professor t. colin campbell, Ph.D is a lecturer and a researcher at cornell university (note that cornell happens to have one of the US best nutrition programs). he admits that he used to mock vegetarians and think little of their claims that dropping meat from your menu can have a transforming effect on your health. he's a guy with 40 plus years of experience in the field, tied to one of the world's best academic departments of nutrition. I'm guessing he knows what his talking about.

anyone read his book the china study?

it's "the most comprehensive study of nutrition and diet ever concluded". wow. that sounds promising. and ambitious.... pasting from wikipedia:

The book examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and illnesses such as cancers of the breast, prostate, and large bowel, diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis, degenerative brain disease, and macular degeneration. The "China study" referred to in the title is the China Project, a "survey of death rates for twelve different kinds of cancer for more than 2,400 counties and 880 million (96%) of their citizens" conducted jointly by Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine over the course of twenty years.

The authors introduce and explain the conclusions of scientific studies, which have correlated animal-based diets with disease. The authors conclude that diets high in protein, particularly animal protein (such as casein in bovine milk) are strongly linked to diseases such as heart disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

The authors recommend that people eat a plant-based diet and avoid consuming beef, poultry and milk as a means to minimize and/or reverse the development of chronic disease. The authors also recommend that people take in adequate amounts of sunshine in order to maintain sufficient levels of Vitamin D and consider taking supplements of vitamin B12. The authors criticize "low carb" diets (such as the Atkins diet), which include restrictions on the percentage of calories derived from complex carbohydrates.

(a professional acquaintance of mine told me couple of months ago that his father went vegan - after reading "some book". it was the china study, this was the first time I heard about it. now the second time I hear about this book is when this acquaintance of mine calls me up yesterday, tells me he read it, he'd just went vegetarian two weeks ago and wants me and my girlfriend to recommend some nice veggie places in town and "maybe we can discuss this over dinner tonight". hahah. I like this book already - without even reading it...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Study / http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html

ps.

again, wikipedia:

The authors state that "most, but not all, of the confusion about nutrition is created in legal, fully disclosed ways and is disseminated by unsuspecting, well-intentioned people, whether they are researchers, politicians or journalists."

The authors also state that some people in very influential government and university positions have acted "to stifle open and honest scientific debate."

The authors further state that "there are powerful, influential, and enormously wealthy industries that stand to lose a vast amount of money if Americans start shifting to a plant-based diet."

Speaking of Cornell check this out: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=asAH3mUNmSE
Skip to 3:50.

When I lived in Ithaca near Cornell I crashed his class a few times. Bryan (who I started ESF with) he and I stopped Cambell's office hours and talked to him about blurbing a ESF booklet about Diet and sustainability, he read it, blurbed it nicely and and we were so awesome we never got around publishing it.

-David