Health Reasons For Going Vegan

“You need to know the truth about food, and why eating the right way can save your life.” T. Colin Campbell PhD

Last year I read a book the full title of which is China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health by T. Colin Campbell PhD. Drawing on the project findings in rural China, but going far beyond those findings, The China Study presents an enormous amount of scientific evidence which shows the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The report also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and opportunistic scientists. The New York Times has recognized the study (China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project) as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” and the “most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease.”

The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell. “I propose to do nothing less than redefine what we think of as good nutrition. You need to know the truth about food, and why eating the right way can save your life.”

There are over 750 references in this book, and the vast majority of them are primary sources of information, including hundreds of scientific publications from other researchers that point the way to less cancer, less heart disease, fewer strokes, less obesity, less diabetes, less autoimmune disease, less osteoporosis, less Alzheimer’s, less kidney stones and less blindness.

Some of the findings, published in the most reputable scientific journals, show that:

• Dietary change can enable diabetic patients to go off their medication.

• Heart disease can be reversed with diet alone.

• Breast cancer is related to levels of female hormones in the blood, which are determined by the food we eat

Eating Animals Is Unhealthy

I was shocked by what I read in The China Study and also angry. If what it said was true we had been lied to and those lies were costing us our health and even our lives. The truth about nutrition has been known for years it seems, but the meat and dairy companies successfully obscured this knowledge.

In some ways they are no better than tobacco companies. They fund university research and they don’t fund it for the truth to come out about their product. Those research papers are published in respectable journals even though the academics have a conflict of interest. They also powerfully lobby the government, again just like the tobacco companies,

Having read the facts about animal based foods in “The China Study” I followed up with another one called Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure by Dr.Caldwell B. Esselstyn. This book also provides a great deal of evidence that eating meat and other animal products is a deadly practice.

Dr.Esselstyn goes so far as to show that giving up this type of food can not only prevent heart disease but can actually reverse it. Amazingly plaque lined blood vessels shed the plaque and become patent again after some months on a plants only diet. The arteriogram images show that this is not fantasy.

Having read those facts what would you do? We decided to give up eating meat and almost all animal derived foods right away.

That was over 13 months ago and we are getting better at it all the time. We like the food we eat and we feel healthier. Charles had been feeling unwell in a general way for some time and he had also begun to suffer with arthritis in his hands. The arthritis hasn’t gone away completely but it hasn’t got any worse either and is less painful than it was.

We can’t tell whether our arteries are now clean as whistles but we are sure they must be improving and that our chances of stroke or heart attack must be reduced. This is important to us because we are both on the wrong side of 60.

Does Milk In The Diet Prevent Osteoporosis?

Look at the chart below and notice where the most hip fractures occur. They are in the countries where the most milk, cheese and butter are part of the diet. New Zealand’s main industry is milk production. Milk and its products provide its main income and NZ citizens have grown up on a diet rich in the stuff. Citizens of the United States are also great milk drinkers. In these countries children are encouraged to drink milk every day and in NZ and the UK free milk is provided for school children.

Notice that the Asian countries where milk is not drunk and which is not tolerated by most after infancy, have he least number of hip fractures.

Now please ask your MP why we are encouraged to drink milk for our bones?

Why Milk and Milk Products Cause Osteoporosis

Milk causes the blood to become acidic, as do other animal foods, when the blood becomes acidic the body tries to restore the alkalinity and it dooes this by pulling calcium out of our bones, which weakens them.

We just do not need milk, it is designed for babies and cows milk for baby cows. Many populations are unable to digest milk after infancy. They do not suffer from osteoporosis. The countries with the worst incidence of osteoporosis are the milk producing countries ie New Zealand, Australia and the US. [Source: The China Study]

You only need to eat a minimal amount of calcium each day, the amount you would eat in a plant based diet, to get all the calcium needed. Risk of getting a hip fracture is highest for those consuming the most calcium. Milk consumption doesn’t protect against osteoporosis. [Source]