"Human nutrition is one of the most important and least understood parts of our existence.  We are bombarded every day with slick slogans that we come to believe are facts. Public relation campaigns that state, "Milk.  It does a body good," and, "Pork, the other white meat" are transformed from advertising pitch to nutritional gospel.  We neglect the daily need to replenish our nutritional building blocks and expect health miracles from the medical profession in the form of a pill.   The picture of our nation shows a portrait that is less than flattering.  Heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes are almost the norm rather than the exception.  We have come to expect life-threatening events at earlier ages in each generation.  We have reached the point where children are affected with adult onset diabetes in their teens.  In past generations this was unknown.
North America acted like we were not part of the world and we could continue to deal with the pending disaster with press releases and loud pronouncements.
 
With health problems becoming epidemic, it is no surprise that we are inundated with a rash of books proclaiming perfect health programs. They offer easy answers, claiming that if we largely follow our same, misguided dietary path we can correct our sickly condition by eliminating foods we didn't care for in the first place.  These feast diets of meat and dairy products appeal to the unwary.  Their siren song sells many books at the expense of our future health.  The majority of the feel-good health and diet books today are written by folks with very limited credentials.

The China Study is setting a new standard.  Dr. T. Colin Campbell directed the largest nutritional study in the world, The China Project, called the "Cadillac of health studies" by The New York Times.  Dr. Campbell is one of the world's brightest stars in human nutrition and his unequaled body of work is finally being shared with a society in desperate need of his advice.

Both Colin and myself share a common background.  We were both raised on rural  family farms and studied agriculture in college.  We were raised with the values of hard work, love of animals, and deep respect for the environment. The most sacred value we shared was the respect of truth and standing up for what you believed even when it went against the grain of popular perception. This commitment has caused both of us to be considered turncoats in the industry where we spent the majority of our careers.  I went from a large scale cattle feeder with thousands of head of cattle, to a vegan, eating no animal products and speaking in public about the hazards of factory farm agriculture.  In this capacity I appeared on The Oprah Show telling a trusting nation that we were feeding cows back to cows. This revelation caused both Oprah and myself to spend six years in court defending ourselves against a food disparagement suit by a group of Texas cattlemen.

Colin caused a similar firestorm when he released the findings of the China Study. He was a tenured professor at Cornell University with strong ties to agriculture. He is a son of the soil and his study caused the entire animal production industry to be viewed in a new light. The industry could not rely on it's time tested response,"you just don't understand agriculture."

Colin did understand agriculture.  He stated the facts that showed what was being recommended for the American diet was wrong.  When you can't deny the facts the next best thing to do is to degrade the messenger.  Both Colin and myself have had to withstand these attacks repeatedly from the industry and their hired hands.  Animal protein and its devastating impact on your health is one of the best kept secrets in the world today.  Dr. Campbell shows, with no-holds barred scientific truth, the correct human diet.

This is straight talk from one of the most qualified nutritional experts in the world at a time when we need it the most.  Dr. Campbell reveals the path he followed from his own family farm in rural Virginia to the laboratories of Cornell University.  His pursuit of the facts unveils the health solution we are all looking for today. I marvel at the amount of human suffering that could have been avoided in my family when I was growing up if this information had been available. Let's hope it isn't too late for our future generations."

--- Howard Lyman, 01/15/05

[Read about the book at Dr. Campbell's website]