[colinhmit]

>"The above analysis is trivially simple. Just data preprocessing simple correlations and filtering, using the most high-level overview the data allows for regarding food intake and health. The possible effect of different foods on longevity. No massaging of the data, no exposure to birthday paradox spuriousness, no statistical tricks, questionable adjustments for, etc"

There is also no controlling for anything! It seems a no-brainer that higher "Saturated Fat" and "Animal Protein" intakes correlate with higher income/access to modern health care infrastructure. Which means the author is really measuring an underlying latent "prosperity" variable. The author almost groks it with:

>"The correlations speak for themselves, the top X correlations for longevity are relatively strongly correlated amongst themselves. It is likely that multiple of these columns are indeed major contributors to longevity, yet given the inter-food correlations, it is quite impossible to isolate these from the variables that are just along for the ride."

Once the author controls for the prosperity that is the causal for all the correlated "dependent" variables, it might turn out that a Vegan diet is better than a non-Vegan diet. Or it might not. But this piece adds no value to the conversation, IMHO.

*As lspears points out, even worse is the wrong endpoint. Prob of making it to 80 != lower chance of death from Western diseases (heart attack/cancer).

[blacksmith_tb]

Certainly true, but I don't think anyone will draw the opposite conclusion that poverty contributes to longevity...

[pergadad]

There were a few studies showing that rats fed less than their normal assumed calorie intake urged to live longer. I can't speak for the effect pathway, but similar things could also be true in humans.

[sridca]

Check this Comment on Campbell and the china study by a vegan on the vegan subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vegan/comments/zz7wb/debunking\_res...

>As a short list, here are a few peer-reviewed articles specifically attacking claims made in the China Study (which, by the way, is itself not peer-reviewed):

Claim 1: "\[Protein from dairy products\] almost certainly contribute to a significant loss of bone calcium while vegetable-based diets clearly protect against bone loss". \—[Campbell in 1994 article in Cornell Chronicle](http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/96/11.14.96/osteoporos...)

Debunking of 1: "The results strongly indicated that dietary calcium, especially from dairy sources, increased bone mass …. \[C\]alcium from dairy sources was correlated with bone variables to a higher degree than was calcium from the nondairy sources". —[Campbell in Dietary calcium and bone density](http://www.ajcn.org/content/58/2/219.full.pdf+html)

Claim 2: "\[Due to animal consumption raising cholesterol,\] the findings from the China Study indicate that the lower the percentage of animal-based foods that are consumed, the greater the health benefits. " —[Campbell on p242 of The China Study](http://books.google.com/books?id=KgRR12F0RPAC&pg=PA242)

Claim 3: "Plasma cholesterol is positively associated with animal protein intake and inversely associated with plant protein intake." —[Campbell in 2001 article in Cornell Chronicle](http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/01/6.28.01/china_study...)

Debunking of 2 & 3: "Within China neither plasma total cholesterol nor LDL cholesterol was associated with CVD. … The results indicate that geographical differences in CVD mortality within China are caused primarily by factors other than dietary or plasma cholesterol. … There were no significant correlations between the various cholesterol fractions and the three mortality rates." —[Campbell in Erythrocyte fatty acids, plasma lipids, and cardiovascular disease in rural China](http://www.ajcn.org/content/52/6/1027.full.pdf)

Claim 4: "Liver cancer is strongly associated with increasing blood cholesterol." —[Campbell on p104 of The China Study](http://books.google.com/books?id=KgRR12F0RPAC&pg=PA104)

Debunking of 4: "This produces…an inverse relation between cholesterol concentration and the risk of death from liver cancer or from other chronic liver disease." —[Campbell in Prolonged infection with hepatitis B virus and association between low blood cholesterol concentration and liver cancer](http://ukpmc.ac.uk/backend/ptpmcrender.cgi?accid=PMC1677354&...)

Claim 5: "\[A\]s blood cholesterol levels in rural China rose in certain counties the incidence of 'Western' diseases also increased". —[Campbell on p78 of The China Study](http://books.google.com/books?id=KgRR12F0RPAC&pg=PA78)

Debunking of 5: "\[I\]t is the largely vegetarian, inland communities who have the greatest all risk mortalities and morbidities and who have the lowest LDL cholesterols". —[Campbell in Fish consumption, blood docosahexaenoic acid and chronic diseases in Chinese rural populations](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643303...)

>For fun, notice that every single debunking article I mentioned above is from T. Colin Campbell himself. Yes, seriously. He actually rebuts his own points when submitting peer reviewed articles.* I guess he's more careful with what he says when he's not writing a book aimed at the general public to help convince people to go vegan.