The award was reported in February in the People's Daily, China's leading newspaper. The 894-page monograph was the first major publication to come out of the China Project, a longitudinal study of the relationship between diet and disease being carried out by the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. The monograph was one of 111 publications recognized in the nationwide competition that evaluated medical science and technology publications produced between 1978 and 1997. It reports the results of phase I of the project, which examined the broad diet and lifestyle characteristics of 6,500 people in 65 rural and suburban counties in China. Campbell and his colleagues chose China for the study because of the contrast in lifestyles between rural and suburban populations.
Rural residents consume primarily a simple, plant-based diet.
People living in suburban areas, by contrast, are adopting a more Western diet, with higher intakes of fat and animal protein and fewer plant-based food products. The study has found this Western lifestyle to be correlated with greater incidences of obesity, higher levels of plasma cholesterol, and increased risk for cancer and heart disease. Mean intakes of dietary fiber by county in China were as high as 77 grams a day. The average Chinese intake of dietary fiber was three times that of the United States. Rising plasma cholesterol levels in China were associated with a greater prevalence of stomach, liver, colon, breast, and blood cancers.