Diet Debate

Campbell's response is here: http://campbellcoalition.com/?p=142

It is also interesting to read the comments posted below, and the final decision to disallow further comments on the reason given by Campbell's admin as quote: "Based on the response received thus far, we have determined that our prior idea of a reasoned and civil discourse, with participation by Dr. Campbell, is not feasible and have decided to discontinue this discussion thread."

Which baffles me because only questions regarding science and methodolgy were posted with absolutely no personal remarks, nothis abuse, personal or flamey. Dr. Campbell's forum admin must be really touchy... Either overreacted or Campbell himself may be trying to avoid having to respond to specific points regarding his data processing methodology? I suspect the latter.

One of the comments pointed to a fascinating extract by Denise Minger regarding one of Campbell's own papers. I have to rely on her quote out since the full text is not freely available:

Quote:



"Regarding wheat and heart disease: In a (peer-reviewed) paper Campbell co-authored called "Diet, Lifestyle, and the Etiology of Coronary Artery Disease: The Cornell China Study" , he concluded after looking at wheat and confounding variables that: ''Nonetheless, the wheat-flour effect appears to be independent of meat consumption, so enhancement of coronary artery disease risk by wheat consumption may be a possibility.''


I am stunned by the weirdness of this! Campbell was fully aware of a large (*) and possibly real correlation between wheat and heart disease yet it did not deterr him from unequivocally propagating exclusively plant based nutrition as heart healthy! Without warnings or exceptions! This is so illogical that it's not even false! What a heck is that?


Stan (Heretic)

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*) The raw univariate correlation uncorrected for possible confounders, beween wheat flour consumption in g/day and coronary mortality is 62.4% in the China Study.

This may explain perhaps:

"While confident we can make this dream a reality, we recognize that we lack sufficient resources. And for this reason, we are starting as a cash-generating foods business. We soon will announce details of a company launched with a group of like-minded business partners that is focused on selling tasty, wholesome and affordable plant-based foods. This company will be embody our health message and will set a new standard for product quality."

http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/denise-mingers-refutation-of-campbells-china-study-generates-continued-debate.html

Her responce to his responce..

I'm sorry thats Chris's responce.

thanks for the reference. It is very long and I am still reading it. I wish campbell had fed the rats chicken or hamburgers. And that his student had given the rats whole wheat bagels.

Dolores

Dolores I totally agree with your sentiments. However I would also add that the fact that he did not use real food in his experiments, time and time is significant by itself rather than omission. I strongly suspect that there are many possible outcomes of those kinds of study that he did not wish to obtain.

I realize it's a pure speculation on what Campbell's intensions but this is such a consistent repeatable pattern behind his and other similar studies of his kind, plus a consistent tactics of critics smear and avoidance, that I do not believe it's all by a chance omission.

Stan (Heretic)

Of course we have no way of knowing what his intentions are. However, from what I have seen, he is not doing anything different from every other researcher. For instance, feeding subjects beta carotene instead of carrots. Am I wrong in saying that it isn't a good idea to feed casein to your rat after he ingests aflatoxin?

While Campbell seems to have made an attempt to answer his critics, one wonders how much time anyone can spend answering critics. Isn't the proper place for this exchange in peer reviewed journals? Years ago there was a Ph.D, M.D. who was debating diet on Sci.med.nutrition who eventually just had to discontinue his correspondence because he was too busy to keep up answering arguments. I personally believe Campbell answered many of Denise's arguments. Do you know of criticism of his work by his peers by way of letters to the journals in which he published his results? It is my understanding that he published his raw data and I am assuming someone knowledgeable would have offered criticism in the literature. Is it usual for researchers to publish raw data? I don't know.

I personally do not base my own dietary habits on Campbell's work but on what I have read of the successes of Ornish, Pritikin, Fuhrnan, McDougall etc. And on the fact that Atkins admits in his second book that his diet does not reverse diabetes. He adds grains for diabetics!! The low fat guys and the high fat guys are at least seeing patients.

I do know that Pritikin's family allowed an autopsy and published the results. His arteries were clean as a baby's. Atkins, it turns out, did have some kind of heart or artery disease and his family did not allow an autopsy. The south beach diet guy takes statins himself but I do not know about essy, McDougall etc. I also know that my brother was on a South Beach diet for quite a while and had no success with lowering blood pressure until he tried Fuhrman's six week trial. Huge difference in a short time.

It seems to me that what it boils down to has to be ---does this work for me? Why would you change the way you eat if it is working for you no matter what the studies say?

Dolores

Hi Dolores,

Re: Atkins

Atkins never endorsed cereals, only low GI vegetables. If they added cereals later on then this is a different diet.

Kwasniewski for example never excluded anythng, just limited the total amount of carbs regardles of a kind.

Re: I personally believe Campbell answered many of Denise's arguments.

I personally believe that he didn't. He distorted Denise argument claiming that her analysis was wrong because she used univariate correlations while failing to admit that he himself used such methodology. Worse, he failed to admit that he only obtained "harmful" correlations with animal food when he used indirect correlation using cholesterol as an intermediary - that alone is a far worse methodological mistake (*) than using univariate correlations (**). He also failed to address Denise criticism that he omitted very important confounders such as bilharzia, wheat and South-North geographic location.

Last but not least he wasn't able to reign in his condescending attitude which has hurt him in many subtle ways, more than anything specific he ever said. BTW I had the same impression with Dr. Ornish when he used to appear on the WebMD.

Neither really wanted to talk, they wanted to lecture but not listen.

Stan (Heretic)

*) I now do not believe that he made a mistake, I suspect that this was intentional. He set out to "prove" veganism and this coincidentally happened to have worked very well for his life long career at Cornell, which probaly was the main motivating factor explaining whay he did what he did. Atkins for instance had to use his own private funds to do his research; Campbell instead used other people's money!

**) Using univariate (uncorrected for confounders) correlations is a very legitimate methodology; many papers do that all the time. Often they publish both univariate and multi-variable regressed correlations in the same table side by side. A multivariate regression is not by itself any more trustworthy (or less) that the univariate; it all depends on the often arbitrary choice, on what kind of confounding variables were used. However, using intermediate variable correlations (i.e. cholesterol) and failing to account for a glaringly obvious (to a 23 years old student!) schistosomiasis/bilharzia factor is a fatal methodological flaw.

H, Dr.Atkins certainly did recommend grains for diabetics because he found that while his original diet SEEMED TO WORK for a while for diabetic patients, eventually it failed. He then says that the best diet for diabetics is his Meat and Millet diet using millet and other grains.

This can be found in his second book called,"Dr. Atkins Nutrition Breakthrough" I ran out to the library to get his first and second books but they are no longer there--just his newer ones. So now I will have to search for these books so I can quote chapter and verse. You heretics and your skepticism certainly cause a lot of problems for the flock.

Dolores

Thanks Dolores, I will appreciate and appologize for the trouble. I never read his second book, only the original one but I am curious. I will be perfectly happy to apply my heretical criticism to late Dr. Atkins as well. To all equal...

Best regards,
Stan