The China Study is the most extensive research study done.  In the early 1970s, the premier of China, Chou EnLai, was dying from cancer. Premier Chou initiated a national study to be done about cancer.  This survey was the most ambitious undertaking.  This survey involved 880 million (96%) of the population at the time.  There were 650,000 workers involved in the project.

The end result was a color-coded atlas showing where certain types of cancer were prevalent and the regions with little cancer.  This atlas made clear the localized geographic areas and variations of cancer rates.  Interestingly, this atlas showed that the areas with the highest cancer rate was occurring in the population where 87% of the people were of the same ethnic group, the Han people.  This study brought up some interesting questions:

• Why was cancer higher in some regions and not others?
• Why were the differences so incredibly large?
• Why was overall cancer, in the aggregate, less common in China than in the U.S.?

A world-class team of scientists was assembled.  A decision was made to make the study as comprehensive as possible.  When they were done they had more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between lifestyle, diet and disease variables.

This was a perfect opportunity to test the principles that were discovered in the animal experiments.

Diet was one critical aspect to be reviewed.  The diet of the China Study was of most importance because it provided a rare opportunity to study health-related effects of a mostly plant-based diet. The findings were standardized for a body weight of 143 pounds.  Other standardizations included: calories intake, fat % of calories, dietary fiber of g/day, total protein g/day, animal protein % of calories, and total iron mg/day.

In every category, there was a massive difference seen between the Chinese and American diet.  The Chinese have a much higher overall calorie intake, less fat, less protein, mostly from eating less animal products, more fiber, and much more iron consumed.

In the next posting we will take a closer look at the dietary findings in the China Study.

Notation:  As a nurse who has worked in the home health sector in the past, I have worked in areas of Arkansas where the cancer rate was high in certain regional areas.  In one county, the cancer rate was so high that the Health Department helped us investigate possible causes.  In that case, the area was high in radon in the soil.