CANCER AND THE DIET
In 1976, the United States Senate held a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs under the chairmanship of Senator George McGovern. The hearings were convened to determine the health effects of the American diet on the population. After listening to the testimony of the nation's leading "cancer experts", McGovern pointedly asked National Cancer Institute director Arthur Upton how many cancers he thought were caused by the nature of the American diet. He replied, "Up to 50 percent." Dumbfounded, McGovern asked, "How can you assert the vital relationship between cancer and diet and then submit a preliminary budget that only allocates slightly over 1% of your funds to this problem?" Dr. Upton responded, "That is one question which I am indeed concerned about myself."
Organizations like the National Cancer Institute do not encourage much focus on prevention, because there is vastly more profit to be made in treatment. Attention is further drawn away from prevention by food industries whose products are known to be involved, and they keep pressure on a spineless government, Congress, and public "health" organizations to keep them from informing the public as to what is known about dietary prevention. In essence, people are not informed how to keep dietary-related cancer from happening. Wilful criminal negligence? Yes. Two-time Nobel Prize winner physicist Linus Pauling once said, "Everyone should know the war on cancer is largely a fraud."
Somewhere around 1,400 people are
dying of cancer every day. During the Senate hearings on diet and cancer,
it was determined that the dietary factors responsible are principally meat
and fat intake. Dr. Mark Hegstead, a nutritional scientist from Harvard University,
was called in by the Federal Trade Commission to determine whether the same
diets that caused heart disease also caused cancer. He testified that the
same diet is "now found guilty in terms of many forms of cancer: prostate
cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, cancer of the colon, and others..."
In light of these developments, the meat, egg and dairy industries have joined
hands with the tobacco industry to do whatever they can to confuse the issue
and make the public think "anything can cause cancer."
COLON CANCER
In the 1970's a number of studies were published in the Journal of the National
Cancer Institute which indicated a direct relationship between meat consumption
and cancer of the colon. The meat industry countered by claiming that the
people were genetically predisposed to get colon cancer. Studies were undertaken
by the National Cancer Institute where people that did not eat meat and did
not have colon cancer were brought to the United States and fed the standard
American diet. They got colon cancer. The meat industry then countered with
the comment that anything in the diet could be responsible. Other studies
were then undertaken at NCI that correlated colon cancer rates with intake
patterns for no less than 119 specific foods. Of all the foods tested, meat
was most strongly associated with colon cancer. Dr Berg, who headed the NCI
study, said "risks of beef, pork, and chicken all rose with frequency
of use, and the composite picture suggests an underlying dose-response relationship."
[1]
RELATIONSHIP OF FIBER CONSUMPTION TO COLON CANCER
Researchers have discovered that the less fiber in
a person's diet, the more likely colon cancer (depending on the diet) is likely
to occur. Since meat, eggs and dairy products are high in fat and provide
absolutely no fiber at all, they are prime candidates for production of dietary-related
cancer. The human intestine has a very hard time handling the putrefying bacteria,
high levels of fat, and lack of fiber that characterize these foods. The human
intestine is convoluted, and requires fiber to move things along. In contrast,
the intestines of a carnivore are almost straight tubes, which shorten the
transit time for material and do not require fiber to move things along. Vegetarians
need to aware that not only meat, eggs and dairy fats are harmful to health,
but also vegetable fats such as salad oils and margarine. Certain nuts, seeds,
olives and avocados contain fats which should be consumed in moderation.
Leading Edge Research 1996
REFERENCES
[1] Reddy,B., "Metabolic Epidemiology of Large Bowel Cancer, Cancer. 42:2832, 1978 Wynder,E.,"Dietary Fat and Colon Cancer," Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 54:7, 1975 Wynder, E.,"The Dietary Environment and Cancer", Journal of the American Dieticians Association,71:385, 1977 Weisberger, J., "Nutrition and Cancer - On the Mechanisms bearing on Causes of Cancer of the Colon, Breast, Prostate, and Stomach," Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 56:673, 1980 Committee on Diet, Nutrition and Cancer: Assembly of Life Sciences, National Research Council, "Diet, Nutrition and Cancer", National Academy Press, Washington D.C, 1982.
