This Is Your Brain on Gluten
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I'm glad I kept reading and got to the science part.
Countless books have been written and people deceived, including the book's authors, trying to contradict that simple reality. As always, follow the money.
Clinton lost 20lbs after reading this book.
Which one is right?
That said, they can both be right. The China Study is specifically about animal protein and fat, not protein and fat in general. You can successfully attempt to combine the two by going near full out vegan.
Furthermore, the "two sides" typically point out that their causal agent typically drives disease development that focus in different areas. Obviously, there's some overlap (diabetes being a big one), but overall, they claim different effects.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that there is a diet that will minimize risk across all possible health complications. In fact, I think that it's incredibly unlikely that there is one given how complex the human body is.
So long story short? Probably neither are right. And I'm going to invoke one of the nastiest, meanest, dirtiest heuristic that I have. If it's in an idea first spearheaded by a best-selling book, it's more likely than not seriously flawed.
There are simply too many broad variables in culture, history and genetics for the China study's claims to be valid. You can't compare two types of diets when one group is heterogenous and the other group is homogenous, and if both were homogenous or both were heterogenous, you'd have to draw subjects from the same population.