110 THE CHINA STUDYof heart disease, as well as obesity, diabetes, cataracts, macular degener-
ation, Alzheimer's, cognitive dysfunction, multiple sclerosis, osteoporo-
sis and other diseases. Furthermore, this diet can only benefit everyone,
regardless of his or her genes or personal dispositions.
All of these diseases, and others, spring forth from the same influ-
ence: an unhealthy, largely toxic diet and lifestyle that has an excess of
sickness-promoting factors and a deficiency of health-promoting fac-
tors. In other words, the Western diet. Conversely, there is one diet to
counteract all of these diseases: a whole foods, plant-based diet.
The following chapters are organized by disease, or disease grouping.
Each chapter contains evidence showing how food relates to each dis-
ease. As you go through each chapter, you will begin to see the breadth
and depth of the astonishing scientific argument favoring a whole foods,
plant-based diet. For me, the consistency of evidence regarding such a
disparate group of diseases has been the most convincing aspect of this
argument. When a whole foods, plant-based diet is demonstrably ben-
eficial for such a wide variety of diseases, is it possible that humans were
meant to consume any other diet? I say no, and I think you'll agree.
America and most other Western nations have gotten it wrong when
it comes to diet and health, and we have paid a grave price. We are sick,
overweight and confused. As I have moved on from the laboratory stud-
ies and the China Study and encountered the information discussed in
Part II, I have become overwhelmed. I have come to realize that some
of our most revered conventions are wrong and real health has been
grossly obscured. Most unfortunately, the unsuspecting public has paid
the ultimate price. In large measure, this book is my effort to right these
wrongs. As you will come to see in the following chapters, from heart
disease to cancer, and from obesity to blindness, there is a better path
to optimal health.
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