Have you ever wondered why, despite the billions of dollars spent on cancer research over many decades, and the constant promise of a cure, which is forever “just around the corner,” cancer continues to increase? In spite of more than 20 billion dollars invested in cancer research in the last ten years, the death rate from cancer has increased steadily for the last 75 years in line with increases in obesity and heart disease. Once quite rare, cancer is now the second major cause of death in Western countries such as Australia, the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom.

It is not true that this increase in cancer is due to people living longer and thereby having a greater chance of contracting cancer. Cancer has increased in all age groups, and has been linked in population studies to dietary and life-style factors that promote the particular forms of cancer that are predominant in those populations. Has the war on cancer been lost? The fact is that we now have good evidence to understand the complicated biology of cancer causation and educated individuals can dramatically reduce their risk of ever getting cancer.

The five year survival statistics of the American Cancer Society are misleading because we are diagnosing more cancers at an earlier stage of the disease, so the claims that patient are living longer with cancer is also false. More women with mild or benign diseases are being included in statistics and reported as being 'cured'. The bottom line is that we are feeding a cancer research establishment and drug industry that will never win the war on cancer. Cancer is a disease caused by lifestyle choices, and when we finally decide to work together to prevent cancer we will begin to win the war.

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed progress against cancer in the United States for 35 years concluding that despite progress against some rare forms of cancer, which account for 1 to 2 percent of total deaths caused by the disease, the overall death rate had increased substantially since 1950: "The main conclusion we draw is that some 35 years of intense effort focused largely on improving treatment must be judged a qualified failure." The report further concluded that “. . . we are losing the war against cancer" and argued for a shift in emphasis towards prevention if there is to be substantial progress.

Environmental causes of cancer include lifestyle factors such as smoking, a diet high in processed foods and animal products and low in fresh fruit & vegetables, food additives, pollution, and drugs and medical procedures. Despite the general recognition that 85 percent of all cancers are caused by environmental influences, less than 10 percent of the (U.S.) National Cancer Institute budget is given to nutritional, lifestyle and environmental causes. Less than 1 percent of the National Cancer Institute budget is devoted to nutrition studies. Treating disease is enormously profitable and big businesses and medical institutions are sustained by almost worthless drug treatments and cancer therapies.

Your body is a self-repairing and self-healing machine. Human cells have all the features necessary to protect themselves from chemical damage to their DNA that eventually results in carcinogenic changes. The process that is creating our modern epidemic of cancer is twofold. One aspect involves the exposure of our cells to damaging stresses such as chemical carcinogens, high levels of saturated and trans fats and excess animal protein. At the same time, we have a woefully insufficient dietary intake of plant-derived nutrients, which include thousands of newly discovered and undiscovered phytochemicals that are essential for normal human cell function. Our cells have built-in, powerful mechanisms to remove or destroy toxic substances, inhibit DNA damage, repair broken DNA cross-links, and remove cells that are injured or abnormal before they become cancerous, but only if our nutritional requirements for antioxidants and phytochemicals are met.

In recent years, the term phytochemicals has been used to refer to the thousands of newly discovered nutrients supplied by plants that in addition to vitamins and minerals are necessary for maximal immune system protection, and for the promotion of cellular detoxification and repair. Populations that have a high intake of natural, unrefined plant foods always have a low incidence of cancer, proportional to the intake of these phytochemical-rich plant foods.

Examining data from numerous epidemiological studies, the World Cancer Research Fund concluded that the evidence that fruits and vegetables can reduce the risk of oral, esophageal, lung, stomach, colon, pancreatic, bladder, and breast cancer was convincing. No single substance in a plant-based diet accounts for this relationship; rather, it is the synergistic effect of multiple phytochemical compounds (which number in the thousands).

Even though other factors such as chemicals, pollution, and smoking play a role in cancer etiology, the scientific literature still illustrates that a better diet offers dramatic protection even against non-dietary cancer promoters. For example, the Fiji Islands (where smoking rates are high) still has a dramatically lower incidence of lung cancer than Hawaii (where smoking rates are lower). This protection against lung cancer, even in Fiji Islanders, was shown to be the result of the high intake of green vegetables in Fiji.¹

The National Cancer Institute recommends eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day. However, scientific studies suggest that this is still inadequate. More is better and much, much more is much, much better at reducing cancer risk. A healthy anti-cancer diet receives the vast majority of its calories from fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds. These should not be seen as the add-ons; rather they must be the core of any diet that can be considered healthy.

The evidence that we can prevent the vast majority of human cancers is overwhelming. People do not need to get cancer. They can choose to live in a manner that can increase healthy life expectancy and they can do it in a way that tastes great: the Nutritarian way.

1. Le Marchand L, Hankin JH, Bach F, et al. An ecological study of diet and lung cancer in the South Pacific. Int J Cancer 1995 Sep 27; 3(1):18-23. 5