Fighting off cancer with food

Is there really an anticancer diet? Right now, the answer seems to be a definite
maybe. The problem is that cancer isn’t one disease; it’s many. Some
foods seem to protect against some specific cancers, but none seem to protect
against all. For example:
Fruits and vegetables: Plants contain some potential anticancer substances,
such as antioxidants (chemicals that prevent molecular fragments
called free radicals from hooking up to form cancer-causing
compounds); hormone-like compounds that displace natural and synthetic
estrogens; and sulfur compounds that interfere with biochemical
reactions leading to the birth and growth of cancer cells. (For more
about these protective substances in plant foods, see Chapter 12.)
 Foods high in dietary fiber: Human beings can’t digest dietary fiber, but
friendly bacteria living in your gut can. Chomping away on the fiber, the
bacteria excrete fatty acids that appear to keep cells from turning cancerous.
In addition, fiber helps speed food through your body, reducing
the formation of carcinogenic compounds.
For more than 30 years, doctors have assumed that eating lots of
dietary fiber reduces the risk of colon cancer, but in 1999, data from the
long-running Nurses’ Health Study at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s
Hospital and Harvard’s School of Public Health threw this into question.
By 2005, several very large studies — one with more than 350,000
people! — confirmed that dietary fiber has no protective effect against
colon cancer. But even if dietary fiber doesn’t fight cancer, it does prevent
constipation. One out of two ain’t bad.
Low-fat foods: Dietary fat appears to increase the proliferation of various
types of body cells, a situation that may lead to the out-of-control
reproduction of cells known as cancer. But all fats may not be equally
guilty. In several studies, fat from meat seems linked to an increased risk
of colon cancer, but fat from dairy foods comes up clean. In the end, the
link between dietary fat and cancer remains up in the nutritional air . . .
so to speak.
The American Cancer Society Advisory Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and
Cancer Prevention issued a set of nutrition guidelines that shows how to use
food to reduce the risk of cancer. These are the American Cancer Society’s
recommendations:
Choose most of the foods you eat from plant sources. Eat five or more
servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Eat other foods from plant
sources, such as breads, cereals, grain products, rice, pasta, or beans,
several times a day.
Limit your intake of high-fat foods, particularly from animal sources.
Choose foods low in fat; limit consumption of meats, especially high-fat
meats.
Be physically active. Achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Be at least
moderately active for 30 minutes or more on most days of the week. Stay
within your healthy weight range.
If you drink alcohol, drink in moderation. Chapter 9 lays it out:
Moderate consumption means no more than one drink a day for a
woman, two for a man.