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Authors: T. Colin Campbell, Thomas M. Campbell
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eyes, one at eleven pounds, the other at fourteen
pounds, trying to get them to open their mouths to eat some porridge.
Older children blind from malnutrition, being led around by their
younger siblings to seek a handout. Children without legs or arms hop-
ing to get a morsel of food.
A REVELATION TO DIE FOR
Needless to say, those sights gave us ample motivation to press ahead
with our project. As I mentioned before, we first had to resolve the
problem of AF contamination in peanuts, our preferred protein food.
The first step of investigating AF was to gather some basic information.
Who in the Philippines was consuming AF, and who was subject to liver
cancer? To answer these questions, I applied for and received a National
Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant. We also adopted a second strat-
egy by asking another question: how does AF actually affect liver cancer?
We wanted to study this question at the molecular level using laboratory
rats. I succeeded in getting a second NIH grant for this in-depth bio-
chemical research. These two grants initiated a two-track research inves-
tigation, one basic and one applied, which was to continue for the rest of
my career. I found studying questions both from the basic and applied
perspectives rewarding because it tells us not only the impact of a food
or chemical on health, but also why it has that impact. In so doing, we
could better understand not only the biochemical foundation of food and
health, but also how it might relate to people in everyday life.
We began with a stepwise series of surveys. First, we wanted to know
which foods contained the most AF. We learned that peanuts and corn
were the foods most contaminated. All twenty-nine jars of peanut butter
we had purchased in the local groceries, for example, were contami-
nated, with levels of AF as much as 300 times the amount judged to be
acceptable in U.s. food. Whole peanuts were much less contaminated;
none exceeded the AF amounts allowed in U.s. commodities. This
disparity between peanut butter and whole peanuts originated at the
peanut factory. The best peanuts, which filled "cocktail" jars, were hand
selected from a moving conveyor belt, leaving the worst, moldiest nuts
to be delivered to the end of the belt to make peanut butter.
THE CHINA STUDY
36
Our second question concerned who was most susceptible to this AF
contamination and its cancer-producing effects. We learned that it was
children. They were the ones consuming the AF-Iaced peanut butter.
We estimated AF consumption by analyzing the excretion of AF meta-
bolic products in the urine of children living in homes with a partially
consumed peanut butter jar. 12 As we gathered this information an inter-
esting pattern emerged: the two areas of the country with the highest
rates of liver cancer, the cities of Manila and Cebu, also were the same
areas where the most AF was being consumed. Peanut butter was almost
exclusively consumed in the Manila area while corn was consumed in
Cebu, the second most populated city in the Philippines.
But, as it turned out, there was more to this story. It emerged from my
making the acquaintance of a prominent doctor, Dr. Jose Caedo, who
was an advisor to President Marcos. He told me that the liver cancer
problem in the Philippines was quite serious. What was so devastating
was that the disease was claiming the lives of children before the age of
ten. Whereas in the West, this disease mostly strikes people only after
forty years of age, Caedo told me that he had personally operated on
children younger than four years of age for liver cancer!
That alone was incredible, but what he then told me was even more
striking. Namely, the children who got liver cancer were from the best-fed
families. The families with the most money ate what we thought were
the healthiest diets, the diets most like our own meaty American diets.
They consumed more protein than anyone else in the country (high quality
animal protein, at
pounds, trying to get them to open their mouths to eat some porridge.
Older children blind from malnutrition, being led around by their
younger siblings to seek a handout. Children without legs or arms hop-
ing to get a morsel of food.
A REVELATION TO DIE FOR
Needless to say, those sights gave us ample motivation to press ahead
with our project. As I mentioned before, we first had to resolve the
problem of AF contamination in peanuts, our preferred protein food.
The first step of investigating AF was to gather some basic information.
Who in the Philippines was consuming AF, and who was subject to liver
cancer? To answer these questions, I applied for and received a National
Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant. We also adopted a second strat-
egy by asking another question: how does AF actually affect liver cancer?
We wanted to study this question at the molecular level using laboratory
rats. I succeeded in getting a second NIH grant for this in-depth bio-
chemical research. These two grants initiated a two-track research inves-
tigation, one basic and one applied, which was to continue for the rest of
my career. I found studying questions both from the basic and applied
perspectives rewarding because it tells us not only the impact of a food
or chemical on health, but also why it has that impact. In so doing, we
could better understand not only the biochemical foundation of food and
health, but also how it might relate to people in everyday life.
We began with a stepwise series of surveys. First, we wanted to know
which foods contained the most AF. We learned that peanuts and corn
were the foods most contaminated. All twenty-nine jars of peanut butter
we had purchased in the local groceries, for example, were contami-
nated, with levels of AF as much as 300 times the amount judged to be
acceptable in U.s. food. Whole peanuts were much less contaminated;
none exceeded the AF amounts allowed in U.s. commodities. This
disparity between peanut butter and whole peanuts originated at the
peanut factory. The best peanuts, which filled "cocktail" jars, were hand
selected from a moving conveyor belt, leaving the worst, moldiest nuts
to be delivered to the end of the belt to make peanut butter.
THE CHINA STUDY
36
Our second question concerned who was most susceptible to this AF
contamination and its cancer-producing effects. We learned that it was
children. They were the ones consuming the AF-Iaced peanut butter.
We estimated AF consumption by analyzing the excretion of AF meta-
bolic products in the urine of children living in homes with a partially
consumed peanut butter jar. 12 As we gathered this information an inter-
esting pattern emerged: the two areas of the country with the highest
rates of liver cancer, the cities of Manila and Cebu, also were the same
areas where the most AF was being consumed. Peanut butter was almost
exclusively consumed in the Manila area while corn was consumed in
Cebu, the second most populated city in the Philippines.
But, as it turned out, there was more to this story. It emerged from my
making the acquaintance of a prominent doctor, Dr. Jose Caedo, who
was an advisor to President Marcos. He told me that the liver cancer
problem in the Philippines was quite serious. What was so devastating
was that the disease was claiming the lives of children before the age of
ten. Whereas in the West, this disease mostly strikes people only after
forty years of age, Caedo told me that he had personally operated on
children younger than four years of age for liver cancer!
That alone was incredible, but what he then told me was even more
striking. Namely, the children who got liver cancer were from the best-fed
families. The families with the most money ate what we thought were
the healthiest diets, the diets most like our own meaty American diets.
They consumed more protein than anyone else in the country (high quality
animal protein, at
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