Doing research on Cancer, you cannot help but stumble across about a million web sites (not to mention books, those old things) ready to inform about all the ways that food and supplements can either prevent or cure the myriad of cancers out there. So I thought I would do everyone a solid and break down the Truth About Nutrition and Cancer right here. I’m not a doctor, nor a nutritionist, but I am a human being who eats, takes his vitamins AND has cancer! Kind of makes me an expert, just don’t look at this as medical advice. (The info here is good for people without cancer, too, because everyone wants to be healthy!)

About the time that a patient receives a diagnosis of CanCeR, or any other crazy disease/condition/illness/mutation that sets the mind into panic mode, someone is going to be hot after a diet to improve things or search out a cause in the previous diet for where things went terribly wrong, or otherwise look to Nutrition for answers. And, just as inevitably as Nutrition will be sought out for those answers, the InterWebs will provide volumes about why whatever the patient had been eating was the cause of his or her maladies, or perhaps what the patient had not been eating, but whichever the case is there will most certainly be a solution/cure for whatever ails said patient in the form of an ingestible, potentially (or at least allegedly) natural substance. And, by gum, this is in spite of the fact that Big Pharma and the Medical Industrial Complex have conspired to keep the valuable information a secret (which is why it is available on thousands of non-academic, ready to sell you something web pages).

And this is when I point out something obvious, which many individuals fail entirely to pay attention to while distracted by the conspiracy theories being thrown at them: even when the information is being “given away for free,” the site you are visiting is almost certainly selling something. While I have seen nutritional information dispensed on a few discussion only forums, the wilder claims, the ones you have to watch out for, always are referenced back to sites selling some sort of related product, even if just through lots of affiliate links. Juicing is a prime example. There are several sites online that have source stories to “prove” that their program cures cancer, and each of those sites links to their “favorite” products or makes “recommendations” for products sold on other sites — it seems all altruistic until you realize that it is just a scam to get commissions on each sale. Not that I am above the occasional affiliate link for a product, I use them for Amazon quite often, but I won’t lie about stuff or make inflated claims to generate interest.

But I have digressed away from the meat of this post. Which is to say, there are a few things you should know about Foods That Prevent Cancer! Sadly, there aren’t any. That’s right, in spite of what you may have heard in quiet whispers or read in one of those overstuffed envelopes filled with lots of colorful pictures depicting elderly people living active lives between Xeroxed order forms for weird vitamins and supplements for things no human you know had ever ingested before someone had the genius to market them properly. The truth is, there are a whole bunch of foods that legitimate scientists believe have cancer-fighting properties. Many of those foods are analyzed to isolate the effective chemical component with the hope that it can be used as the basis for an effective drug. And this is good, because no amount of eating will allow a person to ingest enough of the effective chemical to ensure it goes to the right place in the body in high enough concentrations to actually do what we want, which is to kill the cancer or cure whatever.

All of those “Superfoods” out there are great for you, certainly. Eat a bunch of the most nutritionally dense vegetables you can find, but they will neither prevent nor cure Cancer. Kale and broccoli and garlic and seaweed and a plethora of other amazing, often tasty vegetables have been given this label. I have a book chock full of them, and it is an interesting read, but the idea that the suggested diet is going to be a cure-all is abject nonsense. And books with extraordinary claims attached to them, claiming to be “based on science” and with information on “proven links to longevity,” etc., most likely are offering a lot more hype than truth. Although, and this is an important point, they might offer some truly tasty recipes for healthy meals. The problem with “Superfoods” is not that they aren’t healthy, because these are foods that are generally quite good for us to eat. The problem is that the label is essentially meaningless. There are no true “Superfoods” out there. Simply, some foods are more nutritionally dense than others, but the ludicrous claims being made by many authors about these “Superfoods” boils down to a marketing technique and little else. Yes, find out which vegetables and fruits and nuts have the highest nutritional density! Yes, eat them if you are not allergic and they are available. But don’t think that those foods are significantly different than anything else you could get locally from the grocery store. Can’t find kale? Any leafy green will do. ANY. Even iceberg lettuce. Can’t find the Gogi berries? Don’t panic, eat whatever berries you can get your hands on. I will, however, continue to use the “Superfood” excuse to eat as much damn chocolate as I please. It’s a nutritional powerhouse.

What about the water you drink? Why, that is a very good question. Of course the water makes a huge difference. But if you are considering buying a contraption to make your water more alkaline under the pretext that it is essential for curing your ailments, you might want to actually stop and learn what that means. There is nothing wrong with drinking alkaline water. It’s quite tasty, and it has a nice sort of round feeling on the tongue. I personally love it, especially when it has a high mineral content. Those minerals can be good for you, too, if it comes from a natural spring with loads of healthy dissolved solids. Unfortunately, your home machine won’t have those, and you’ll likely be adding a lot of salt to your water to get it to be alkaline, and you don’t need the extra salt — or the alkaline water, if you think it will cure you of anything. While pretty much all mineral water is slightly alkaline, and probably most tap water, too, there are only two ways in which it is going to make any difference to the drinker. The first is that many people prefer the taste. I am one of those people. The second is that it may have a very slight effect on improving acid indigestion by neutralizing some stomach acid. Beyond that, however, alkaline water passes through your body and you will expel any excess alkalinity in your urine. Period. It does not make your blood alkalinity change and you cannot alter the alkalinity of your overall body in any way through drinking or eating. (In fact, different parts of your body have different levels of alkalinity and they remain relatively constant as such — if your blood alkalinity changes, it is due to a failure of either the lungs or kidneys, either of which will lead to death if not treated, but it is never due to the water or healthy food you eat.)

One thing remains constant, however: you need to drink a sufficient amount of liquid every day to remain hydrated. This amount varies from person to person and does not have to be only water. Although water is the best thing to make your primary beverage, virtually anything healthy to drink will be good for you. Just avoid a lot of alcohol and soda. And of course, if you are on certain meds, you’ll want to be avoiding pineapple juice — which you remember from the fine print, so I don’t even need to remind you.

I recently read an argument on a discussion forum that obesity isn’t about eating too much, but rather it is the byproduct of a body’s inability to properly regulate insulin. The argument sounded a bit overly defensive at first blush, but I wanted to consider it (as I try to do with all reasonable sounding arguments). The problem was that it only told part of the story. Even if the body cannot regulate insulin levels properly, it still will not store calories that it needs to burn; this means that if a person is eating the correct amount of calories for their activity level, there will be no issue of obesity. Period. You cannot become obese unless you consume more calories than you use. This is one of the main reasons that sedentary people who consume sugary drinks tend to put on weight, even without eating a lot. Certainly, insulin regulation will be effected if a person gains too much weight, and it is part of the cycle of obesity, but the base cause will remain excessive caloric intake. This is one of the reasons that we should all be aware of what we are putting into our bodies — and not blindly believing marketing ploys on processed and packaged foodstuffs.

Many packaged products like to tout themselves as a “Good Source” of some vitamin or mineral. Very often, this is an untrue statement. The product may contain a good amount of a single nutrient, but that does not make it a good source. A good source would be balanced, for instance. A good source would not have excessive levels of unhealthy ingredients, nor would it have higher levels of things that must be limited (like sugar, fats and sodium) as compared to vitamins, minerals and fiber.

Also, being a “low sodium food” does not make it healthy, but this appears on numerous labels for products like Coca Cola. Interestingly, it does not appear on all bottles — only those that have an 8 ounce serving size listed on the nutritional information label, rather than the 12 ounce serving normally listed. It was an interesting marketing choice to change the serving size of Coke in order to appear like it had less sodium in it and fewer calories, but it is doubtful that changing the label had any affect on how it was consumed by real human drinkers. In general, processed foods rely on sweeteners and fats to be more palatable. Because of this, they tend to be significantly higher in calories for the amount of nutrition they offer than foods made out of fresh, whole ingredients. This contributes to obesity, which in turn puts people at high risk for diabetes, numerous cancers, heart disease and other nasty conditions.

Avoiding obesity, although sadly not possible for all people, is best done through the combination of a healthy diet and exercise. From a nutritional perspective, exercise plays a couple of key roles. It affects the entire circulatory system, the lymphatic system which lacks its own pump, and the pulmonary system. When things are moving through the body properly, nutrients are able to be delivered where the body needs them to go, just as waste products are removed. It is all done in cycles, in and out. We take in nutrients, expelling those that are not used or needed. But calories cannot be simply expelled, and exercise ensures that they are burned off rather than stored. If a person does end up contracting cancer, however, in spite of getting all that excellent exercise and eating, it is alway better to be in good shape. In fact, the better shape a patient is in at the point of diagnosis, the better that patient is likely to respond to treatment. A stronger, healthier body can withstand a much stronger and harsher approach to treatment than a weak, unhealthy body can. So while exercise and diet may not prevent cancer, they absolutely will affect treatment and recovery.

Too many people rush to take supplements in order to ensure that they are getting all the nutrients they need, but there is little to no evidence that supplements are beneficial unless there is reason to believe a specific deficiency exists. Some common areas where a medical reason exists to take supplements would include common things like thyroid issues (requiring more iodine) or scurvy (requiring Vitamin C), or an increase in Folic Acid to aid with nerve development or repair (for pregnancy or undergoing chemotherapy). There is good indiction that fish oil supplements, or more accurately the DHA and ALA and whatnot that is found in fish oil, aid in brain development while a fetus is growing, and probably have additional health benefits for the immune system, and thus are worth taking in the absence of whole fish in the diet. Everyone needs some antioxidants, but there is evidence that high concentrations may be unhealthy, and certainly most of the vitamins taken in pill form are soon purged from the body rather than put to use. Otherwise, most of the supplement industry is based on pseudoscientific marketing, and often has been shown to be an outright scam.

Going back to the basic tenet that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, it is obvious that the hugely profitable supplement industry fails to pass even the simplest tests of legitimate scientific validation. Chief among these failures are herbal supplements. The State of New York recently sued a number of manufactures over their formulation, in some cases the manufacturers did not even have the herbs being sold in the supplements themselves. Because the herbal supplement industry is largely unregulated (and their labels universally carry the disclaimer that they are not being sold to treat any medical condition), they can get away with insinuating a lot as long as they don’t print anything too specific on their packaging. Not surprisingly, many of the supplement world’s self-proclaimed gurus have ended up in trouble. But that does not stop con artists and opportunists from pushing herbal or vitamin cures upon the desperate. There are plenty of documented cases, too, where supplements have hidden toxins in them that lead to illness or death. I’ve read of several cases where people got lead poisoning from Ayurvedic supplements, and I recall hearing about tainted herbal remedies from China when I was still in college and looking for something more natural than No-Doze to keep me awake. (Eventually I settled on steadily drinking cold water, which worked better than coffee without preventing me from sleep if I actually happened to finish whatever paper I had been putting off.) This is all the byproduct of an industry whose quality control is based on the honor system, but whose sales are based largely on specious claims.

In the end, nutrition is still resoundingly important, but it is not nearly as complex as many profiteers would have you believe. To be healthy, which is the important thing here, regardless of what malady you are fighting or hoping to prevent, a person need only follow this easy program:

• Practice moderation
• Eat a mix of fruits and vegetables every day (plenty of fiber, too)
• Eat a variety of protein sources (i.e., not all hotdogs)
• Drink a decent amount of water, not too much of the other stuff
• Avoid processed foods as much as possible
• Exercise

And that’s about it. I’d add variety to the list, because it is important for a number of reasons, including simply improving the quality of life, but technically it isn’t necessarily going to make anyone significantly healthier from a nutrition perspective. Fresh food is seasonal and sometimes our options are limited. But, you know, if you only have cucumber and mulberries at your disposal, that will have to do. It is more important that you eat fruit and vegetables than it is what type of fruit or vegetables you are eating. Eating balanced meals each day and staying active will give anyone a serious edge when it comes to maintaining their health or fighting an illness.

It really is that simple.

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