IN BRIEF

• The Facts:

  Doctor Colin Campbell, author of the "China Study" discovered that animal protein (casein) can accelerate and "turn on" cancer, while plant based protein has the opposite effect.

• Reflect On:

  Why have our food and nutritional guidelines been completely false? How is this possible? It really highlights the connections between corporations and government.

“What I did during the early part of my career was nothing more than what traditional science would suggest. I made the observation that diets presumably higher in animal protein were associated with liver cancer in the Philippines. When coupled with the extraordinary report from India showing that casein fed to experimental rats at the usual levels of intake dramatically promoted liver cancer, it prompted my 27-year-long study The China Project, of how this effect worked. We did dozens of experiments to see if this was true and, further, how it worked.” – Dr Colin Campbell, (China Study)

advertisement - learn more

I recently published an article titled, “Scientist Explains How Cow’s Milk Leeches Calcium From Your Bones & Makes Them Weaker.” It explains how casein, the protein found within the milk of a cow, creates a condition within the body called metabolic acidosis. From this place, the body compensates by sucking calcium from the bones. How ironic is that? In that article, I go into the science of how the milk from a cow doesn’t really seem to be meant for a human. You can read more about that in the article linked above where I go into more detail.

The science comes from Dr. Colin Campbell, an American biochemist who specializes in the effect of nutrition on long term health. He is Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, he has a Ph.D. in nutrition, biochemistry, and microbiology. Scholars like Campbell and their work is so important in a world of medical education and academia that almost completely ignores nutrition. Most of our nutritional education starts in primary school and is completely designed by the big food companies, not science. But times are changing, and so are food guides. Take Canada for example, who recently re-vamped their food guide in favour of a whole foods plant-based diet. This is in large part due to the work of Dr. Campbell.

Campbell documented all of this in what’s become known as “The China Study.” He first started off in the Philippines, where he and his colleagues were giving protein to malnourished children. He did not expect to find that animal protein might be connected to cancer and emphasized in the video below that it wasn’t easy bringing this information back to his colleagues, especially for himself having grown up on a dairy farm.  He first noticed this from the work he did in the Philippines, and again it was startling because they were observing the exact opposite of what they were going to the Philippines to do.  They wanted to give malnourished children even more protein but then noticed that more protein (animal protein in dairy) seemed to be correlated with higher cancer rates, especially in children.

Casein is the most relevant chemical carcinogen ever identified, make no mistake about it. – Campbell, taken from the video below.

Campbell went beyond mere correlation and found using animal studies he conducted that casein actually “turns on” cancer. When animals were fed a diet high in casein, the cancer increased dramatically. What’s even more interesting is when they decided to do a comparison using plant protein.

What we learned along the way is that we could turn on and turn off cancer. Turn it on by increasing casein consumption, turn it off by decreasing it or replacing it with plant protein. That was a really exciting thing that we could take nutrition and turn cancer on and off, I mean that, that was pretty startling. – Campbell

“It’s Been Ignored, It’s Been Ignored For 200 Years.”

As mentioned above, doctors and medical professionals are not trained in nutrition and they practically know nothing about it. This is why when this research is presented by Campbell to many, it’s almost deemed as unbelievable, and it continues to go ignored. Nutrition is huge and should be the main focus of medical education and a main focus of treatment when it comes to treating several diseases. Unfortunately, doctors are trained to prescribe drugs. This is terrible and it’s one of the reasons multiple diseases do not disappear, and why rates continue to increase every single year.  That being said, no doubt there are also other factors involved. Dr. Asseem Malhotra, a well-known Doctor in Britain had some choice words to say in front of the European Parliment about modern-day medical education and overall knowledge doctors possess. He’s one of many who continues to emerge and speak out, staying that we have “an epidemic of misinformed doctors.” You can read more about that here. This was quite refreshing.

Things are indeed changing, and more doctors are becoming educated in areas where they should be educated in. This, on the part of the doctor, requires self-education.

All the while people in the cancer community have paid almost no attention to nutrition, or if from time to time some information comes up, they discard it, so it’s never considered. Instead they want to work with cancer in other ways, they want to see how chemotherapy works, the want to kill cancer cells, they want to do radiation and so forth, but they don’t want to give any attention to diet. – Campbell

Related CE Article: Plant-Based Protein VS. Protein From Meat: Which One Is Better For Your Body?

“When it comes to getting protein in your diet, meat isn’t the only option. Mounting evidence shows that reducing meat and increasing plant-based protein is a healthier way to go. A diet with any type of meat raises the risk of heart disease and cancer, when compared with a vegetarian diet.”  – Harvard Medical School (source)

The protein contained in whole plant foods is connected to disease prevention. According to Michelle McMacken, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician and an assistant professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine:

“[T]he protein found in whole plant foods protects us from many chronic diseases. There is no need to track protein intake or use protein supplements with plant-based diets; if you are meeting your daily calorie needs, you will get plenty of protein. The longest-lived people on Earth, those living in the “Blue Zones,” get about 10% of their calories from protein, compared with the U.S. average of 15-20%.”

The Takeaway

Where has our idea of nutrition come from? It’s great to see that nutritional awareness is increasing, and minds are opening. Diet is one of the hardest topics to discuss with people because we as a collective have clearly developed habits that do not benefit us, and also cause harm to the planet, ourselves and other sentient beings.

We’ve been trained to believe that certain foods are required, like the milk from a cow, when clearly, it’s starting to become obvious that they are not required at all. (See article linked at the beginning of this one).

The greatest lesson here is self-education and discovery, and to recognize that nutrition is a key player in our health and can be a key nutritional factor for many diseases. Food is medicine, and it’s time we start treating it that way as we did before the introduction of synthetic chemical education.

Perhaps it’s time to consider nutritional changes in order to combat and prevent disease as a human collective.