Books: The China Study
My half-sister, her husband, and two children are Seventh-Day Adventists, whose religious guidelines suggest a vegetarian diet. A while back I thought this was completely insane and often mocked their choices, religious and dietary. When my father was hospitalized with kidney failure for three weeks in late December and into January, their get-well gift to him was a book called The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and Thomas M. Campbell II. It's a book that advocates prevention of disease through a whole foods, plant-based diet. At the time, I was incredibly sensitive, and my thoughts were: "How dare my sister send my dying father a book about how he could have prevented his illness! He's the healthiest eater I know!"
And it's true. My dad's always been an exceptionally healthy eater, to the point of obsession. While most American men his age are taking medication for high cholesterol/blood pressure or suffering from obesity or other issues, he's always been incredibly lean and healthy. His kidney failure snuck up on him, and I don't think that his diet could have prevented it entirely----however, he could have SEEN A DOCTOR in the years when he was experiencing symptoms and not saying a word, but that's beside the point. The point is, his healthy diet did save his life. He got incredibly sick, he shouldn't have been alive. Doctors were stunned that he was living and that he survived, and they've pinpointed his diet as the primary reason. That was part of my decision to start getting healthy and start losing weight.
Fast forward to eight months down the road. I've made the choice to go primarily vegan, and The China Study is still sitting on the shelf. The whole family has taken an interest in vegetarianism, and now all three of us are finally reading the book. The China Study details years upon years of scientific research done to examine the correlation between nutrition and disease, and it's nothing short of extraordinary. I realize now that my sister giving this book to my father really isn't a slap in the face; it's the gift of knowledge to unlock one's best potential for good health. Skinny Bitch was the rude slap in the face that I needed to start paying attention, and The China Study is the research necessary for me to keep it up.
