I can only answer part of your post right now--the part about China. I can address the rest of it later:
You are making comparisons of data that cannot logically be connected, or used to prove your point. The fact that Americans live longer than the Chinese is due to a complex set of factors. (Please see discussion below re Chinese mortality figures, from research abstracts I found on the web.)
That does not mean that meat-based diets are healthy for Americans (or Chinese), which is what I assume you are still trying to prove (good luck)! Imagine how long Americans, with their relative lack of poverty-related disease profiles, and reasonably good medical care, could live in good health if they adapted a plant-based diet! That is the point of this discussion and Dr. Campbell’s research.
Dr. Campbell studied the mortality causes in Chinese counties starting in 1978. His data shows that in areas where the diet was plant based, the rates of heart disease, blood vessel disorders, cancers, adult-onset diabetes, cataracts and macular degeneration were significantly less than in areas where diets were meat based. These findings were replicated in other studies in other countries around the world.
As China moves towards more affluency, more people are eating a meat-based diet, and starting to suffer Western diet diseases at an increased frequency. This also validates Dr. Campbell’s research.
Abstracts:
Cardiovascular risk factor prevalence in three Chinese communities in 1989
Xuxu Rao, Bridget H-H Hsu-Hage, Mark L Wahlqvist, Yihe Li, Xiaoqing Liu, Kui Zhang, Tiehan Kuang, Daolin Zhang, Zongrong Dai, and the Australia-PR China Collaborative Health Study team
Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1995) Volume 4, Number 3: 278-286
The cardiovascular risk prevalence of 935 adult Chinese living in Chauzhou, Meizhou, and Xinhui cities of Guangdong Province, China, is reported. The three communities are geographically separated, and represent the three major dialect group in Guangdong Province (Teochew, Hakka and Cantonese respectively) which are also the major donor populations of overseas Chinese to Australia and South East Asia. Taking into account historical data, the conventional cardiovascular risk factor prevalence of these combined communities in China as a whole is on the increase and approaches or even exceeds that in Western Society. However, the three communities are not very alike in their prevalences of individual conventional cardiovascular risk factors, notably for hyperlipidaemia (most prevalent in Chauzhou), hypertension (most prevalent in Chauzhou men at 12.4% and least in Meizhou women 5.0%) and cigarette smoking (most prevalent in Xinhui men at 72.7% and least in Xinhui women, 0%). They are similar in stature, body weight, BMI, and waist-to-hip ratio, with very low prevalences of overweight/obesity, or abdominal obesity. An understanding of the contributors to sub-ethnic difference in cardiovascular risk should emerge with further study of these Chinese populations.
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Nutrition transition in China: the growth of affluent diseases with the alleviation of undernutrition
Xiao-Shu Chen, MD and Ke-You Ge, MD
Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1995) Volume 4,
Number 4: 287-293
Since 1950, the annual GNP in China increased from 104 to 1401 Yuan per capita, while household real purchasing power quadrupled. In addition, food production and distribution also rose. China's improved standard of living has brought about several health changes: a reduction in diseases of poverty (high infant mortality, communicable disease, nutritional deficiency), the doubling of life expectancy from 35 years in the 1950s to 67 (male) and 71 (female) years, but it has increased diseases of affluence, such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. The three leading causes of death in China today are cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and myocardial infarction, while deaths from tuberculosis and acute infectious illness are markedly reduced. About 60 million of the population suffer from hypertension and a quarter that number has diabetes. Because China is a vast territory with different levels of development and types of diet, pockets of nutritional deficiency remain; about 35 million people are undernourished. While most of the population receive sufficient macronutrients to satisfy the Chinese RDA, they frequently lack micronutrients. Childhood rickets and iron deficiency anaemia are prevalent in rural regions and close to half of the children under three years of age in the autonomous regions and provinces suffer from these conditions.
Chinese diets are changing. They are becoming more westernised and people are consuming more food of animal origin. This is most noticeable in cities where, in 1988, fat accounted for 30% of the caloric intake (up from 26% in 1981). In urban areas about 10% of woman and 5% of men are now obese. China is encouraging citizens to eat a variety of foods along more traditional lines, with plant foods constituting the bulk of intake, and a lesser amount of food of animal origin. In 1993, the State Council approved a national position paper entitled "Outlines for China's Food Structure Reform and Development in the 1990s". The government hopes that this will lead to a healthier national diet by the year 2000.
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Studies on the relationship between changes in dietary patterns and health status
Zhao Faji, MD, Guo Junsheng, MD and Chen Hongchang, MD
Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1995) Volume 4, Number 4: 294-297
In order to study the relationship between dietary composition and health and disease, we investigated retrospectively the changes in diet composition, health status and disease specific mortality of the Shanghai population from 1950 to 1985. The results showed that remarkable changes occurred in dietary composition, health status and disease mortality. The energy from grain products decreased from 80-83% in the 1950s to 68-72% in the 1980s, and the energy from animal foods increased from 6.5-8.5% in the 1950s to 17.5-18.0% in the 1980s. With the changes in dietary composition, notable changes also occurred in the nutritional composition of the diet. From the 1950s to the 1980s, energy from fat was increased from 16.3-20.1% to 24.0-28.0%, and the energy from carbohydrates decreased from 72.0-73.5% to 62.2-65.8%. Almost certainly as a result of the changes in diet, health status and disease mortality also changed. For example, the average height in males of 18-20 years old increased from 164.89 cm in 1955 to 167.33 cm in 1974, and the average life span of males and females increased from 42.0 years and 45.6 years in 1950 to 72.1 years and 76.4 years in 1985, respectively. At the same time, the rank order of mortality causes also changed. Before 1950, the first three causes of death were measles, tuberculosis and senility, but in 1985 they were malignant tumours, cerebrovascular disease, and ischaemic heart disease. In particular, the mortality from ischaemic heart disease is now higher than in Japan. The causes of these changes may be the changes of dietary composition and nutritional composition of diet, although there are other factors. Therefore, changes in dietary composition which maintain or improve life expectancy, yet decrease the burden of chronic non-communicable disease is required.
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