceptively simple suggestion to "eat food" by providing meal plans, recipes and shopping and cooking strategies that help nudge your diet from American industrial to one rich in whole grains and vegetables.
"If I told you that the same lifestyle change could help you lose weight," he writes, "reduce your risk of many long-term or chronic diseases and help stop global warming, I imagine you'd be intrigued."
Bittman can vouch for all of the above, because looming health issues were among the reasons he began thinking about the "Food Matters" diet. He suffered from sleep apnea, high blood sugar, elevated cholesterol and had gained extra pounds over the years. When I met him recently during a swing through Portland, he had said goodbye to all that; he'd lost 35 pounds and looked a slim and healthy 58.
"It's been two years now and I've stuck to it," he said. "I own it now, though it isn't always easy. I was in San Francisco for 18 hours and I didn't go out to eat, if you can believe it. Instead I went to the supermarket and bought bags of cut-up vegetables." Because he does better with rules, Bittman is stricter with himself than he recommends in "Food Matters:" He eats like a vegan during the day, then allows himself just about anything -- white bread, a few glasses of wine, a meat entree -- in the evening.
"I'm not in favor of vegetarianism, really, because if you replace half a pound of meat with half a pound of cheese, you haven't done anything. And I'd like a better term than 'flexitarian,' " he said, using the relatively recent coinage describing a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. "Perhaps 'less-meatatarian' is the best way to describe it."
He may not cotton to the word flexitarian, but Bittman and his recipes are marvels of flexibility -- he often includes several variations with different ingredients and spicing. His recipes in "Food Matters" are as expansive, and it's an easygoing book. For instance, he doesn't ban meat, but asks us to rethink its place. "I want people to think of meat as the treasure, like it is in Chinese dishes," he said. "I want people to use meat like a condiment."
He doesn't ask you to cut out anything completely; even over-processed junk food is OK occasionally, just not as a routine. He loves crusty white bread with dinner, but for breakfast, he eats a salad or a bowl of whole grains -- oatmeal, wheat berries or quinoa, one of his favorites -- or leftover sauteed vegetables from the night before. Snacks are a part of life, so Bittman includes several recipes and suggestions, as he does for desserts. Cheating? No such thing, he says. If you mess up one day, you've got the rest of your life to get it right.
People seem to be hearing the "Food Matters" message, because Bittman's crowds on this book tour are much bigger than he's used to for his cookbooks. And people are asking him, "Where do we go from here?"
"That's a question I haven't given a lot of thought to, because I don't see myself as the leader of a movement," he said. "I guess you go home and start cooking some of these recipes. I'm not trying to sell you on the way I eat -- I'm asking you to think about the food you eat.
"This is one of the places where individuals can make a change," he said. "If Americans now get 80 or 90 percent of their calories from meat, dairy and processed foods and 20 percent or less from vegetables -- if we can change that to 70/30 or 60/40, and enough people do it, then our food system will change."
John Foyston: 503-221-8368; johnfoyston@news.oregonian.com
- denise
- Posts: 1286
- Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2004 12:04 pm
- Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:21 am
I came across this old article on the original (scientific) report of the China Study today. It's a nice summary ... the main points from a very long book in a few pages of text - and a few new points, besides:
The New Scientist December 8, 1990
China's long march to longevity: An ambitious epidemiological study, charting the life and death of thousands of Chinese, has just been published. It holds many lessons for both East and West
By GAIL VINES
Since the birth of the People's Republic in 1949, China has experienced a revolution in public health. In one of the great medical success stories of our century, the Chinese have largely won the battle against malnutrition, and infectious and parasitic diseases. At the death rates of the 1940s, about half the children born in China could expect to die before reaching middle age. But at current death rates, more than 90 per cent can now expect to survive to middle age, as in the West, and China has achieved this 'epidemiological transition' in less than half th time it took Britain.
Now, the chief causes of premature death are the 'chronic' diseases of middle age - primarily stroke, emphysema, hepatitis-B-related disease (liver cancer or cirrhosis), and, last but not least, diseases linked to tobacco. So, as the children of Mao's baby boom reach middle age, China will inevitably suffer an explosion in the number of premature deaths from chronic disease. But more than demographic change is at work. Deaths from lung cancer are increasing rapidly because cigarette smoking has, relatively recently, become widespread in China, and by the late 2020s almost a million a year may die from this disease alone. Smoking will kill even more from other diseases besides lung cancer. And, as the country grows richer, so too might its diet move closer to the Western 'norm', bringing heart disease and diabetes to millions.
So China is now faced with an enormous challenge - that of widening the health priorities for one-fith of the world's population to include the prevention of chronic disease, while still completing its first health care revolution. 'Put prevention first' was China's health slogan in the early days of the Republic, when most deaths were from communicable diseases. But, as China's health minister Chen Min-Zhang points out, the slogan applies equally well to the remaining chronic diseases that now account for many of the premature deaths in China. Indeed, prevention is even more important because for most of the chronic diseases there is no real cure.
The Chinese government is now considering various anti-tobacco measures, ranging from restrictions on tar levels and advertising, to labelling cigarettes with health warnings and providing smoke-free areas. Officials also acknowledge that the notion of introducing a Western-style agriculture that is heavily reliant on livestock is neither practicable nor medically desirable for the Chinese people. These far-sighted policies have their beginnings, in large part, in a huge nationwide survey of the causes of all deaths in the whole of China between 1973 and 1975. Some 600,000 people worked on the survey, which covered 96 per cent of the population - then some 850,000,000 people. Authorised by Premier Zhou En-Lai in the last year of his life, when he himself had bladder cancer, it is one of the largest epidemiological studies ever done.
It was a visionary move. Zhou En-Lai commissioned the study because 'the first thing in battle is to know where your enemy is' - or, in this case, where particular types of cancers are occurring. The result was the Chinese Cancer Atlas, published in 1980. It maps the geography of each main type of malignant disease, and reveals huge and intriguing variations from one part of China to another in each of the major types of cancer. Regions just a few hundred miles apart sometimes show a tenfold difference in the mortality rates from liver cancer, for instance. Indeed, every type of cancer that is common in one part of China is much less common in some other part. This suggests that most of the risk could be avoided, if only we could understand the main reasons for these huge differences.
The Chinese Cancer Atlas has inspired a wide range of further studies into the causes and correlates of chronic disease in China, many in collaboration with researchers in the US, France or Britain. The latest study, and one of the largest, is described in a weighty monograph published simultaneously this week in China and in the West*. Entitled Diet, Life-style, and Mortaility in China, it describes 65 countries (3 per cent of the total) scattered all over the populated parts of the Chinese countryside. It is the result of a fertile collaboration over the past 10 years between two Chinese researchers, Chen Junshi of the Academy of Preventive Medicine in Beijing, and Li Junyao of the China Cancer Institute in Beijing, one American, Colin Campbell of Cornell University, one Briton, Richard Peto of the ICRF Cancer Studies Unit at the University of Oxford, and almost a hundred other colleagues in laboratories around the world.
The study describes the geographic variation across China not only for various cancers but also, for the first time, for other major causes of death (such as stroke, hypertensive heart disease, chronic lung disease and tuberculosis), using data from the original survey of 1973-75. What makes this new study so interesting is that, based on special surveys in 1983 and 1984 in 65 chosen counties, the researchers have tried to describe the way people live as well as how they die. One aim is to correlate the two, but the wider goal is simply descriptive - to provide information that will suggest new hypotheses and form the groundwork for further research.
To chart the geography of lifestyle, diet and body biochemistry, teams of researchers interviewed thousands of people, and collected endless samples of blood, urine and food from all over the country. The heart of the monograph is 367 maps, one for each aspect of death or of life that was studied. These maps illustrate the great variation between different counties not only in the deaths attributed to 82 specific diseases, but also in 150 aspects of the Chinese lifestyle - smoking, drinking, eating and reproduction - and in 135 biochemical attributes of blood and urine.
The organisation required to collect thousands of samples of blood, urine and food, store them safely, and eventually fly them for analysis to laboratories in Beijing and all around the world would be substantial even in the world's richest nations. To have accomplished this in a developing country is an astounding achievment. The survey team from the Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene in Beijing was well organised and entirely committed to the task - which involved obtaining blood and urine samples from people living in 130 villages scattered widely across China (including 'an oasis village near the Great Gobi Desert and a nomadic group on the Soviet border that required four days of travel over severe terrain from the nearest airport', says Campbell).
Chen Junshi at the nutrition institute was the linchpin, backed by provincial health survey teams all over China and scores of analytical laboratories in Beijing and all around the world that carried out assays free of charge. Chen met Campbell during an eight-month sabbatical visit to the Cornell Division of Nutritional Sciences in 1980, just as the Chinese Cancer Atlas was being published, and the striking heterogeneity of some of the cancer rates in the atlas led them to initiate what was originally thought of as a study just of nutrition and cancer. But Li, in Beijing, arranged for information on other causes of death to be provided, and Peto, in the Oxford ICRF cancer unit, devised practicable methods for blood samples to be analysed for dozens of different characteristics.
To save money, the team adopted a novel approach: pooling blood samples from particular groups of people - say, males in a particular village - and then doing on that pooled blood sample many different assays. This approach reduced the number of laboratory analyses that had to be done to work out the mean values in each country, but still allowed statistical checks on the quality and consistency of the data.
The study was incredibly good value for money. With only $2 million, over seven years, in hard cash, mostly from the National Institutes of Health, plus 600 person-year of labour, mostly contributed by the Chinese government, the team achieved what could probably not have been done anywhere else. Three other people, Feng Zulin in Beijing, Linda Youngman at Cornell and Jillian Boreham at the Oxford ICRF unit then spent years coordinating assays and data management, as well as nursing the monograph text through the labour of publication in side-by-side English and Chinese.
The amount of data is staggering - as well as the average results for the men and for the women in each village, there are some 100,000 between-county correlation coefficients to wade through and weigh up, for a start. Several positive correlations between the findings in different counties probably do reflect real cause-and-effect relationships - for example, stomach cancer with chronic infection by gastric bacterium, Helicobacter pylorum; liver cancer with chronic infection by the hepatitis B virus; lung cancer with cigarettes; intestinal cancer with chornic intestinal infection by Schistosomiasis japonicum ('snail fever'); oesophagus cancer with low vitamin C (from fresh fruit and vegetables); stroke with salt consumption; and heart muscle wastage ('Keshan disease') with severe selenium deficiency.
But the authors deliberately draw no formal conclusions, perhaps partly because they still differ somewhat in their philosophical perspectives. Peto rather distrusts many of the geographic correlations, and particulary distrusts multiple ones; he argues that the study's strength lies in its ability to inspire further, more tightly defined studies (some of which are already in progress) that can test particular ideas. Campbell, while agreeing on the need for additional studies, thinks that we may nevertheless be able to draw quite subtle inferences from multiple correlations between many interacting factors. 'The present series of surveys may offer a unique opportunity to consider causes of human cancer as they realistically exist within the complex human environment,' he says. 'The complexity of both diet and disease must be addressed at every opportunity.'
Campbell is attracted to the notion that 'the lowest risk for cancer is generated by the consumption of a variety of fresh plant products' - what he calls the 'plant nutrient hypothesis'. The first step towards cancer, he argues, is probably the result of exposure to something in the environment, such as hepatitis B virus, tobacco, aflatoxin or nitrosamines. But Campbell emphasises that nutrients can then modulate in various ways the subsequent development of the cancerous cells, and argues that a diet low in a variety of fresh plant foods generally increases the risk that a pathological cancer will actually emerge. If this is true, then the right diet might slow or even reverse pre-clinical stages of the cancer process.
East v West
The comparison of China and the West is particularly fascinating, says Campbell, because 'for most nutrients and many metabolic indicators, Chinese and Western values would appear to be at opposite ends of a spectrum'. The survey found, for instance, that fat generally accounted for only 6 to 25 per cent of dietary calories (the average being 15 per cent). Yet even the top of this range falls below the vast majority of Western intakes: in Britain, for example, the average is often about 45 per cent, and even a 'low-fat' British diet might average about 30 per cent calories from fat. Compared with Americans, Chinese people eat on average 22 per cent less protein and 64 per cent less fat, 75 per cent more soluble carbohydrate and 157 per cent more fibre.
The variety of ways of living within China, ranging from the nomadic herders of the Inner Mongolia Region to the suburban dwellers of Shanghai, also makes the survey especially interesting. Rice is the staple food of southern China, for instance, but in the northern half of this vast country people eat mainly wheat, corn or millet. In the weighed diet survey, salt intake ranged from 2 grams a day to a whopping 30 grams, with an average of 15 grams (Britons consume 8 grams a day on average, and are urged to reduce this to below 5.) Most Chinese never eat milk or dairy products, but the nomadic herders of the northwestern county of Tuoli obtain more than half their calories and three-quarters of their protein from this source. 'Epidemiologists need to be able to study large, persistent differences between the ways in which different people live and the ways in which they die,' says Peto; China - vast, heterogeneous - is an ideal laboratory.
The data amassed about the Chinese way of life underline the healthfulness of a diet rich in plant foods, says Campbell. For instance, the study seems to refute worries in the West that diets high in fibre might seriously interfere with the ability to absorb minerals such as iron. The Chinese with the highest intake of fibre also had the most iron in their blood. Even Chinese people who ate no meat showed no sign of anaemia, nor, according to other evidence, did they suffer inordinately from osteoporosis despite a lack of calcium-rich dairy products.
One of the most striking diet-related differences between East and West, however, is the level of cholesteral in the blood. A third of all deaths in middle age in Britain are from cholesterol-related diseases, many of which are the result of a diet rich in saturated animal fats. In Britain an average of between 40 and 45 per cent of dietary energy comes from fat, but in rural China in 1983 only 15 per cent did so, and virtually all that came from plant fats, not animal or dairy fats.
Diet for a healthy heart
As a result of this largely vegetarian, almost vegan diet in rural China, cholesterol levels are, by Western standards, extraordinarily low, and coronary heart disease is rarely recorded as a cause of death. 'The Chinese experience shows that most of Western coronary heart disease is unnecessary,' says Peto.
Interestingly, prospective studies by Chen Zhengming and his colleagues in Shanghai, in collaboration with the Oxford unit, have shown that there is still, even without China, a direct relationship between blood cholesterol level and the relative risk of coronary heart disease - the lower the levels the lower the risk, with no sign of a threshold. So as far as cholesterol levels are concerned, 'there is no such thing as a really normal Englishman', says Peto. (Importantly, the Shanghai study also tends to counter the notion that low levels of cholesterol could predispose to stroke).
Will the Chinese diet begin to alter along Western lines? So far, Western hamburger chains and the like have made a few inroads, and the findings of this and other surveys may help to create the political will to maintain some of the good aspects of the traditional Chinese diet towards not an American but perhaps a Japanese diet,' says Campbell - that is, not towards sugar and animal fat but towards fish and plant protein.
Perhaps, however, the most immediately important result of the study is that it has helped to draw the attention of the Chinese authorities to the vast epidemic of chronic disease and death that tobacco carries in its wake. Peto has made great efforts to spread the word. 'It has been important for everyone to understand that the predicted mortality from tobacco is real,' he says. 'In the 1950s, one popular slogan in China was 'Food, shelter and cigarettes for everybody' - that is, essentials and a few luxuries. If you were a revolutionary in the 1930s the least of your worries was that you might die in middle age of smoking.' But things have changed. China is at the beginning of a vast epidemic of smoking-related disease: 'As far as male cigarette smoking is concerned, China is now where the US was in 1945, and the pattern of rapidly increasing lung cancer death is going to be much the same,' says Peto. By the mid 1980s, male lung cancer had overtaken other cancers in China's cities.
Last year, the Chinese consumed almost a third of the world's cigarettes - with consumption having risen from 500 billion cigarettes in 1978 to 1600 billion just over a decade later. The rapid increase has taken China up to the worst male smoking rates for the US and Britain. In Britain and North America, however, cigarette smoking has decreased, and in the US only one-third of the men now smoke; in China, two-thirds do. 'We can learn from China about what low cholesterol can do,' says Peto, 'and China can learn from our experience with tobacco what cigarettes are going to do.'
Current trends suggest that there will be a rapid rise in the incidence of lung cancer among men in China - from 30,000 in 1975 to 900,000 in 2025. By that time, most men will have smoked cigarettes throughout adult life, (and the surveys of Weng Xin-Zhi, one of the first to warn seriously against smoking in China, show that in Beijing young women are now also beginning to do so). Demographic changes - a fourfold increase in the number of men old enough to be at risk of lung cancer - will be responsible for a fourfold increase in lung cancer numbers, while medical change - the delayed effects of the large increase in smoking - will be responsible for about a sevenfold increase. Chairman Mao did not believe in birth control, and there are now 420 million Chinese under 20. On present smoking patterns, about 150 or 200 million of these young people will become adult smokers and about a quarter or a third of those who smoke cigarettes regularly are eventually killed by the habit. So in total about 50 million of those now aged under 20 in China will eventually be killed by tobacco.
At the moment, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), also know as emphysema, is, with stroke, the commonest cause of death in middle age in China. No one really knows why it is so common - although air pollution from cooking over coal-fired open pots could be important. Smoking is a cause of most COPD in the West, but in China women die of COPD as often as men, even though few women smoke. 'What will smoking do on top of that high background?' says Peto. 'It will certainly produce an enormous amount of severe, permanent COPD disability, and might produce even more deaths from COPD than from lung cancer.'
We need to know much more about current and future smoking-related mortality in China. Three major studies will help to fill the gaps in our knowledge. One now underway, again in a collaboration between the Beijing Cancer Institute, the Beijing Nutrition Institute, Cornell University and the ICRF unit at Oxford, involves a retrospective assessment of the smoking habits of 600,000 married people who died between 1986 and 1988, by interviewing each of the surviving spouses. (Surviving spouses can also act as controls for the deaths of married people.) Another, in collaboration between the Shanghai Tumour Institute and the US National Cancer Institute, is a large local prospective study of smoking in central and suburban Shanghai and in the country near the city. The third, organised by the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine with funds from the World Bank, is a very large, nationwide prospective study of the smoking habits and other characteristics of half a million Chinese people, with follow-up to record the causes of all their deaths every five years for at least 20 years thereafter. 'Such studies will monitor first the current state, and then the evolution, of this great epidemic,' says Peto.
All sorts of other studies are also planned or in progress, direct or indirect offshoots of the original cancer atlas or the present survey of 65 counties .
Chen Min-Zhang, the Minister of Public Health, has said that when the health priorities become clear, China can act faster than other countries. But recent structural changes in China may make this more difficult. Communal health care may be replaced by 'self-financing' clinics with no economic interest in the prevention of disease or in the treatment or vaccination of those who cannot pay. Even the World Bank, in its 1990 report on the Chinese health sector, emphasises tha incentive-based systems that can increase overall cost-efficiency in other sectors of the Chinese economy may decrease it when it comes to the control of disease. This is true for communicable diseases, but it is even more true for non-communicable diseases, where cure is difficult and prevention may require social change.
But in the long run, Premier Zhou En-Lai's nationwide mortality survey probably did mark the beginning of a second stage in China that will help to control premature death from non-communicable diseases. Yet to achieve this goal China will need more descriptive studies such as Diet, Life-style and Mortality, more specific studies of individual causes of death and the establishment of a strong tradition of large, simple, properly randomised trials that can assess treatments reliability. It will also depend on finding ways to ensure a proper balance between the prevention and treatment of disease, whatever economic structures China ultimately adopts.
* * *
Work in progress: A growing tradition of strong research
The original Chinese Cancer Atlas and, more recently, the study of disease and lifestyle in China have already inspired scores of further specialised, in-depth studies, involving international teams of scientists and doctors. Below are just a few projects now underway.
Food and cancer Li Junyao of the China Cancer Institute in Beijing is collaborating with the American National Cancer Institute in a vitamin intervention trial involving more than 30,000 people. The idea is to see whether a combination of vitamins might help to slow or reverse precancerous lesions in the oesophagus. The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer has also worked with the Chinese Cancer Institute in a similar vitamin trial, and with Chen Junshi at the Nutrition Institute in Beijing on studies of precursors of nitrosamines in the diet.
Bones and dairy products Workers at Cornell University are collaborating with Chinese researchers in a study to see whether there really is no difference between the incidence of osteoporosis in Inner Mongolia, where nomadic herders consume a diet rich in dairy products, and in another region of China where no one eats dairy products.
Viruses, vaccines and cancer Researchers at the cancer institutes of Beijing and Qidong, with scientists from the WHO and the ICRF in Britain, are conducting a large, randomised trial of vaccination against hepatitis B virus for 60,000 infants in Qidong county. The idea is to find out what, if any, vaccination regimen is most effective in preventing liver cancer 40 years later.
Stroke, salt and high blood pressure Prospective studies have already shown that stroke in China is often driven by hypertension. High blood pressure may be common in China partly because salt consumption is so high. More information on how diet affects blood pressure is needed, but working to reduce salt in the storage and preparation of food may help to lower the incidence of stroke in the long run.
Meanwhile, randomised trials of 7,000 stroke patients are getting underway in a nationwide network of hospitals coordinated through the Fu Wai Hospital in Beijing. The goal is to find out whether drugs that lower blood pressure reduce the risk of having a further stroke, even if the patient has blood pressure in the supposedly 'normal' range.
Scores of other studies are also planned or in progress, including a complete repetition by Chen, Campbell, Li and Peto of the entire 65-county survey.
* Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China, a study of the characteristics of 65 Chinese counties, by Chen Junshi, T Colin Campbell, Li Junyao and Richard Peto, is jointly published by Oxford University Press (95 Pounds Pounds), Cornell University Press and the People's Medical Publishing House, Beijing, 1990.
The New Scientist December 8, 1990
China's long march to longevity: An ambitious epidemiological study, charting the life and death of thousands of Chinese, has just been published. It holds many lessons for both East and West
By GAIL VINES
Since the birth of the People's Republic in 1949, China has experienced a revolution in public health. In one of the great medical success stories of our century, the Chinese have largely won the battle against malnutrition, and infectious and parasitic diseases. At the death rates of the 1940s, about half the children born in China could expect to die before reaching middle age. But at current death rates, more than 90 per cent can now expect to survive to middle age, as in the West, and China has achieved this 'epidemiological transition' in less than half th time it took Britain.
Now, the chief causes of premature death are the 'chronic' diseases of middle age - primarily stroke, emphysema, hepatitis-B-related disease (liver cancer or cirrhosis), and, last but not least, diseases linked to tobacco. So, as the children of Mao's baby boom reach middle age, China will inevitably suffer an explosion in the number of premature deaths from chronic disease. But more than demographic change is at work. Deaths from lung cancer are increasing rapidly because cigarette smoking has, relatively recently, become widespread in China, and by the late 2020s almost a million a year may die from this disease alone. Smoking will kill even more from other diseases besides lung cancer. And, as the country grows richer, so too might its diet move closer to the Western 'norm', bringing heart disease and diabetes to millions.
So China is now faced with an enormous challenge - that of widening the health priorities for one-fith of the world's population to include the prevention of chronic disease, while still completing its first health care revolution. 'Put prevention first' was China's health slogan in the early days of the Republic, when most deaths were from communicable diseases. But, as China's health minister Chen Min-Zhang points out, the slogan applies equally well to the remaining chronic diseases that now account for many of the premature deaths in China. Indeed, prevention is even more important because for most of the chronic diseases there is no real cure.
The Chinese government is now considering various anti-tobacco measures, ranging from restrictions on tar levels and advertising, to labelling cigarettes with health warnings and providing smoke-free areas. Officials also acknowledge that the notion of introducing a Western-style agriculture that is heavily reliant on livestock is neither practicable nor medically desirable for the Chinese people. These far-sighted policies have their beginnings, in large part, in a huge nationwide survey of the causes of all deaths in the whole of China between 1973 and 1975. Some 600,000 people worked on the survey, which covered 96 per cent of the population - then some 850,000,000 people. Authorised by Premier Zhou En-Lai in the last year of his life, when he himself had bladder cancer, it is one of the largest epidemiological studies ever done.
It was a visionary move. Zhou En-Lai commissioned the study because 'the first thing in battle is to know where your enemy is' - or, in this case, where particular types of cancers are occurring. The result was the Chinese Cancer Atlas, published in 1980. It maps the geography of each main type of malignant disease, and reveals huge and intriguing variations from one part of China to another in each of the major types of cancer. Regions just a few hundred miles apart sometimes show a tenfold difference in the mortality rates from liver cancer, for instance. Indeed, every type of cancer that is common in one part of China is much less common in some other part. This suggests that most of the risk could be avoided, if only we could understand the main reasons for these huge differences.
The Chinese Cancer Atlas has inspired a wide range of further studies into the causes and correlates of chronic disease in China, many in collaboration with researchers in the US, France or Britain. The latest study, and one of the largest, is described in a weighty monograph published simultaneously this week in China and in the West*. Entitled Diet, Life-style, and Mortaility in China, it describes 65 countries (3 per cent of the total) scattered all over the populated parts of the Chinese countryside. It is the result of a fertile collaboration over the past 10 years between two Chinese researchers, Chen Junshi of the Academy of Preventive Medicine in Beijing, and Li Junyao of the China Cancer Institute in Beijing, one American, Colin Campbell of Cornell University, one Briton, Richard Peto of the ICRF Cancer Studies Unit at the University of Oxford, and almost a hundred other colleagues in laboratories around the world.
The study describes the geographic variation across China not only for various cancers but also, for the first time, for other major causes of death (such as stroke, hypertensive heart disease, chronic lung disease and tuberculosis), using data from the original survey of 1973-75. What makes this new study so interesting is that, based on special surveys in 1983 and 1984 in 65 chosen counties, the researchers have tried to describe the way people live as well as how they die. One aim is to correlate the two, but the wider goal is simply descriptive - to provide information that will suggest new hypotheses and form the groundwork for further research.
To chart the geography of lifestyle, diet and body biochemistry, teams of researchers interviewed thousands of people, and collected endless samples of blood, urine and food from all over the country. The heart of the monograph is 367 maps, one for each aspect of death or of life that was studied. These maps illustrate the great variation between different counties not only in the deaths attributed to 82 specific diseases, but also in 150 aspects of the Chinese lifestyle - smoking, drinking, eating and reproduction - and in 135 biochemical attributes of blood and urine.
The organisation required to collect thousands of samples of blood, urine and food, store them safely, and eventually fly them for analysis to laboratories in Beijing and all around the world would be substantial even in the world's richest nations. To have accomplished this in a developing country is an astounding achievment. The survey team from the Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene in Beijing was well organised and entirely committed to the task - which involved obtaining blood and urine samples from people living in 130 villages scattered widely across China (including 'an oasis village near the Great Gobi Desert and a nomadic group on the Soviet border that required four days of travel over severe terrain from the nearest airport', says Campbell).
Chen Junshi at the nutrition institute was the linchpin, backed by provincial health survey teams all over China and scores of analytical laboratories in Beijing and all around the world that carried out assays free of charge. Chen met Campbell during an eight-month sabbatical visit to the Cornell Division of Nutritional Sciences in 1980, just as the Chinese Cancer Atlas was being published, and the striking heterogeneity of some of the cancer rates in the atlas led them to initiate what was originally thought of as a study just of nutrition and cancer. But Li, in Beijing, arranged for information on other causes of death to be provided, and Peto, in the Oxford ICRF cancer unit, devised practicable methods for blood samples to be analysed for dozens of different characteristics.
To save money, the team adopted a novel approach: pooling blood samples from particular groups of people - say, males in a particular village - and then doing on that pooled blood sample many different assays. This approach reduced the number of laboratory analyses that had to be done to work out the mean values in each country, but still allowed statistical checks on the quality and consistency of the data.
The study was incredibly good value for money. With only $2 million, over seven years, in hard cash, mostly from the National Institutes of Health, plus 600 person-year of labour, mostly contributed by the Chinese government, the team achieved what could probably not have been done anywhere else. Three other people, Feng Zulin in Beijing, Linda Youngman at Cornell and Jillian Boreham at the Oxford ICRF unit then spent years coordinating assays and data management, as well as nursing the monograph text through the labour of publication in side-by-side English and Chinese.
The amount of data is staggering - as well as the average results for the men and for the women in each village, there are some 100,000 between-county correlation coefficients to wade through and weigh up, for a start. Several positive correlations between the findings in different counties probably do reflect real cause-and-effect relationships - for example, stomach cancer with chronic infection by gastric bacterium, Helicobacter pylorum; liver cancer with chronic infection by the hepatitis B virus; lung cancer with cigarettes; intestinal cancer with chornic intestinal infection by Schistosomiasis japonicum ('snail fever'); oesophagus cancer with low vitamin C (from fresh fruit and vegetables); stroke with salt consumption; and heart muscle wastage ('Keshan disease') with severe selenium deficiency.
But the authors deliberately draw no formal conclusions, perhaps partly because they still differ somewhat in their philosophical perspectives. Peto rather distrusts many of the geographic correlations, and particulary distrusts multiple ones; he argues that the study's strength lies in its ability to inspire further, more tightly defined studies (some of which are already in progress) that can test particular ideas. Campbell, while agreeing on the need for additional studies, thinks that we may nevertheless be able to draw quite subtle inferences from multiple correlations between many interacting factors. 'The present series of surveys may offer a unique opportunity to consider causes of human cancer as they realistically exist within the complex human environment,' he says. 'The complexity of both diet and disease must be addressed at every opportunity.'
Campbell is attracted to the notion that 'the lowest risk for cancer is generated by the consumption of a variety of fresh plant products' - what he calls the 'plant nutrient hypothesis'. The first step towards cancer, he argues, is probably the result of exposure to something in the environment, such as hepatitis B virus, tobacco, aflatoxin or nitrosamines. But Campbell emphasises that nutrients can then modulate in various ways the subsequent development of the cancerous cells, and argues that a diet low in a variety of fresh plant foods generally increases the risk that a pathological cancer will actually emerge. If this is true, then the right diet might slow or even reverse pre-clinical stages of the cancer process.
East v West
The comparison of China and the West is particularly fascinating, says Campbell, because 'for most nutrients and many metabolic indicators, Chinese and Western values would appear to be at opposite ends of a spectrum'. The survey found, for instance, that fat generally accounted for only 6 to 25 per cent of dietary calories (the average being 15 per cent). Yet even the top of this range falls below the vast majority of Western intakes: in Britain, for example, the average is often about 45 per cent, and even a 'low-fat' British diet might average about 30 per cent calories from fat. Compared with Americans, Chinese people eat on average 22 per cent less protein and 64 per cent less fat, 75 per cent more soluble carbohydrate and 157 per cent more fibre.
The variety of ways of living within China, ranging from the nomadic herders of the Inner Mongolia Region to the suburban dwellers of Shanghai, also makes the survey especially interesting. Rice is the staple food of southern China, for instance, but in the northern half of this vast country people eat mainly wheat, corn or millet. In the weighed diet survey, salt intake ranged from 2 grams a day to a whopping 30 grams, with an average of 15 grams (Britons consume 8 grams a day on average, and are urged to reduce this to below 5.) Most Chinese never eat milk or dairy products, but the nomadic herders of the northwestern county of Tuoli obtain more than half their calories and three-quarters of their protein from this source. 'Epidemiologists need to be able to study large, persistent differences between the ways in which different people live and the ways in which they die,' says Peto; China - vast, heterogeneous - is an ideal laboratory.
The data amassed about the Chinese way of life underline the healthfulness of a diet rich in plant foods, says Campbell. For instance, the study seems to refute worries in the West that diets high in fibre might seriously interfere with the ability to absorb minerals such as iron. The Chinese with the highest intake of fibre also had the most iron in their blood. Even Chinese people who ate no meat showed no sign of anaemia, nor, according to other evidence, did they suffer inordinately from osteoporosis despite a lack of calcium-rich dairy products.
One of the most striking diet-related differences between East and West, however, is the level of cholesteral in the blood. A third of all deaths in middle age in Britain are from cholesterol-related diseases, many of which are the result of a diet rich in saturated animal fats. In Britain an average of between 40 and 45 per cent of dietary energy comes from fat, but in rural China in 1983 only 15 per cent did so, and virtually all that came from plant fats, not animal or dairy fats.
Diet for a healthy heart
As a result of this largely vegetarian, almost vegan diet in rural China, cholesterol levels are, by Western standards, extraordinarily low, and coronary heart disease is rarely recorded as a cause of death. 'The Chinese experience shows that most of Western coronary heart disease is unnecessary,' says Peto.
Interestingly, prospective studies by Chen Zhengming and his colleagues in Shanghai, in collaboration with the Oxford unit, have shown that there is still, even without China, a direct relationship between blood cholesterol level and the relative risk of coronary heart disease - the lower the levels the lower the risk, with no sign of a threshold. So as far as cholesterol levels are concerned, 'there is no such thing as a really normal Englishman', says Peto. (Importantly, the Shanghai study also tends to counter the notion that low levels of cholesterol could predispose to stroke).
Will the Chinese diet begin to alter along Western lines? So far, Western hamburger chains and the like have made a few inroads, and the findings of this and other surveys may help to create the political will to maintain some of the good aspects of the traditional Chinese diet towards not an American but perhaps a Japanese diet,' says Campbell - that is, not towards sugar and animal fat but towards fish and plant protein.
Perhaps, however, the most immediately important result of the study is that it has helped to draw the attention of the Chinese authorities to the vast epidemic of chronic disease and death that tobacco carries in its wake. Peto has made great efforts to spread the word. 'It has been important for everyone to understand that the predicted mortality from tobacco is real,' he says. 'In the 1950s, one popular slogan in China was 'Food, shelter and cigarettes for everybody' - that is, essentials and a few luxuries. If you were a revolutionary in the 1930s the least of your worries was that you might die in middle age of smoking.' But things have changed. China is at the beginning of a vast epidemic of smoking-related disease: 'As far as male cigarette smoking is concerned, China is now where the US was in 1945, and the pattern of rapidly increasing lung cancer death is going to be much the same,' says Peto. By the mid 1980s, male lung cancer had overtaken other cancers in China's cities.
Last year, the Chinese consumed almost a third of the world's cigarettes - with consumption having risen from 500 billion cigarettes in 1978 to 1600 billion just over a decade later. The rapid increase has taken China up to the worst male smoking rates for the US and Britain. In Britain and North America, however, cigarette smoking has decreased, and in the US only one-third of the men now smoke; in China, two-thirds do. 'We can learn from China about what low cholesterol can do,' says Peto, 'and China can learn from our experience with tobacco what cigarettes are going to do.'
Current trends suggest that there will be a rapid rise in the incidence of lung cancer among men in China - from 30,000 in 1975 to 900,000 in 2025. By that time, most men will have smoked cigarettes throughout adult life, (and the surveys of Weng Xin-Zhi, one of the first to warn seriously against smoking in China, show that in Beijing young women are now also beginning to do so). Demographic changes - a fourfold increase in the number of men old enough to be at risk of lung cancer - will be responsible for a fourfold increase in lung cancer numbers, while medical change - the delayed effects of the large increase in smoking - will be responsible for about a sevenfold increase. Chairman Mao did not believe in birth control, and there are now 420 million Chinese under 20. On present smoking patterns, about 150 or 200 million of these young people will become adult smokers and about a quarter or a third of those who smoke cigarettes regularly are eventually killed by the habit. So in total about 50 million of those now aged under 20 in China will eventually be killed by tobacco.
At the moment, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), also know as emphysema, is, with stroke, the commonest cause of death in middle age in China. No one really knows why it is so common - although air pollution from cooking over coal-fired open pots could be important. Smoking is a cause of most COPD in the West, but in China women die of COPD as often as men, even though few women smoke. 'What will smoking do on top of that high background?' says Peto. 'It will certainly produce an enormous amount of severe, permanent COPD disability, and might produce even more deaths from COPD than from lung cancer.'
We need to know much more about current and future smoking-related mortality in China. Three major studies will help to fill the gaps in our knowledge. One now underway, again in a collaboration between the Beijing Cancer Institute, the Beijing Nutrition Institute, Cornell University and the ICRF unit at Oxford, involves a retrospective assessment of the smoking habits of 600,000 married people who died between 1986 and 1988, by interviewing each of the surviving spouses. (Surviving spouses can also act as controls for the deaths of married people.) Another, in collaboration between the Shanghai Tumour Institute and the US National Cancer Institute, is a large local prospective study of smoking in central and suburban Shanghai and in the country near the city. The third, organised by the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine with funds from the World Bank, is a very large, nationwide prospective study of the smoking habits and other characteristics of half a million Chinese people, with follow-up to record the causes of all their deaths every five years for at least 20 years thereafter. 'Such studies will monitor first the current state, and then the evolution, of this great epidemic,' says Peto.
All sorts of other studies are also planned or in progress, direct or indirect offshoots of the original cancer atlas or the present survey of 65 counties .
Chen Min-Zhang, the Minister of Public Health, has said that when the health priorities become clear, China can act faster than other countries. But recent structural changes in China may make this more difficult. Communal health care may be replaced by 'self-financing' clinics with no economic interest in the prevention of disease or in the treatment or vaccination of those who cannot pay. Even the World Bank, in its 1990 report on the Chinese health sector, emphasises tha incentive-based systems that can increase overall cost-efficiency in other sectors of the Chinese economy may decrease it when it comes to the control of disease. This is true for communicable diseases, but it is even more true for non-communicable diseases, where cure is difficult and prevention may require social change.
But in the long run, Premier Zhou En-Lai's nationwide mortality survey probably did mark the beginning of a second stage in China that will help to control premature death from non-communicable diseases. Yet to achieve this goal China will need more descriptive studies such as Diet, Life-style and Mortality, more specific studies of individual causes of death and the establishment of a strong tradition of large, simple, properly randomised trials that can assess treatments reliability. It will also depend on finding ways to ensure a proper balance between the prevention and treatment of disease, whatever economic structures China ultimately adopts.
* * *
Work in progress: A growing tradition of strong research
The original Chinese Cancer Atlas and, more recently, the study of disease and lifestyle in China have already inspired scores of further specialised, in-depth studies, involving international teams of scientists and doctors. Below are just a few projects now underway.
Food and cancer Li Junyao of the China Cancer Institute in Beijing is collaborating with the American National Cancer Institute in a vitamin intervention trial involving more than 30,000 people. The idea is to see whether a combination of vitamins might help to slow or reverse precancerous lesions in the oesophagus. The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer has also worked with the Chinese Cancer Institute in a similar vitamin trial, and with Chen Junshi at the Nutrition Institute in Beijing on studies of precursors of nitrosamines in the diet.
Bones and dairy products Workers at Cornell University are collaborating with Chinese researchers in a study to see whether there really is no difference between the incidence of osteoporosis in Inner Mongolia, where nomadic herders consume a diet rich in dairy products, and in another region of China where no one eats dairy products.
Viruses, vaccines and cancer Researchers at the cancer institutes of Beijing and Qidong, with scientists from the WHO and the ICRF in Britain, are conducting a large, randomised trial of vaccination against hepatitis B virus for 60,000 infants in Qidong county. The idea is to find out what, if any, vaccination regimen is most effective in preventing liver cancer 40 years later.
Stroke, salt and high blood pressure Prospective studies have already shown that stroke in China is often driven by hypertension. High blood pressure may be common in China partly because salt consumption is so high. More information on how diet affects blood pressure is needed, but working to reduce salt in the storage and preparation of food may help to lower the incidence of stroke in the long run.
Meanwhile, randomised trials of 7,000 stroke patients are getting underway in a nationwide network of hospitals coordinated through the Fu Wai Hospital in Beijing. The goal is to find out whether drugs that lower blood pressure reduce the risk of having a further stroke, even if the patient has blood pressure in the supposedly 'normal' range.
Scores of other studies are also planned or in progress, including a complete repetition by Chen, Campbell, Li and Peto of the entire 65-county survey.
* Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China, a study of the characteristics of 65 Chinese counties, by Chen Junshi, T Colin Campbell, Li Junyao and Richard Peto, is jointly published by Oxford University Press (95 Pounds Pounds), Cornell University Press and the People's Medical Publishing House, Beijing, 1990.
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Mon Mar 23, 2009 4:36 pm
This, rather, reports on a very significant health disadvantage to meat-based diets:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... death.html
"Women who consumed the most red meat – 66 grams (2.3 ounces) per 1000 calories – were roughly 36% more likely to die than women who ate the least red meat – 9.1 grams (0.3 ounces). For men, a similar difference in red meat consumption, upped death rates by 31%."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... death.html
"Women who consumed the most red meat – 66 grams (2.3 ounces) per 1000 calories – were roughly 36% more likely to die than women who ate the least red meat – 9.1 grams (0.3 ounces). For men, a similar difference in red meat consumption, upped death rates by 31%."
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by KrystynaN on Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:06 am
They discussed that study on the news last night. Unfortunately, they simply recommended switching from red meat to chicken and fish as they found that people who consume white meat had a higher chance of fighting off cancers, so the animals dont really win in this case . 
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Sat Mar 28, 2009 7:05 pm
Anti-cancer benefits of fruit and veg are underlined
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 55349.html
I don't know how much weight to put on the salicylate argument, but it's interesting just the same.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 55349.html
I don't know how much weight to put on the salicylate argument, but it's interesting just the same.
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Identical bone density in vegan and meat-eating women
by dsteele on Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:18 pm
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by denise on Thu Apr 16, 2009 8:02 pm
Interesting. And although nuns probably spend considerable time indoors meditating, I'll bet they get a lot more sun there - & thus vitamin D - than most Canadians.
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by chinadev on Sat Apr 18, 2009 2:37 am
Thanks for this post.
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Re: Health Advantages to Plant Based Diets
by dsteele on Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:24 pm
A new meta-analysis concludes that a diet high in meat increases your risk of Type 2 diabetes by 17%. Eating a lot of so-called "red" meat was associated with a slightly higher increase (21%), and a high intake of processed meats increases your risk by a whopping 41%.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v1h7374736t010t0/
"The estimated summary RR and 95% confidence interval of type 2 diabetes comparing high vs low intake was 1.17 (95% CI 0.92–1.48) for total meat, 1.21 (95% CI 1.07–1.38) for red meat and 1.41 (95% CI 1.25–1.60) for processed meat. There was heterogeneity amongst the studies of total, red and processed meat which, to some degree, was explained by the study characteristics."
The UBC library tells me i can download the full article but, so far, Diabetologia is not cooperating.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v1h7374736t010t0/
"The estimated summary RR and 95% confidence interval of type 2 diabetes comparing high vs low intake was 1.17 (95% CI 0.92–1.48) for total meat, 1.21 (95% CI 1.07–1.38) for red meat and 1.41 (95% CI 1.25–1.60) for processed meat. There was heterogeneity amongst the studies of total, red and processed meat which, to some degree, was explained by the study characteristics."
The UBC library tells me i can download the full article but, so far, Diabetologia is not cooperating.
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