The China Study Read Online Free PDF Page A

illness, despondence and confusion about their health and what
they can do to protect it.
    Americans are confused, and I will tell you why The answer, dis-
c u s s e d in Part IV, has to do with how health information is generated
and communicated and who controls such activities. Because I have
been behind the scenes generating health information for so long, I
have seen what really goes on-and I'm ready to tell the world what is
wrong with the system. The distinctions between government, indus-
try, science and medicine have become blurred. The distinctions be-
t w e e n making a profit and promoting health have become blurred. The
problems with the system do not come in the form of Hollywood-style
corruption. The problems are much more subtle, and yet much more
dangerous. The result is massive amounts of miSinformation, for which
average American consumers pay twice. They provide the tax money to
do the research, and then they proVide the money for their health care
to treat their largely preventable diseases.
    This story, starting from my personal background and culminating
in a new understanding of nutrition and health, is the subject of this
book. Six years ago at Cornell University, I organized and taught a new
elective course called Vegetarian Nutrition. It was the first such course
on an American university campus and has been far more successful
than I could have imagined. The course focuses on the health value of a
plant-based diet. After spending my time at MIT and Virginia Tech, then
coming back to Cornell thirty years ago, I was charged with the task
of integrating the concepts and principles of chemistry, biochemistry,
physiology and toxicology in an upper-level course in nutrition.
After four decades of scientific research, education and policy making
at the highest levels in our society, I now feel I can adequately integrate
these disciplines into a cogent story That's what I have done for my
most recent course, and many of my students tell me that their lives are
changed for the better by the end of the semester. That's what I intend
to do for you; I hope your life will be changed as well.

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     I -
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THE CHINA STUDY

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     Problems We Face,
     Solutions We Need
     "He who does not know Jood, how can he
     understand the diseases oj man?"
     -Hippocrates, the father of medicine (460--357 B. C.)

ON A GOLDEN MORNING IN 1946, when summer was all tuckered out and
fall wanted to be let in, all you could hear on my family's dairy farm was
quiet. There was no growl from cars driving by or airplanes burning
trails overhead. Just quiet. There were the songbirds, of course, and the
cows, and the roosters who would chime in once in a while, but these
noises merely filled out the quiet, the peace.
Standing on the second floor of our bam, with the immense brown
doors gaping open, allowing the sun to soak through, I was a happy
twelve-year-old. I had just finished a big country breakfast of eggs, ba-
con, sausage, fried potatoes and ham with a couple of glasses of whole
milk. My mom had cooked a fantastic meal. I had been working up my
appetite since 4:30 A.M., when I had gotten up to milk the cows with my
father Tom and my brother Jack.
My father, then forty-five, stood with me in the quiet sun. He opened
a fifty-pound sack of alfalfa seed, dumped all the tiny seeds on the

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THE CHINA STUDY
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wooden barn floor in front of us and then opened a box containing fine
black powder. The powder, he explained, was bacteria that would help
the alfalfa grow. They would attach themselves to the seeds and become
part of the roots of the growing plant throughout its life. Having had
only two years of formal education, my father was proud of knowing
that the bacteria helped the alfalfa convert nitrogen from the air into
protein. The protein, he explained, was good for the cows that would
eventually eat it.