Library Journal
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Humans should eat only the whole food, plant-based diet for which their bodies are designed. All animal products and/or added fats are bad. Repeat. Tell a few interesting stories, oversimplify a few biological concepts, and repeat. This sequel to the author's extremely popular The China Study is more a personal examination of political and social constraints on Campbell's diet crusade than true science. It should be no surprise that the coauthor Jacobson is a marketing expert. Don Hagan gives a beautifully clear reading. Verdict Readers looking for "scientific" support for radical diet choices will probably love this book; however, a more skeptical approach might be safer.-I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Campbell (Emeritus, Nutritional Biochemistry/Cornell Univ.; The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, 2005) elaborates on the themes of his earlier book and the 2011 documentary film Forks Over Knives. In 1980, the author began a study with Chinese scientists to investigate how the transformation of the Chinese diet in the aftermath of the stringencies of the Cultural Revolution affected the health of a sample of 100 Chinese families living in two different rural counties. A comparison with mortality statistics 20 years earlier showed a significant increase with the introduction of more protein in their diets. While admitting that these conclusions (taken from the original China study) are based on correlations and do not establish causality, Campbell does base his dietary recommendations on those conclusions. He claims that the adoption of a whole-foods, plant-based lifestyle can prevent 95 percent of all cancers, nearly all heart attacks and strokes, and even reverse severe heart disease. The author cautions against the use of dietary supplements and multivitamins and rejects the potential of targeted drugs as well as traditional medical remedies such as chemotherapy and radiation. He attempts to buttress his conclusions by referring to experiments conducted on rats in which the incidence of cancer was significantly higher for those fed a diet high in animal protein. Campbell dismisses the failure of medical and scientific journals to publish papers that he has written over the years, attributing this to biased peer review and financial pressure from doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, and dairy and livestock producers. While his earlier book had impressive sales figures, he complains that the media has failed to showcase his work. A spirited but unconvincing defense of Campbell's earlier work.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

According to Campbell (emer., Cornell Univ.; The China Study, Jun'05, 42-5895), plant-based whole food is the nutritional elixir for maintaining health. The noted nutrition researcher criticizes the current scientific reductionist mind-set, along with the medical system that focuses on disease rather than health, and provides evidence that proper nutrition is basic to fitness. A diet that excludes fats and sugars and is low in meat-based proteins is the holistic recipe to avoid cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Plant-based foods contain the antioxidants essential for health that are absent in meat products. Vegetable food sources serve as the enzymes for the myriad combinations and permutations of chemical reactions that are part of metabolism. Evolution has fine-tuned the body to select its raw materials from the ingested diet. Unfortunately, profits drive industries to fashion food tastes; medicine treats symptoms but not underlying causes; and science pursues molecular solutions while ignoring the whole picture of the functioning body. Campbell emphatically and emotionally argues for a shift from the reductionist paradigm of science to a broader, holistic view of how food affects the body. The reader may well be converted to a vegetarian diet after digesting the book's contents. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. R. A. Hoots emeritus, Sacramento City College