ScienceMeThis
- Dec 2, 2019
- 5 min read

Vegan experience

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

- Albert Einstein

Our food choices can reflect political statements, ethnical believes, economical choices, time-convenience, rebellious tendencies, or just personal tastes. One thing is for sure: what we eat shapes us (quite literally, our body is made of elements… found in our food) and who we are defines what we eat.

Growing up, it seemed that people’s dietary restrictions were due to one of 2 things: allergies/intolerances and religious believes. Not everybody would be eating everything (personal tastes would see to that) and there definitely were some vegetarians/vegans out there, but it feels that in the last 10 years there has been a “boom” and the numbers suddenly increased. Personal believes have taken over religious ones when it comes to diets.

It is not about being either vegetarian or vegan nowadays; the number of terminologies to describe one’s diet has increased proportionally with the mediatic attention and the popularity of said diets. Flexitarians will mainly eat plant-based food, dairy products, eggs, fish, and meat occasionally ; semivegetarians (or pescatarians) will eat plant food, dairy products, eggs, and fish; ovo-lacto vegetarians will eat plant food, dairy products, and eggs; lacto-vegetarians will eat plant food, and dairy products; ovo-vegetarians ; will eat plant food, and eggs fruitarians will eat plant food, fruits, nuts, and seeds; and finally vegans will eat plant food only. Who would have thought there would be so many different diet names?

The reasons for following one of those diets are as varied as there are different categories, and even more. Health is becoming the most common one for reducing the amount of meat eaten: eating red meat everyday is not that great for your body, increasing the risks of cardio-vascular diseases and really, we do not need to eat meat 3 times a day… Removing meat from one’s diet entirely is most commonly due to environmental or ethical reasons (i.e., personal believes). Environmentally speaking, it consumes A LOT more energy and resources (i.e., space, water, electricity) to raise cattle and produce meat than it does to grow crops and produce plant-based food. And yes, it would be possible to produce enough plant food to feed the whole planet if only we stopped wasting so much and actually thought for a minute. Ethical reasons are usually the reason for going full vegan and stopping the consumption of ANY animal-based products; the idea is to protest against animal cruelty and not wanting to be part of an economy based on the suffering of others.

The vegan movement is getting bigger every year and people are becoming more aware of the shortcoming of modern diets: super-fat and super-rich, increasing the risks of diseases and taking a massive toll on the planet. It is, however, still important to remain cautious about the information spread and the validity of some research. Behold, The China Study.

Up until this weekend, I had no idea what The China Study was. I went to a vegan festival on Sunday; I consider myself as a full time ovo-lacto vegetarian/ part-time pescatarian, open to new experiences and curious about alternative food sources. I had a wonderful time, marvelling at the diversity and the creativity of the products presented, delighted to (finally) find a cookbook for vegan with NO MUSHROOM in it (none, zero, nada), and enjoying a super chocolate brownie. Throughout the afternoon, I kept hearing about this wonderful, marvellous, God-given China Study, the Bible of vegan of a sort. I had no idea what it was or what it said (I got the general gif it would present the benefits of vegan diet). So I decided to ask around and research it.

The China Study is a book, a book about nutrition examining the link between the consumption of animal products and chronic illnesses (e.g., cancer, heart diseases). A book based on a massive study in 65 counties in China (hence the name…) concluding that vegan diet will protect you from developing of one of numerous terrible diseases. No wonder everybody keeps referring to it! That is a great selling-point of vegan diet - if animal-cruelty is not enough to make people think, tell them about the implications for the thing they care the most about: themselves.

As to be expected, a lot of people started taking a closer look at The China Study, looking at the validity of the research conducted, the solidity of the findings and the reliability of the analysis.

First, nutritionists and scientists looked at the references cited in The China Study and found some questionable ones, presenting mixed results on the effect of lifestyle on health (lifestyle as a whole, not diet-only) or dubious methodologies. That doesn’t discrete the findings of The China Study, but it certainly questions the scientific rigour associated with the production of the book.

Second, the results relied on 650 adult participants and investigated 367 variables through 8,000 correlations. The statistical power of the results is no longer questionable: it is inexistent. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, let me find an analogy. Image you want to make 2 quiches, but you only have one pastry. You decide to split said pastry in 2 and using a rolling pin you extend each half, thinning them. You now have 2 pastries, each very fine. The risk for them to beak is a lot higher than for the original pastry. Well, in stats, the more tests you run on a small sample of people, the more error you might make and false results you might find. Not good.

Third, the author of The China Study reported a lot of indirect associations between variables, such as: cholesterol is associated with numerous diseases; cholesterol is associated with animal protein and not with plant protein; thus, animal protein is associated with diseases. Hmmm. When looking at the data itself, it turns out animal protein is not associated more with cancers than plant protein. A lot of confounding effects (i.e., effects that could also explain the results found) failed to be reported, such as cholesterol is higher in areas where hepatitis B is also higher, which is a risk factor for cancer. In short, the book is full of short-cuts that do not reflect the reality of things.

Fourth, all the results are based on Chinese people and generalised to the whole wide world. Here’s another confounding effect: the genetic differences between European/Westerners and Asians lead to different abilities to digest different food and lifestyle differences mean the diets are not comparable per se. It would be far more informative to conduct an international study, looking at people with various diets from various countries, and then drawing conclusions on those. It would be a titan of a study, requiring an enormous number of participants to account as many confounding factors as possible and explore the relationships diet-lifestyle-health.

Fifth, in relation to the previous point, many studies conducted outside of China found contradicting results. In Europe, the healthiest people are living in Iceland, Switzerland and Scandinavia… all consuming a fair amount of animal-based food. And there are many other scientifically rigorous studies out there showing a more complex picture than the one presented in The China Study. It wouldn’t probably sell as many books, but at least it is more accurate.

A lot more can be said about this book, but the take-home message is: check the sources. It is not because it aligns with your believes that it means it is true. Many things have an impact on our health, and we don’t understand it all yet. Short-cuts are tempting but in the long term it can have the opposite effect: nobody believes the boy who cried wolf, even when the wolf actually came.

Instead of pushing veganism, let’s educate our kids about the value of healthy diets and sustainable solutions. Let’s look into environmental and animal-friendly practices, based on solid science. If anything, reducing our carbon-footprint should be our main priority.