Grow Plants Not Cancer Cells
One of the most compelling reasons to adopt the Plant-Based Solution right now is to lower your risk of cancer. Few things scare people more than the fear of a phone call or office visit where they learn that cancer is the diagnosis. No matter how it is diagnosed (biopsy, CT scan, or blood test), cancer is common and frightening.
How common is cancer in the United States? The National Cancer Institute estimates that in 2016 there were 1,685,210 new cases of cancer and that 595,690 people died from the disease.1 That is like filling the Big House stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which holds over 100,000 people, six times, and no one makes it out alive. That is a lot of loved ones. And that is just in one year.
The most common cancers in 2016, in order of prevalence, were:
1. bladder cancer
2. breast cancer
3. colon and rectal cancer
4. endometrial cancer
5. kidney cancer
6. leukemia
7. liver cancer
8. lung cancer
9. melanoma of the skin
10. non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
11. pancreatic cancer
12. prostate cancer
13. thyroid cancer
Cancer deaths are highest in the United States in African American men. About 15 million to 16 million Americans are living with a cancer diagnosis, and that number is expected to rise to almost 19 million by 2024. Approximately 40 percent of American men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime.2
The problem is not isolated to the United States. Cancer is among the leading causes of death worldwide. In 2012, there were 14 million new cases and 8 million cancer-related deaths worldwide. More than 60 percent of the world’s new cancer cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America; 70 percent of the world’s cancer deaths also occur in these regions.3
In the United States, the overall cancer death rate has been declining since the early 1990s, and in the most recent National Cancer Institute report, it continued to drop.4 Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of people are still dying yearly of cancer, and if nutrition can prevent even a few cases, then information should be taught and shared everywhere possible. You can lower your risk for cancer, and here is the data to support your journey.
Science Corner: The WHO and Processed Red Meats
The medical world was caught by surprise in October 2015 when an announcement by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), known for expertise in analyzing scientific data for health risks, declared that meat acts as a carcinogen.5 Processed red meats include bacon, pepperoni, bologna, hot dogs, salami, and corned beef, and these foods were found to cause colorectal cancer. Those are strong words. Not maybe or might, but definitely cause cancer. The analysis placed processed red meat as a Group 1 carcinogen similar to diesel fumes and tobacco. These strong determinations shocked many and made headlines worldwide.6 In case you missed it, the IARC, made up of twenty-two scientists from ten countries, reviewed over 800 studies and ruled that:
• Processed meats like bacon, ham, salami, sausage, and beef jerky are Group 1 carcinogens, the highest risk assigned, which means they cause cancer. The relationship was strongest with colorectal cancer (CRC) and stomach cancer but also existed for other cancers like pancreatic and prostate.
• The risk increases incrementally with the amount of these meats eaten. Each 50 gram portion of processed meat daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent.
• Fresh red meats, like steak and roasts as well as pork and lamb, were considered as probable causes of cancer to humans (Group 2a) with links to colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancer.
The IARC report followed similar prior reports like that of the World Cancer Research Fund,7 which identified the same causation.
The news about processed red meats and cancer made headlines for a few days but was quickly forgotten, at least in hospital cafeterias and wards. There is new research indicating how the recommendations of the IARC could reduce the risk of colorectal cancer if applied widely.8 Six dietary and lifestyle recommendations (body weight, physical activity, energy density, plant foods, red and processed meat, and alcohol) were examined in terms of their association with CRC incidence over more than seven years of follow-up in 66,920 adults aged fifty to seventy-six with no history of CRC. The analysis indicated that participants meeting one to three preventive recommendations enjoyed a 34 to 45 percent lower CRC incidence than those who followed none of them, while those meeting four to six of the targets experienced a 58 percent lower incidence of CRC. In both men and women, the lowest risk for cancer was achieved by avoiding processed red meats like bacon. I am sure you would like to drop your risk of colon cancer by over 50 percent even if it means changing your diet to a cancer prevention pattern.
The burden of tragedy for CRC in the United States is enormous. In 2014, about 140,000 people were diagnosed with CRC and nearly 50,000 died of this disease.9 African American men and women experience the highest rates of CRC, as much as 50 percent higher than whites, and should be spreading the word in their communities to eat plants, not bacon and sausage.
Processed Red Meats and Hospital Food
I want you to get as mad as I am. Outraged. You heard it already in an earlier chapter, but let’s have a moment of good, old-fashioned anger again. How can hospitals knowingly contribute to cancer by serving foods classified as carcinogens? Hospitals banned smoking after risk of cancer was established. Why have they not committed to tackling cancer prevention in all manners? Is it okay for hospitals to avoid cancer prevention if it might hurt their finances and invite criticism from workers and the public by banning popular foods? Hospitals are now facing an ethical choice regarding the WHO statements on processed red meats. Is it appropriate for a medical center to continue serving hot dogs, sausages, bacon, ham, bologna, and salami? I bring these questions up because as you start your journey on the Plant-Based Solution, you might wonder why Group 1 carcinogens are being served in hospitals. It confuses a lot of people.
Not only is colorectal cancer the third most common cancer diagnosed in the United States each year, but it also causes terrible pain and suffering during therapy. This can include disfiguring surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and the risk of death. If even a few more deaths yearly are related to hospitals serving processed meats, it is a tragic error.
I went to my main hospital administrators and asked for a meeting to discuss banning processed meats on the principle that medical centers should not cause cancer knowingly. I persisted with emails until I heard a response: “People should have a choice.” A choice, like a pack of Lucky Strikes or Marlboros? Asbestos or diesel exhaust fumes? What people do in their own homes or free time is a personal choice, but the food served in hospitals must be held to a higher standard.
According to the American Medical Association, a hospital’s ethical responsibility is to make the health-promoting choice the easy choice. Just as doctors (derived from the Latin docere, “to teach”) are responsible for teaching individual patients about good eating habits, so are the hospital systems for which they work responsible for promoting dietary change. At least one major hospital system has announced a total ban on processed red meats in accord with the WHO data (Kaiser Permanente, discussed in chapter 1). Others must follow suit. If you are ever admitted to a hospital, and I hope you are not, ask for a plant-based meal and see the staff scratch their heads.
Hot Question: Can I Eat Starchy Vegetables and Still Be Healthy?
Do you have to stick to leafy green vegetables like kale to succeed on your journey with the Plant-Based Solution, or can you eat a baked squash, rice, beans, and even white potatoes? Dr. John McDougall, who you read about in chapter 5, is not only a warrior for whole-starch diets, he has led the charge for forty years. With his McDougall Program, he has seen huge success with patients by emphasizing a diet rich in complex carbohydrates from plant-based starches.
Dr. McDougall developed the diet in the early 1970s when he was practicing medicine on a sugar plantation in Hawaii. He observed the health of plantation workers decline as they traded their starch-rich diets of native Asian countries, with lots of rice and potatoes, for new American choices. The second and third generations of immigrant workers experienced new and serious health problems as a result.
He began treating patients with plant-based diets that were also free of vegetable oils (but were rich in common starches, such as corn, rice, oats, barley, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, peas, and lentils). Fresh fruit and non-starchy green, orange, and yellow vegetables were also included. Overall, the diet was about 80 percent complex carbohydrates, 12 percent protein, and 8 percent fat. Spices were also used, along with small amounts of salt and sugar.
Dr. McDougall published a study in Nutrition Journal that showed the effects of one week of following the program. After seven days, there was an average weight loss of three pounds. And even though most blood pressure and diabetic medications were reduced or eliminated on the first day, systolic blood pressure fell 8 mmHg and blood glucose also dropped. Heart disease risk calculated with a standard formula fell from greater than 7.5 percent over ten years to 5.5 percent.
Whether it is corn and yucca among Native Americans, potatoes in South America, millet in Africa, barley in the Middle East, rice in Asia, or sorghum in East Africa, human civilization has been powered by starch throughout history. The chronic afflictions of heart attacks, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and dementia, which plague our society, were all rare in these native populations. In Okinawa, Japan, where people have lived longest in the world, their traditional diet was at least 80 percent from carbohydrates, most of which were varieties of sweet potatoes.
For more information and a little bit of humor, you can download a free picture book that Dr. McDougall created, Food Poisoning: How to Cure It by Eating Beans, Corn, Pasta, Potatoes, Rice, Etc.
Study In-Depth: Shrinking Prostate Cancer with Plants
Dr. Dean Ornish, who revolutionized “lifestyle medicine” for heart health, did not limit his research on a plant-based lifestyle program to heart disease. He planned and executed experiments in men with prostate cancer who had been chosen for “watchful waiting”—not to be treated with drugs or surgery—for reasons unrelated to Ornish’s study. This was done with the head of urology at the University of California’s San Francisco School of Medicine, Dr. Peter Carroll. Dr. Ornish identified ninety-three men who had prostate cancer and were being observed without surgery or radiation therapy.10 The men were randomized into a conventional treatment group that followed up with their urologists as planned and a second group that enrolled in the Ornish Lifestyle Medicine Program—a plant-based diet without added oils or fats (no nuts, seeds, avocados, or oils while minimizing sugar and refined carbs) that included stress management with yoga and meditation, walking for exercise, and social support.
At the end of a year, none in the lifestyle group had progressed to needing additional treatment like surgery or radiation, but six of the control patients did need such surgery for the growth of their tumor. The serum PSA level, a tumor marker, fell by 4 percent in the lifestyle group while it increased by 6 percent in the control group.
The researchers took blood from both groups and dropped it on prostate cancer cells growing in Petri dishes. The growth of the cancer cells was inhibited almost eight times as often in the lifestyle group versus the control group! This is like the blood becoming a form of chemotherapy itself when it is rich in plant-based foods without dairy and added fats. The more the subjects fully adhered to the program, the more their blood killed cancer cells! What a great reason to learn to love broccoli. In fact, the cruciferous vegetable family, which includes broccoli, cauliflower, greens, mustards, and wasabi, is one of the most potent food groups you can choose to impact prostate cancer cell growth.
I have cared for hundreds of men with prostate cancer since this research study was published, and not one had heard from their medical team that lifestyle habits could help shrink their cancer. Maybe you are one of these men or know one of them. I routinely tell them to search online for Dr. Ornish and prostate cancer, and they will find all they need to read to implement the changes. The same study has not been done with breast cancer because it is not standard to advise a group of women with biopsy-proven cancer to simply watch their disease. However, there are many similarities in the response of breast cancer cells and prostate cancer cells, and it would be wise to inform a woman about the results of the Ornish prostate cancer study so she can make an informed decision.
Feeding the Prostate Healthy Choices
I met Jeff over a decade ago when he was referred by his doctor for management of his cholesterol. He was a friendly man from the start but quite busy in a high-pressure law firm as a partner trying cases. During the course of working with him on lifestyle measures to manage his cholesterol, including educating him about the ability of plant-based diets to lower his cholesterol levels, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was recommended to have radiation therapy. He recovered, and on the next visit we discussed his options.
The data from Dr. Ornish’s clinical trial on prostate cancer had just been published, and I reviewed it with Jeff. He had a great zest for life, a beautiful wife, children, and grandchildren. He also loved golf and decided if changes could improve his odds of remaining cancer-free for decades ahead, he was in. He moved his diet more and more to the Plant-Based Solution and seemed to enjoy the empowerment it gave him to know that three times a day at least he was voting for life and health with his fork and spoon.
Now, a dozen years later, every urology checkup is good news while he consistently gets good cardiology reports from me too. The power of the Plant-Based Solution to promote optimal blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood sugar, body weight, heart health, cancer prevention, and as you will see, brain health and other benefits, is truly breathtaking. At the same time, he is making the world a cleaner and safer place for those grandchildren he loves so much. Good work, Jeff, health hero! 
Science Corner: Studies Support the Plant-Based Solution for Cancer Prevention
You might be wondering if the Plant-Based Solution can prevent the development of prostate cancer in the first place. The familiar Adventist Health Study studied a large group of 26,346 male participants for this risk.11 In total, 1,079 incident prostate cancer cases were identified. About 8 percent of the study population reported adherence to the vegan diet. Vegan diets showed a statistically significant protective association with prostate cancer risk, reducing it by about 35 percent. Vegan diets were protective in both whites and blacks, an important finding, as the incidence of prostate cancer in African Americans is the highest of all demographic groups. The authors concluded that vegan diets may confer a lower risk of prostate cancer.
What happens to the risk of CRC when adopting a vegetarian dietary pattern? The Adventist Health Study looked at the relationship between dietary pattern and risk of CRC in over 77,000 participants.12 In a follow-up over seven years, about 500 new cases of CRC were diagnosed. The risk of CRC was reduced by over 20 to 30 percent in vegetarians versus non-vegetarians. As there are around 130,000 new cases of CRC diagnosed yearly in the United States alone, this is tens of thousands of cases of a tragic diagnosis that might be avoided with the Plant-Based Solution.
Another group of subjects have been followed prospectively in the United Kingdom. Their dietary pattern and risk for overall cancer rates have been examined in detail and published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.13 Over 61,000 British citizens were studied, including 32,491 meat eaters, 8,612 fish eaters, and 20,544 vegetarians (including 2,246 vegans). Cancer incidence was followed through nationwide cancer registries. After an average follow-up of fifteen years, there were 4,998 cancers: 3,275 in meat eaters (10 percent), 520 in fish eaters (6 percent), and 1,203 in vegetarians (6 percent). Stomach cancer was reduced by over 60 percent in vegetarians. Cancers of the lymphoid and hematopoietic tissues like leukemia were reduced by over 35 percent in vegetarians. Multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, was reduced by almost 80 percent in vegetarians. Overall, the combined data from the Adventist and the British studies, with over 130,000 subjects studied and followed for years, makes the case that we could empty oncology wards and chemotherapy centers by teaching and implementing simple strategies to favor plants over animals. Share this information with your friends and loved ones.
Cruciferous Vegetables Are Crucial in Cancer Prevention
If you had to put your emphasis on only a single plant-based food group to impact your risk of developing cancer or your recovery from cancer, you would want to concentrate on the brassica family of cruciferous vegetables. These vegetables include broccoli, kale, bok choy, mustard greens, cauliflower, wasabi mustards, cabbage, arugula, watercress, and turnips. Many studies show that the higher the intake of these foods, the lower the risk of cancers.14 There is a beneficial chemical called sulforaphane that can be produced by eating these foods. Sulforaphane leads to an increase in the production of protective antioxidants via a pathway called nrf2.
The trick to getting the most sulforaphane from your cruciferous vegetables is to chew them. Cruciferous vegetables are like a “glow stick” because before you break them open by chewing, two chemicals are kept apart. The enzyme called myrosinase is separated from the precursor of sulforaphane called glucophoranin. These are big words but with big benefits. When these foods are chewed and the cell walls broken down, the precursor and the enzyme mix together producing the sulforaphane, and then the nrf2 pathway gets activated.
How to Get the Glow Stick Effect
If you cook your cruciferous vegetables heavily before chewing them, the delicate myrosinase enzyme may be damaged and unable to activate the sulforaphane. You still get lots of fiber and other nutrients but less of the cancer-fighting properties of cruciferous vegetables. There are several strategies to activate the myrosinase enzyme during cooking to maximize the antioxidant benefits:
• Chop the vegetables and let them sit before cooking. This mimics chewing and allows the chemical reaction to occur outside the body before the heat is applied. After fifteen to thirty minutes, you can cook them any way you prefer.
• Add a few pieces of the raw vegetable, like a few broccoli florets, into the bigger bowl of cooked vegetable and mix them. The raw pieces still have the active myrosinase enzyme to spark the health reaction.
• Sprinkle dried mustard powder on the bowl of cooked vegetables. Mustard is part of the brassica family and has the myrosinase enzyme retained. It adds a distinct flavor with a bit of a bite that is quite tasteful, and when you sprinkle it on, you ignite the “glow stick” reaction.
Cruciferous vegetables have been called “frugal chemoprevention” against cancer and are one form of natural protection you want to use regularly.15
Plant Rant
There are so many studies supporting the powerful role of the Plant-Based Solution on the prevention and treatment of cancer that this should be common knowledge and standard medical advice. In most of the studies, the vegan dietary pattern was superior to other versions of a vegetarian diet. Try to get five, ten, or even more servings of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes into your daily routine. Add a variety of types and colors to gain all the benefits. Emphasize cruciferous vegetables served to maximize sulforaphane production.
You may still wonder about all the talk of high-profile diets featuring animal products: the message that butter is back; that a low-carb, high-fat, meat-centric diet is good for you or necessary for your hormones or brain; that full-fat dairy, like adding cheese to your diet, as some of my colleagues now recommend, is healthy. And what about hospitals serving processed red meats known to be carcinogens? You know the real data now, and you know that the lowest risk of developing cancer for you and your family is by sticking to the science of the Plant-Based Solution.
THE PLANT-BASED PLAN Make Vegetable Broth
You will see in my recipes in chapter 15 that I often use vegetable broth when cooking. You can make a batch and freeze it in 1- to 2-cup portions or in ice-cube trays. Then, just take out a 1- or 2-cup portion for a recipe or pop out one or two cubes when you need a little broth for sautéing. This is an easy way to replace the oil and reduce your daily fat intake without sacrificing flavor. Wine, vinegar, or water can also be used.
VEGETABLE BROTH
INGREDIENTS
2–3 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
Several sprigs fresh parsley
Bay leaf
OPTIONAL ADD-INS
A few tablespoons of brown lentils
A handful of any type of mushrooms, chopped
A few garlic cloves, minced
A few sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
Springs of fresh thyme
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Combine the carrots, onion, celery, parsley, and bay leaf in a large stockpot filled with water.
2. Toss in optional add-ins.
3. Bring to boil, and gently simmer uncovered for 2 to 3 hours.
4. Strain, cool, and refrigerate or freeze.