The China Study (book) - Reception

Reception

Wilfred Niels Arnold, professor of biochemistry at the University of Kansas Medical Center, reviewed the book in Leonardo in 2005: "Any serious challenge to the 'American Diet' is bound to elicit some academic, public, and food industry opposition ... the authors anticipate resistant and hostile sources, sail on with escalating enthusiasm, and furnish a working hypothesis that is valuable. In fact, the surprising data are difficult to interpret in any other way. Hal Harris of the University of Missouri–St. Louis's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry recommended the book in 2006 in the Journal of Chemical Education: "The bottom line of this thoroughly-documented study is essentially that animal protein is not good for us—even milk, 'the perfect food.'"

In a written debate with Campbell in 2008, Loren Cordain, a professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University, argued that "the fundamental logic underlying Colin's hypothesis (that low protein diets improve human health) is untenable and inconsistent with the evolution of our own species", and that "a large body of experimental evidence now demonstrates a higher intake of lean animal protein reduces the risk for gout, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity, insulin resistance, and osteoporosis while not impairing kidney function." Campbell responded by questioning the implications of the evidence Cordain noted, and argued that "diet-disease associations observed in contemporary times are far more meaningful than what might have occurred during evolutionary times—at least since the last 2.5 million years or so."

American President Bill Clinton became a vocal supporter of The China Study. In 2010, after years of living with heart disease, he undertook the diet, eating legumes, vegetables, fruit and a protein shake every morning, effectively living as a vegan. Within a short period he had dropped 24 pounds, returning him to his college weight. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, said in his documentary The Last Heart Attack in August 2011 that The China Study had changed the way people all over the world eat, including Gupta himself.