Cancer Is Preventable

I just finished reading Anticancer, A New Way Of Life by David Servan-Schreiber. Everyone should read this book.

We’ve known for years now that certain foods have anticancer benefits. Fruits and veggies, packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are very, very good for you. Omega-3, lycopene, polyphenols, and resveratrol are household names. We now understand that foods don’t just break down to protein and carbs, fiber and vitamins, and that the soil our foods are grown dramatically affect the nutrients that result in the food it produces. And slowly, we are seeing how what we feed animals affect the composition of the meat we end up eating. Duh.

I’ve written about the cost of meat before. Not only are factory farming practices cruel, they have atrocious effects on our environment. And beyond the well known facts that factory farming is the direct cause of the rise of E. Coli poisoning around the world, and the use of antibiotics and hormones have contributed to the rise of superbugs and the alarming change in sexual health in both humans and aquatic life, it can be argued that it is carcinogenic — not meat eating, but factory farming itself.

Factory farmed meat causes cancer.

Fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices prevent and fight cancer.

I don’t want to put all the weight on just one book. I’ve been reading about this for years (see below for a list of additional resources). One of the most eye opening was The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. He found a link between meat eating and cancer.

My husband is skeptical when I tell him this. He wonders why, information that is so impactful, is not more well known. This is addressed very well in Anticancer, and briefly in The China Study.

It’s not that the meat and dairy industry, pharmaceuticals, politicians, and all the other people involved, want people to get cancer and die from it. But their actions, driven by reasonable motivations, effectively do the same thing.

It’s just business

Factory farming, pesticides, processed foods, preservatives, and pills are big businesses. Not only that, it represents the modern way of life. It’s not just that these large companies that manufacture (alleged) carcinogens have overwhelming pressure to not acknowledge the dangers, but the population in general doesn’t want to change. As long as these claims are just “studies” and “links,” there’s no reason to upend everything. Of course, if people knew that eating corn-fed cows caused cancer, they’d stop eating it (at least, many would, after all, there’s still plenty of people smoking). But as long as it’s possible to be skeptical, nothing has to change.

There is proof

There have been extensive studies done, around the world, that shows very clearly the direct link between food and cancer. In Anticancer, David Servan-Schreiber explains why the medical community haven’t embraced this idea. It’s not so hard to recommend more fruits and vegetables to patients, but doctors still don’t believe it.

1. Evidence-based medicine

In medical culture, changes in recommendations given to patients are allowable in only one case and one alone: when there has been a series of “double-blind” studies demonstrating the effectiveness of a treatment in humans. This is called, legitimately, “evidence-based medicine.”

Compared to these experimental studies with humans, epidemiology is looked on merely as a source of hypotheses. At the same time, to an oncologist who spends his days in contact with patients, studies carried out in laboratories on cancer cells or on mice are not taken into consideration either. Until they have been confirmed by large-scale studies in humans, they do not constitute “evidence.”

The validation of an anticancer drug up through the stage of adequate experimentation on humans costs between five hundred million and a billion dollars. This kind of investment seems justified when one considers that even a relatively minor anticancer medicine such as Taxol brings in a billion dollars a year to the company that holds the patent. On the other hand, it is not financially feasible to invest such sums in demonstrating the usefulness of broccoli, raspberries, or green tea, because they can’t be patented and their scale will never cover the cost of the original investment. Even when they exist, human studies of anticancer benefits of food will simply never match the caliber of those for drugs.

2. Drug fix

Nutrition is barely taught in medical schools…If there’s a problem, there’s a drug. Even in the case of cardiologists, who willingly acknowledge that the risk of cardiac disease can be lowered by changing one’s eating habits, our medical culture encourages us to neglect that approach and prefer a pharmaceutical solution.

Our bodies can fight cancer

The premise of Anticancer is this: “All of us have cancer cells in our bodies. But not all of us will develop cancer.”

There is a very good explanation in the book on the process of cancerous tumors. The bottom line is that inflammation gives cancer cells the perfect environment to grow. Inflammation brings a bunch of white blood cells that are then infected by cancer cells to help them. Additionally, cancer cells are able to create new blood vessels in order to get nutrients to the cells. Lastly, cancer cells are hard to fight because they don’t die. Regular cells commit suicide after their time is done. Cancer cells don’t.

So it goes to reason that there are several ways to attack cancer.

1. Prevent inflammation

2. Prevent the development of these new blood vessels

3. Find a way to kill cancer cells

It turns out that the right foods are able to do all three.

We can choose to help

We can either provide tools for our own bodies to fight cancer cells, or leave them weakened to promote cancer growth. These tools are simply food and environment.

It’s difficult to change our environment. We can do what we can to limit our exposure to chemicals. But we don’t live in a bubble. We are exposed to thousands of potentially harmful chemicals every day. At the very least, limit exposure to BPA (bisphenol A) in plastics, perchloroethylene/tetrachloroethylene in dry cleaning, deodorants and antiperspirants that contain aluminum, parabens and phthalates in cosmetics and perfumes, household pesticides and insecticides, and cooking in scratched Teflon pans. Additionally, avoid close contact with your cell phone — use speaker or headsets and don’t keep it in your pocket.

A note on cell phones: you’ve probably heard that there is no proof of harm from cell phones. These studies are based on participants who have used cell phones for less than 5 years. Studies done on people who have used cell phones for over 10 years have shown a risk for brain tumors. These people developed brain tumors on the side of the brain they used their cell phone on.

I think environmental factors are easier to understand for most people — we know that asbestos and tobacco cause cancer. We can process how these bad chemicals can get into our bodies and damage it.

What seems to be difficult for people to believe is that the food we eat can cause cancer (but more importantly, can also fight cancer). Maybe it’s because it’s always been put as a conventional versus organic argument, or meat versus no meat debate. Perhaps it is too large of a commitment to make, to pay more for organic or to stop eating meat. But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic.

Omega-6, white flour, and sugar increases inflammation. Corn-fed beef has a lot of Omega-6. Grass-fed beef has less, plus more Omega-3, which reduces inflammation. Green tea, turmeric (curry), tomatoes (cooked), olive oil (and generally, all fruits, vegetables, and clean meat) decrease inflammation, prevents the development of blood vessels, and kills cancer cells.

We eat 3 times a day (or more). Every day, at each meal, we choose what to eat. Is it possible to simply shift the portions that go onto our plates? Instead of a large slab of meat with two pieces of broccoli, could we cut the meat portion in half (and eat the other half tomorrow), put add a few different pieces of vegetables (broccoli, carrot, tomato)? Have fruit, dark chocolate, green tea, and olive oil often.Is that so hard to swallow?

Deciding between conventional and organic

Keep in mind that while some products aren’t labeled organic, it might still contain little to no pesticides compared to conventional. If you buy directly from farmers, ask them. It costs a lot of money to get the “organic” stamp. Some farmers might be using the same methods (or practically the same) but just don’t have the label.

Similarly, organic meat doesn’t mean the cows were grass-fed or the chickens are free-range. It meets some specific requirements like no antibiotics or hormones, no animal byproducts in their feed, etc. While that is great in terms of the environment and health of the animals, it does not necessarily mean the nutrient content of the meat is much better.

Depending on where you are, finding grass-fed beef, free-range chickens, and pastured pork can be difficult, and really cost prohibitive. But just think about eating a  little less meat. We eat way more protein than we need. Really, we eat more of everything than we need. Eat less meat, eat more fruits and vegetables. You don’t need to deny yourself the simple pleasure of a great piece of steak. Just eat in moderation. And eat a lot more fruits and vegetables.

Michael Pollan’s food rule boils down to seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

For fruits and vegetables, the most contaminated are apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, raspberries, grapes, peppers, celery, green beans, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkin.

The least contaminated fruits and vegetables are bananas, oranges, tangerines, pineapple, grapefruit, melons, watermelons, plums, kiwi, blueberries, mangoes, papaya, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, mushrooms, asparagus, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, peas, radishes, and avocados.

As a nation, we spend less percentage of our income on food than any other in the world. But cheap, unsubstantial, and unhealthy food costs much more than cash. We pay for cheap food with our health. This seems to indicate that paying for healthy food ultimately costs us much less.

What if it really was that easy?

Additional Resources

These are books that have moved me to change my ways. If you don’t want to do so much reading, watch the documentary Food, Inc and follow the rules listed in Michael Pollan’s small, handy book, Food Rules.

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
• In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
• The Food Revolution, by John Robbins
• The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health, by T. Colin Campbell
• Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser