Below are a number of articles referring to cancer prevention through lifestyle, diet and nutrition that have appeared in CANCERactives icon magazine. Just click on the title to read the piece.
French Food Agency decrees ’Organic Food really is better’
In a direct snub to the UK’s Food Standards Agency, a new comprehensive report by the University of Aix-Marseille, for the French Food Agency concludes that organic food is clearly nutritionally superior. (Journal: Agronomy for Sustainable Development.)
We covered the UK sponsored study in a recent Cancer Watch. For reasons best known to them, the UK FSA decided to ignore the current and definitive 12 million EU study which grows fields of organic produce and compares them directly with mass market produced foods in identical fields. The EU study is already showing clearly that organic food contains higher levels of vitamins and health providing natural compounds like omega 3 and resveratrol. Instead, the FSA commissioned an American company who selected 50 out of some 550 studies available and drew the conclusion that there were ’no health benefits to organic food’. This conclusion produced widespread bewilderment and mockery as it ignored factors such as the possible negative effects of pesticides.
The French researchers conducted what they called ’an exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food’ and concluded it contained more minerals such as calcium, magnesium and iron, more natural compounds, such as phenols and polyphenols, and far, far less pesticide residue. Organic vegetables contained 50 percent less nitrates than non-organic and less than 6 percent of organic produce tested contained pesticide residue.
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Stress does cause cancer
Chinese and American scientists have shown, for the first time, that stress (emotional, work related and others) causes inflammation, which in turn stimulates two cancer causing genes inside the cell. (Nature, Jan 2010). Study leader Tian Xu from Yale Medical Center confirmed that hitherto, many people had felt that stress could cause cancer but only now could science start to show how.
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Rainbow Diet cuts depression by 30 per cent; and type-2 diabetes
Firstly, in a study of over 10,000 men by the University of Las Palmas in Spain, eating a Mediterranean diet can cut your risk of depression by 30 per cent. And depression is known to heighten cancer risks.
In my book ’The Rainbow Diet and how it can help you beat cancer, I go through the various benefits of the relevant foods. The Spanish researchers suggested there were 9 points of importance to your health: The frequency of consuming mono-unsaturated fatty acids; moderate intake of alcohol, low intake of dairy products; low intake of meat; high intake of fruit and nuts; cereals; vegetables and fish.
The diet is known to keep the arteries and the heart healthy, it helps fight inflammation, it promotes repair and has a number of potent cancer killers in it. It has also been used to reduce asthma and fight Alzheimer’s. (Click here to read Chris Woollams’ book, The Rainbow Diet)
In a second study, by researchers from the Second University of Naples, Italy, and Warwick Medical School in Coventry, England (Annals of Internal Medicine) newly diagnosed type-2 dibetes patients were divided into a group who continued with a low fat diet, one who used a ’Doctor recommended diet, and a third group who were given the Rainbow Mediterranean Diet. The latter group went significantly longer before needing any drugs and those needing drugs was half the level of the ’normal doctor diet’ diet group. Their conclusion was that ’The Rainbow diet is better than the doctors’ recommendations for type-2 diabetes.’
I rest my case.
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Green tea benefits extend to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
We have told you before about the benefits of Green tea (click here to read article) in terms of preventing cancer, and even as a part of an anti-cancer diet if you already have the disease. Now researchers have shown that a particular active component in green tea, EGCG, helps protect the brain from the build up of amyloid proteins (Nature Chemical Biology, December 2009)
Researchers (from the University of Pennsylvania and the Boston Biomedical Research Institute) claim the finding is a ’breakthrough’, and suggest that it can be effective in not just prevention but treatment too.
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