It has now been more than 50 years since President Nixon signed the famous “War on Cancer” declaration. Ever since the U.S. government has poured billions of dollars in research funds to try to “conquer” this scourge of humanity. Alas, the war is far from over, and millions perish each year to this condition. 

However, there is hope that there will be major breakthroughs, provided more and more people would start adopting the whole food plant-based (WFPB) diet that METI has been recommending for the past 10 years. 

As the army generals will tell us: “Intelligence gathering about the enemy is crucial to winning a war”. And luckily, over the past 50 years, science has gathered a lot of information about the almost diabolic nature of cancer and identified its peculiar characteristics. 

As we have explained in previous columns, the unique difference between a cancer cell and a normal cell is that a cancer cell never dies (is immortal) and keeps dividing, whereas normal cells grow older and eventually die and are regularly replaced by new cells. Because cancer cells never die but keep dividing, the cancer keeps growing and growing. 

And this is where science has discovered one of the fatal weaknesses of cancer! Compare cancer to a small town that keeps growing with more and more people wanting to live there: it will require more and more services. 

For example, more bus routes will need to be provided and new shopping centres built to offer food to the increasing population. Similarly, what the growing cancer tumour needs most of all is more and more food. And how does it get that? By a constant growth of blood vessels that allow the blood to reach every cancer cell to bring it the food it needs! It is called ‘angiogenesis’ (the growth of more blood vessels) in the scientific language. 

So, as the logic goes, if we could block this angiogenesis…we could starve the cancer and kill it! This led researchers to investigate whether plant-based diets could protect us from diseases that show excess angiogenesis like cancer but also other disease conditions like vision loss in persons suffering from advanced diabetes, where tiny blood vessels crowd into the back of the eye. 

As we have repeatedly highlighted, the beneficial effects of eating a plant-based diet are linked to the thousands of phytochemicals (plant chemicals) that are ingested. As a result, the concentration of phytonutrients in the urine of vegetarians can be 30 times higher than that of the general population. Investigating these phytonutrients, researchers were able to identify a number of natural phytochemicals in our diet that blocked the growth of new blood vessels into an expanding cancer tumour. 

To give a few examples: the phytochemical sulforaphane found in high concentrations in broccoli reached anti-angiogenic concentrations in the bloodstream within an hour, eating less than three-quarters of a cup of broccoli soup! One and a quarter cup of boiled onions may get you an anti-angiogenic dose of quercetin circulating in your blood in less than an hour. Anti-angiogenic concentrations of b-cryptoxanthin, another phytochemical, can be reached within hours of just eating two cups of red-fleshed papaya. The list goes on. 

Let me report another example: More than 20 years ago, Professor Willet of Harvard Medical School and his team studied the potential of the phytochemical lycopene abundant in tomatoes. They found that those men suffering from prostate cancer that were eating the most tomato products had significantly less angiogenesis within their tumour, which then appeared to translate into a reduced risk of fatal disease. 

In their research article, based on the review of medical records of 47,365 participants in Harvard's Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, they identified that men who consume two or more servings of tomato sauce per week had 23 per cent less risk of prostate cancer, compared to those having tomato sauce less than once per month. The effect was attributed to lycopene, the phytochemical that imparts the red colour to tomatoes and other fruit. 

We could go on and on, but many phytonutrients that we routinely consume in a plant-based diet block angiogenesis, causing cancer tumours to starve and eventually shrink and even disappear. Other anti-angiogenic phytochemicals are abundantly found in herbs and spices, berries, cocoa powder, and ground flaxseeds. 

In conclusion: the moral of the story, repeated over and over again: follow the WFPB diet to protect you from cancer or to have a chance of controlling and even reversing existing cancer growth. We invite you to visit the METI Healthy Living Clinic at House No. 51 at Motootua (across from the Kokobanana Restaurant) to become further acquainted with METI’s whole food plant-based diet and Lifestyle Change programs. Or call us at 30550. Learning how to follow these programs might be your ‘game changer’!