"If you change to a vegan diet, and do it very
vigorously, you have enormous power... You can, I believe, prevent most cases of
cancer if you combine dietary changes with avoiding tobacco. You could
prevent probably 70% to 80% of cancers, just by those steps alone. And,
obviously, there's a whole host of other diseases that you would be able to live
without."
Neil Barnard, M.D.
Turn Off the Fat Genes
One curious aspect of being a vegan is that you also cut down on restaurant food. A die-hard vegan can eat very little in a traditional restaurant and is limited even in a vegetarian-friendly environment. Here's why: a vegetarian eats butter, cheese, eggs and milk. Some eat fish. Because a vegetarian diet is considered strict to most Americans, restaurants tend to flood a vegetarian dish with pasta, cheese, eggs and butter. So a true vegan cannot eat a meal labeled "vegetarian" by a restaurant.
"Women with the highest fruit and vegetable intakes
have better ovarian cancer survival rates than those who generally neglect these
foods, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Dietetic
Association. Researchers examined food patterns prior to ovarian cancer
diagnosis in 341 Illinois women. They found that yellow and cruciferous
vegetables, in particular, contributed to longer survival, whereas consumption of
dairy products and red and processed meats shortened lifespan. The authors
concluded that low-fat, plant based diets are not only beneficial for cancer
prevention - they may also play a role in increasing survival time after
diagnosis."
www.vegetarian.org
Is it too late to become a vegan once you have been diagnosed with cancer? Absolutely not!
"Daily consumption of fresh fruit was associated with a
reduced mortality from all cancers combined."
www.vegetariannutrition.net
But the real question is this: why are vegan cancer rates so much less than the general public? All fingers point to meat. Yes, tobacco, alcoholism, drug use etc will make you sicker and older faster. But from a purely nutritional perspective the difference between a vegan and the average American is consumption of meat; the difference between rates of cancer in a vegan versus a meat-eating American are off by 50-80% meaning vegans get cancer less than half the time Americans in general get cancer.
"High consumption of meat, especially red meat and
processed meat, is linked with higher risk of bowel, breast, prostate, and
pancreatic cancer. There is some evidence of an association with lung
cancer, and of an association of barbecued meat and oesophageal cancer.
This British study also concluded that up to 80% of bowel and breast cancer may
be preventable by dietary change."
William Harris, M.D.
www.vegsource.com
What's so bad about meat? Actually, nothing is wrong with eating wild animals that have lived their lives running free and eating according to their natural instincts. If the wild animal was then killed, bled properly and cooked in whole food condiments with no flour, preservatives or synthetic fats, then one serving per week (eaten after a prayer of thanks) would nutritionally edify.
But Americans have 3 servings of hormone-laden animal fat per day. A bagel with cream cheese, a tuna melt for lunch and grilled chicken with pasta for dinner sounds normal and even wholesome. But our current methods of chicken and dairy production turn our daily diets into a dangerous injection of growth hormones, antibiotics and steroids.
"A six-year study of 88,000 nurses by Boston's
Brigham and Women's Hospital found that those who ate meat every day were more
than twice as likely to get colon cancer as those who avoided
meat."
New England Journal of Medicine
13 December 1990
"An 11-year-long German study involving more than 800
vegetarian men found their cancer rates were less than half those of the general
public. The lowest cancer rates were found in those who had avoided meat
for 20 years or more. Studies in Japan and Sweden also have shown lower
risk among vegetarians. A 2007 study of more than 35,000 women
published in the British Journal of Cancer found that women who ate the most
meat were more likely to develop breast cancer than women who consumed the
lowest amount of meat. It seems that with every bite of meat, we increase
our risk of cancer."
www.goveg.com
