This book was recommended to me by someone within the vegan community, and while I do not follow any particular eating regimes (I buy local as often as possible and avoid fast foods and sodas, but that’s about it) I am open to other eating lifestyles so long as you continue to provide your body the proper types and quantities of nutrients that it needs. I was excited to read The China Study because I know a lot of vegans swear by it, but I quickly lost my enthusiasm less than a third of the way through and it took me another 3 months to finish the book.

Looking at the book as a whole, there were three main points that I agreed with:

1. I absolutely agree with Campbell that before turning to pharmaceuticals and surgeries to fix problems you should try to cure yourself based on natural means, primarily through changing your lifestyle and/or your diet. If you are overweight and find yourself struggling to lose weight, you should try using the stairs over the elevator or eating veggies and hummus as a snack over potato chips before you turn to a prescribed drug.

2. Though it kills me to say this, there can be corruption in anything and those few corrupt individuals can taint any organization that may be primarily good. We also live in a capitalistic society where profits are a major driver of any business, and it is up to consumers to keep companies accountable. I am a natural resources scientist and while I don’t deal with many of the industries that Campbell named, I do deal with many different parts of agriculture. I truly believe that scientists should try to stay unbiased in their research (although as humans it is impossible to be 100% unbiased), and I want to believe that the nutritional information recommended to us is healthy for us.

3. Reductionism science I consider to be bad science (Campbell’s example was attributing the health effect of a hamburger solely from the saturated fat in the meat). One part of something never equals the whole, only the sum of the parts does.

But, I also found several troubling things:

1. As a scientist, I don’t believe Campbell interpreted all of the scientific studies he used correctly, but instead skewed them to fit his agenda of removing all animal products from your diet. I also think he could have done more during the China Study, and other reviewers have also pointed out the flaws in this particular study. Campbell also did not sufficiently explain to me how he could take results from Chinese people and directly apply them to anyone anywhere in the world – I do not think diet alone is the only reason why American health is different than Chinese health. If you scroll through the reviews until you find Lauren’s (May 2, 2010), I think she best stated this thought:

“Campbell says in his book that through this study we can look at correlation, but not causation, and he is right. There are way too many variables in this study to come even close to proving anything - especially not a diet as specific as Campbell is suggesting. The diets of the people in China are so dissimilar to ours that it is like comparing apples and oranges. There is no way to prove that the Chinese are healthier because they eat less animal products - it could be because they eat more fish, or because they consume less gluten, or because they don't consume as many sugary foods, or even because they eat more seaweed.” Please see her review to read the whole thing.

2. The most worrisome part, however, was the lack of evidence Campbell included. He explained a lot why certain proteins found in a handful of animal products were bad, but then he applied that to all animal products and generalized the benefits of plant-based foods. For instance, Campbell only looked at milk protein and applied that to all animal products, instead of looking at how animal products are both similar and different. I think he would have made a much more compelling argument if he had spent more time going into detail over trashing the health industry and the animal industry.

3. At multiple points in the book Campbell brought up specific times where his ideas were different than everyone else’s, and these were extremely hard for me to read because he took the stance that it was always entirely everyone else’s fault and never his own. If this was truly the case, that is fine, but Campbell did not fully explain anything so that was not how it came across.

4. Unlike what the title claims, this is not the most comprehensive study of nutrition since Campbell blatantly ignored all but a few variables for a particular culture and did not do extensive research. This may be the most comprehensive study TO DATE, but it could be vastly improved (and perhaps this needs to be on a larger scale with similar studies done across different cultures).

Finally, the book really wasn’t about the China Study, which I would have loved to learn more about, but instead the author’s belief that a vegan lifestyle is the healthiest lifestyle out there and that all big industries (particularly the dairy industry and pharmaceuticals) are scheming liars solely focused on profits. This book did not convince me to drastically change my diet (as Campbell intended) but instead to pay more attention to the information I am receiving. I do want to reread this book in a shorter amount of time and take more notes, because I am sure I missed things over the long stretch of time I first read it. I will try to update this review as I do this.

I think the best moral of this book is to never take words as fact and do your own research. Besides, there are always more than one side to a story and it is the reader’s responsibility to view information through a critical thinking lens. I would caution anyone who reads this book not to switch to a certain diet simply because someone else told you, but to do your own research and chose a diet based on your own values and health. Campbell's father died from a heart attack, and I think that experience has strongly shaped Campbell's beliefs and those are what come through in The China Study.