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From a set of negatives I bought in a Portland Oregon craft shop. Photographer and subjects unknown.
The study that gave this book its title was inspired by a survey initiated in the '70s by Chou EnLai as he was dying of cancer. Ninety-six% of the population (880 million people) participated in 2,400 counties in China. The survey included death rates for four dozen different diseases including 12 different kinds of cancers. The resulting atlas implied that cancer was a disease of environmental conditions and lifestyle rather than genetics. The counties with the highest occurrences of some cancers were 100 times greater than in counties with the lowest occurrences.
In the '80s, to further study these results, the author, T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional biochemist at Cornell University, and a handful of other notable scientists from both the United States and China, embarked on an in depth study of the dietary habits of the Chinese in correlation with disease. Thus was born the China Study. Their findings were startling and are the basis of discussion for the rest of the book.
The study showed that high cholesterol was a prevalent indicator of numerous diseases, not just heart disease. More significantly those with very low levels of cholesterol subsisted on a predominantly plant based diet. They were basically vegans. Poor vegans who died of nutritional inadequacy and poor sanitation while the diseases of affluence, the ones that scare us most, were chiefly a result of extravagant living, (but not as extravagant as in the US). The study compared people of the same age so does not mean that poor people died young before they got a chance to get the other diseases.
The conclusions of the scientists were that a high carbohydrate diet of unrefined plant based whole foods, resulted in much more fiber consumed and many plant based antioxidants providing a host of benefits. While consuming diets high in protein and fat transfers the calories into storage as fat rather than into body heat. (The only reason people lost weight on the famous high protein, meat based Atkins diet was because they were severely limiting their calorie intake to 33% less than normal. Over half of those on the Atkins diet suffered from constipation, bad breath, headaches and a 53% increase in calcium excreted in the urine. Plus many more health problems down the road.)
The book does not stop at the results of the China Study alone, but cross references the results with a host of other compelling American studies supporting research on breast, prostate and colon cancers, diabetes, obesity, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, kidney stones and Alzheimer's. These studies all point in the same general direction. Diet is more important than genes or environmental toxins in the development of these diseases. An animal based diet is what gets the bad genes to fully express themselves, while a plant based diet can minimize the impact of toxins. Consuming a high fat, high protein, animal based diet increases the rate at which toxins bind to DNA to form products that cause cancer.
It is further revealed that cows milk (casein) is a significant factor in the development of cancers especially prostate cancer and is linked to Type 1 diabetes. As one who is lactose intolerant, growing up in a country that doesn't consume milk products, I've always been suspicious of the myth that milk was necessary for bone health. So what were we thinking to feed human babies milk that is meant to put 1000 pounds on a calf within the first few months of life? According to research, the reason our body doesn't absorb enough calcium is because animal protein increases metabolic acids and this condition actually leaches calcium from bones. Only 5 to 6% of our diet needs to be protein to replace what is excreted as amino acids, not 35% as recommended by industry driven government dietary guidelines. The manipulation of such dietary guidelines accounted for in the book.
The role of big industry, i.e. diary producers, meat producers and big ag in protecting and promoting their product translates to considerable ability to influence government policy with industry driven science while suppressing inconvenient facts, in much the same fashion as the politics of global warming has been obfuscated.
The last third of the book describes how reductionist science is in the habit of studying only one element at a time without regard to how elements react with each other in the environment of the body. The Western habit of isolating just one ingredient in order to derive conclusions about its affect on the body, only makes sense if you plan to use pharmaceuticals to run your body; this lack of context is misleading and confuses the public.
Western doctors are also only peripherally trained in nutrition, as it affects drugs, so are not going to prescribe a diet based treatment for disease despite evidence that a plant based diet can reverse the symptons of disease. Those mavericks that do research diet treatments risk being marginalized and their careers truncated. Campbell describes accounts of such from his own career and those of other doctors doing this work. (He and his colleagues eat a vegan diet and recommends such because it is simpler than focusing on what you can't eat and because he believes the benefits are increased with a zero animal product diet than with the 10% actually consumed by many of those he studied.)
So in the end it is not only the Western diet that is killing us, but Western reductionist thinking and Western propaganda-driven-capitalism. And then there is my pet theory — identity politics. America doesn't want to be taking its diet cues from a Chinese peasant; as Campbell points out, Americans believe that our animal based, protein rich diet is the best in the world and that it is somehow unAmerican to think otherwise. Plus Americans like to eat it so no study is going to change that; annoying vegans being the fanatical exceptions that prove the rule.
We did change our diet though. I am happy to return to my Chinese and Thai lactose free roots with a tiny bit of meat while Catherine again embraces vegetarianism with some cheese. This book was recommended to C by her boss, a big brain science and numbers person, in response to the news of her cancer.
home studies; Yoga Anatomy
at Pensacola Beach Condominiums, Ranunculus
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That's me on the couch. Sorry, I can't remember who took this photo.
Indiana Memorial Union
IU Bloomington
Circa 1988
Meer snelle tekeningen gemaakt met inkt. Gewoon een beetje houdingen enzo oefenen, dat vind ik leuk om te doen. De schets rechtsonderin heeft me aangezet om studie 5 en 6 te maken, eigenlijk.
Color Digital
Lifestyle commercial shoot. Product is a Compaq laptop... and maybe a nice, comfy couch? :)
One Travelite 750w/s head with a softbox on camera left over scene, silver reflector on camera right.
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Jul14Tu
Studying for Friday.
First day back in the office after vacation. Nothing spectacular. We had a drummer at practice this evening, but even that was made un-spectacular by people's crankiness.
Then John called. Husband talked to him at length about ... everything. He literally started with Adam and went all the way to the Cross. They got to the point where John has to decide who he's living for, and said good night. Husband is convinced he's saved. I say he's at least very close. Good evening.
This very cooperative Damselfly would occasionally fly on me, landing on my hat, shoulder, etc. However, he would return to his perch and I could resume my sketch.
Square: symbolizes logic
Circle: symbolizes emotions
Right & left hemispheres of our brains...
Which ever might be more predominant in each of us, let's just be certain of one thing: that we look into matters through the eyes of Love.
Love doesn't imply that logic is absent, as it doesn't imply that always sweet words will be spoken.
Love is rather a quality that carries knowledge of ourselves, understanding for others, honesty, passion and devotion.
I study by copying key points from text books and lectures onto paper together with colourful pictures. It's a pity my studying is more sophisticated than my grades!