The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet (9 page)

Later, after compiling data from his monumental research project called the China Study, Campbell found more than
8,000
statistically significant correlations between various dietary factors and disease—a huge number of them pointing to the protein from meat and dairy as the bad guys.

After conducting 27 years of research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the American Institute for Cancer Research, Dr. Campbell emerged a strict vegan, stating:

“The diet that has time and again been shown to reverse and/or prevent these diseases is the same whole foods, plant-based diet that I had found to promote optimal health in my laboratory research and in the China Study.
The findings are consistent.”
⁶

In a study comparing the cancer rates of 42 countries, milk and cheese consumption were strongly linked to the incidence of testicular cancer among men ages 20 to 39. The cancer rates were highest in places like Switzerland and Denmark, where cheese is a national food, and lowest in Algeria and other countries with lower dairy consumption.
⁷
The American Dietetic Association reports that breast cancer rates are highest in places where women consume high-fat, animal-based diets. Did you know that in countries where dairy is not consumed the incidence of breast cancer is so low as to be almost nonexistent? Once women in those countries begin eating Western diets, however, their breast cancer rates increase eightfold. Even the American Cancer Society recommends that we choose most of the foods we eat from plant sources and limit our intake of high-fat foods, especially from animal sources, in order to reduce the risk of cancer. More than 190,000 of our American girlfriends will get breast cancer in 2009 and more than 40,000 of them will die of it.
⁸
That is so, so sad. Sadder still is the fact that many of these deaths could have been prevented.

Milk does not prevent osteoporosis:
This is a particularly touchy subject. This is where we—especially us womenfolk—have been completely boondoggled. We’ve come to believe there is a straight line between milk and strong bones despite the fact that dairy-free countries have the lowest rates of osteoporosis on Earth. In fact, the more milk a population consumes, the
weaker
its bones get. That’s the
real
straight line. So why does this fallacy that milk is inextricably linked to strong, healthy bones persist so stubbornly? It’s true that cow’s milk does contain calcium, which is necessary for strong bones, but that’s not the whole picture. Although milk offers calcium, it causes the body to
release
even more of it. It’s like someone giving you $1,000 but driving away in your car! So no matter how much you’re getting, you’re actually losing. Meat and dairy are the chief
causes
of osteoporosis, not the cures. There are tons of sources of calcium on a meat- and dairy-free diet, and the calcium they contain is actually more readily absorbed by the body. Sea vegetables, sesame seeds, leafy greens, and beans all kick milk’s butt.

Superhero: Ruth Heidrich

Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer at 47. After having the lump removed, further testing revealed cancerous hot spots in her bones and one on her lung. Heidrich decided to follow a strict vegan diet under the supervision of Dr. John MacDougall, who was researching the connection between diet and breast cancer at the time. Twenty-six years later, having undergone neither chemo nor radiation, Ruth not only thrives cancer-free, she has completed six Ironman triathlons, 67 marathons, and was named one of the “Ten Fittest Women in America” in 1999. She lives in Hawaii and Canada, where she writes books (
Senior Fitness
,
A Race for Life
), gives lectures, and cohosts a radio show called
Healing and You
.

Milk underlies asthma and allergies:
This one hits home for me. As a kid, I came down with bronchitis three or four times each year. At a visit to the allergist, I was diagnosed with numerous allergies and was prescribed twice-weekly shots and an inhaler. Well, I lost the inhaler on a camping trip in my teens, but I was still getting allergy shots well into my early twenties. As far as I was concerned, I would need them forever. But very soon after becoming vegan, I stopped experiencing allergies or any asthma-type symptoms. They just disappeared.

You see, the human immune system recognizes milk from another species as an attacker—or allergen—that causes the body to go on red alert. This is why many people walk around with chronic runny, stuffy noses—even asthma and allergies—and think it’s
normal
! But actually it’s the body’s own defense system trying to ward off a foreign invader. Dr. John Oski, chief of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, believes that up to 50 percent of all children are allergic to milk, although they remain largely undiagnosed. This allergy is the underpinning of all sorts of other conditions such as sinusitis, ear infections, eczema, and even behavioral problems. Get rid of the dairy, and you should breathe easier within a week. You’ll be amazed.

Dairy food has been linked to diabetes:
Studies done at the University of Helsinki and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto showed that babies fed dairy-based formula began to develop antibodies for diabetes. As in the case of allergies, the protein in cow’s milk is perceived by the immune system as an attacker. So the immune system fights back—that’s its job! Unfortunately, one of these proteins is a dead ringer for a certain cell found in the pancreas, so in fighting off the perceived “attacker,” the body starts to fight its own pancreas, eventually destroying its ability to produce precious insulin. The studies show that genetics may be a factor as well, but it seems that dairy is a significant trigger.

In Puerto Rico, where approximately 95 percent of babies start life on cow-based formula, the type 1 diabetes rate is
10 times higher
than in Cuba, where almost every baby begins on mommy’s boob.
⁹

We think of diabetes as a tragic twist of fate that pushes the sufferer into the medical system to become dependent on daily injections until death—if she’s lucky! Diabetes kills 72,000 people a year in the United States (and contributes to 230,000 deaths),
¹⁰
and what we’re drinking at the breakfast table plays a role.
That’s
the tragic twist.

What about Eggs?

Eggs are weird. Not technically a dairy product but commonly lumped into this category, an egg is the reproductive cell of a chicken. Hmm . . . We don’t eat our own reproductive cells or those of most other species, so what are we doing scrambling and poaching what a poor hen ovulates?

Egg producers go to great lengths to get their product good press, and it seems to work. Whereas eggs were considered bad guys just a decade ago, nutritionists and the media are now giving them a passing grade. But the nutritional benefits of eggs . . . protein, lutein, and an array of vitamins and minerals, are all easily found in plant-based sources. Meanwhile, eggs are crazy high in cholesterol; one egg contains approximately 200 milligrams of the stuff. So there’s nothing magic about eggs. In fact, 95 percent of the eggs sold in the United States come from industrialized operations using antibiotics that are passed on to the eggs. If you do choose to eat eggs and are buying them from an organic and antibiotic-free producer, there’s still no getting around the cholesterol issue. And remember: Conventional eggs are hiding in lots of the foods you might be ordering at restaurants: pancakes, Caesar salads, muffins, cakes . . . so choose carefully.

Dairy is messing with our hormones:
Dairy cows are pumped full of hormones to force them to produce up to 20 times their normal milk supply, and those hormones go straight into you. Excess hormones in dairy food are now thought to be a factor in reproductive cancers and even precocious puberty. In 1900, American girls started menstruating, on average, at the age of 14. These days, they begin at 12
¹
/
₂
, with the first signs of puberty showing up in some girls as young as 7. Some argue that the excess estrogen found in milk kickstarts the body to enter puberty earlier, and it also wreaks unnatural havoc on men’s hormone levels. Yes, organic, hormone-free milk is better for the drinker with respect to the hormone issues, but it’s still milk, and it still causes all the other problems mentioned earlier.

Dairy is bad for your heart:
Milk, like meat, is full of saturated fat and cholesterol, which clog arteries to your heart. In study after study, incidence of heart disease increases with milk consumption. Researchers for the
Journal of Internal Medicine
write: “It is clear that saturated fats, mainly dairy fats, are closely associated with the mortality rate from ischaemic [artery blocking or constricting] heart disease.”
¹¹

NASTY TO THE PLANET

Dairy cows create greenhouse gases:
More burping = more methane = more global warming = Uh-oh.

Dairy cows produce toxic, freaky waste:
These cows produce millions of tons of waste filled with antibiotics and growth hormones that seep into the earth and the water supply. Residues of antibiotics used only in animals have shown up in rivers and soil samples far from the original sites—even getting into drinking water supplies.

The hormones from dairy waste found in rivers have begun to alter the hormone balance of certain fish, causing female eggs to be found in the testes of the males. By forgoing that latte (or making it with soymilk), you will keep our soil and water cleaner and less freaky.

Pregnant cows eat a lot of food:
Just like pregnant women, cows need lots of food to make a baby. All that food requires land, water, energy, fertilizer, labor, and transport we could be using for other things, like growing food for people. By saying “no” to that frozen yogurt, we can feed ourselves and others more cheaply and efficiently.

And they drink even more water:
You need to drink water to make milk, so a lactating cow drinks 30 to 50 gallons of the stuff a
day.
¹²
That’s a bathtub full. Your eight glasses of water a day is half a gallon. The average dairy farm, between hydrating the cows and washing down the facilities, uses many millions of gallons of water per year.

Water

The planet’s supply of fresh water is finite, so let’s conserve it. Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth. Be mindful of saving water when you do your dishes and laundry or when you wash yourself. Flush only after number 2. Watch the film
FLOW
to learn more about the global water crisis. For more ideas about conserving and to figure out your water footprint, go to
www.thekindlife.com
and type in keyword
water footprint
.

Making milk takes a lot of energy:
Dairy farms use hundreds of thousands of kilowatt-hours of electricity per year to run the pumps that milk the cows. Not to mention the lights, filters, heating systems, and other energy-sucking devices. Since 90 percent of the electricity in the United States comes from nonrenewable sources—and dirty ones at that—the dairy industry is a big, unnecessary drain on the global light socket.