Nutritarian Principle: Prevention is Treatment

In Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat To Live, on pages 83-85, is the best summary of the “China Project” I’ve ever seen. The China Project is the main study reviewed in the book The China Study. It’s the largest study of diet and health ever done.

The China Study is a famous book by Dr. Colin Campbell, a nutritional researcher now retired from Cornell University, and his son Thomas Campbell. It reviews years of correlative research, culminating a study where Dr. Campbell was the lead researcher commonly called The China Study.

This study was sponsored by Cornell University, the USDA and the Chinese Ministry of Health, and reviewed the health outcomes of 850 million people in China, based on what they ate and the diseases they developed. Solid stuff with surprising results that the USDA never expected.

The USDA hoped it would justify ever-expanding markets of U.S. produced meat and agricultural technology. After all, aren't we in the U.S. the healthiest population ever, with all the meat, milk and cheese in our diet; we're the healthiest/wealthiest in the world, right? It did the opposite, so the USDA largely ignored the results from a practical standpoint (I think some people just hoped it would go away).

The study found as animal source calories decreased to 10% and under, cancer almost disappeared. So did diabetes, heart disease and autoimmune diseases. Eggs and milk were nutritionally about the same as meat. Even relatively small added amounts of any kind of meat, milk and cheese significantly increased disease, and real reductions in disease did not take place until animal source calories dropped way below what the great majority of people in the U.S. as well as other western countries eat.

Dr. Campbell even proclaims casein, milk protein, as the most cancer-causing food on the planet.

The main point is, the China Project showed these diseases don’t have to even start. Curing and treating these can be all but totally unnecessary.

Now, if this is true, it has vast significance. It means cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other diseases can be eliminated.

Of course, it follows that if this is so, we can live longer, healthier, more productive lives.

From my experience with this, I believe it can happen. It will happen, when we’re ready for it.

And if animal source calories are the cause, and drastic reductions are almost totally preventive, then treating these diseases becomes potentially much simpler. Treatment that removes the cause are also the cure.

In other words, cutting out the foods causing these in the first place, and adding foods that the lack of which is a cause, can bring "miraculous" results. It's not necessarily so, but it could be, and only experience with trying this could prove if that's so. That’s what Dr. Taylor prescribes for every single patient, and he’s had some amazing results. So does Dr. Fuhrman, also with amazing results. We know from personal experience it works just that way.

Going from proven prevention to proven cure is a leap that's easy to make, and a connection that you can experience personally, as we have, or as clinicians treating patients, as have Dr. Fuhrman and Dr. Taylor.

That's not enough proof to totally revolutionalize medical practice and turn our medical and food culture around. Evidence based medicine sets a high threshold of double blind, peer reviewed studies, published and agreed as to their conclusions. Or, you could have population studies that are repeated and test various aspects of the hypothesis, and are similarly peer reviewed and published.

Couldn’t say it’s true.

Unless it works, over and over and over again, until it becomes so obvious that only fools could disagree.

My wife is cured. That's enough for me. But only as others join me and the thousands of other followers, practitioners, and believers in Dr. Fuhrman, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Campbell and others who live this way, will it become obvious.

One of the most powerful principles I have come to understand about nutritarian eating is that the most universal prevention is to eat right, and the most universal - and long term effective - treatment of most disease is . . . . drum roll . . . . wait for it . . . . I know this is going to be hard to believe . . . . to eat right.

I think Dr. Fuhrman said it best, that based on his experience this is so obvious, how can it not grow? Of course, it all depends if it really works. And it's obvious based on his experience and medical practice, it really does.

From what I've read and experienced, I think so too.

That could take many years, or just a few. How many just might be the subject of a future article . . . .