The World's Best Book Summaries
Are high-carb diets healthy? Recent dietary trends have taught us to shun carbs, but we also know that high-carb foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains are good for you. How do you know whether a low-carb or high-carb diet is healthiest? Studies show that a high-carb diet may be the healthiest out there. We’ll cover why low-carb diets are unhealthy and how you can transition to a healthy high-carb diet.
What are the foods that help lower cholesterol, fast? What you eat matters, especially if you have high cholesterol. A low-cholesterol diet plan can help you get your blood cholesterol levels under control. We’ll cover what kinds of foods to avoid to keep your cholesterol levels in check, and what cholesterol-reducing foods to add to your diet.
What is protein-energy malnutrition? Is protein the key to eradicating malnutrition? Protein-energy malnutrition is a type of malnutrition involving a lack of protein and/or calories in the malnourished person’s diet. During the 1960s and 70s, experts believed that a deficiency in animal-based protein was the primary cause of malnutrition. Learn why T. Colin Campbell, author of The China Study, thinks that consuming more animal protein isn’t the answer to solving protein-energy malnutrition in developing countries.
What is The China Study book? What can we learn from it? And why is it controversial? The China Study book is a book on disease prevention through diet by T. Colin Campbell, who led the Cornell team, and his son Thomas M. Campbell. It’s named for the China Study, a landmark observational study conducted by teams from Cornell, Oxford, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The 1980s study examined the lifestyles, diets, and diseases of inhabitants of rural China. Also known as the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, this study is controversial because researchers concluded that animal products like meat and
Milk has calcium, which makes it healthy, right? Calcium is essential for many processes in the body, but that doesn’t mean that everything that contains it is healthy. Is milk bad for you? Some researchers say it is. We’ll cover the research on milk and health issues like cancer and osteoporosis.
America spends more money on healthcare, per capita, than any country in the world. So Americans must be the healthiest, right? Not quite. There are many health issues in America and we are nowhere near the healthiest nation. Two-thirds of our population is overweight, 25 million Americans are diabetic (up by 10 million since 2005), and half of Americans take a prescription drug every week. If we spend so much on our health, why are there so many health issues in America?
We’re taught that milk is one of the healthiest things we can be drinking. Some researchers don’t think so. Does milk cause cancer? We’ll cover the research on the effect of casein, a milk protein, on cancer development in its early stages and look at ways you can lower your cancer risk.
Why do we test on mice and other rodents? Are the results from research using rats and mice really applicable to humans? We may not like it, but we’re closely related to mice, and research results from tests on mice and other rodents can tell us a lot about our own biology and how we respond to things like carcinogens. We’ll cover why research on mice is applicable to us and look at some examples of tests on mice that tell us about cancer risk factors for humans.
You’ve heard that carrots are a food that’s good for your eyes. Are there other foods that keep your eyes healthy? And how they work to prevent vision problems? We’ll cover two common eye problems, macular degeneration and cataracts, and examine the research on how your diet affects your risk. Then, we’ll look at the best foods for eye health.
Do multivitamins work? Many researchers say no. We’ll cover why it’s so hard to distill the benefits of fruits and vegetables in a pill and look at studies that show the failure of many vitamin supplements to work.