The China Study by Thomas Campbell

120 THE CHINA STUDY

(^2) o
o
(^6) o
CHART 5.3: HEART DISEASE DEATH RATES FOR MEN
AGED 55 TO 59 YEARS AND ANIMAL PROTEIN CONSUMPTION
ACROSS 20 COUNTRIESI6
800

•

(^600) R = .64 • • •
400

200

3 4 5 6 7 8

Percent of total calories coming from animal protein

9

animal-based food in general. So isn't it perfectly reasonable to wonder
whether animal-based food, and not just these isolated nutrients, causes
heart disease?
Of course, no one pointed a finger at animal-based foods in general.
It would have led immediately to professional isolation and ridicule
(for reasons discussed in Part IV). These were contentious times in
the nutritional world. A conceptual revolution was taking place, and
a lot of people didn't like it. Even talking about diet was too much for
many scientists. Preventing heart disease by diet was a threatening idea
because it implied that something about the good old meaty American
diet was so bad for us that it was destroying our hearts. The status quo
boys didn't like it.
One status quo scientist had a good time making fun of people who
appeared to have a low risk of heart disease. In 1960, he wrote the fol-
lowing piece of "humor" to mock the then-recent findings^26 :

Thumbnail Sketch of the Man Least Likely

to Have Coronary Heart Disease:

An effeminate municipal worker or embalmer, completely lacking

in physical and mental alertness and without drive, ambition or

competitive spirit who has never attempted to meet a deadline of

any kind. A man with poor appetite, subsisting on fruit and veg-

etables laced with corn and whale oils, detesting tobacco, spurning