The China Project offers a rare opportunity to study disease in a precise manner because of the unique conditions that exist in rural China. For example, about 90% of the people in rural China live their entire lives in the vicinity of their birth. They also consume diets composed primarily of locally produced foods. In this talk from Accelerating Change 2005, Professor T. Colin Campbell explains why these factors make rural China a living laboratory for the study of the complex relationship between nutrition and other lifestyle factors and degenerative diseases.

According to Campbell, the dietary patterns in China are strikingly different from Western countries, the major difference being the consumption of foods of animal origin. Animal protein intake, for example, is 10-fold greater on average in the US. than in China.

The data from the China Project suggests that what we have come to consider as "normal" illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority perhaps 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet.