This work presents the results of a large study of diet and death rates from cancer in adults across China and Taiwan and explains the study's significance and what it reveals about the implications of poor nutrition. While revealing that proper nutrition can have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as obesity, this text calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as the Atkins diet, that enjoy widespread popularity in the West. The impact of the politics of nutrition and the efforts of special interest groups on the creation and dissemination of public information on nutrition are also discussed.

Campbell takes on the institution of nutrition itself: the history of how we got locked in to focusing on "disease care" over health care; the widespread impact of our reverence of animal protein on our interpretation of scientific evidence; the way even well-meaning organizations can limit what science is and is not taken seriously; and what we can do to ensure the future of nutrition is different than its past.