Welcome considerate viewers to Healthy Living on Supreme Master Television. According to the World Health Organization, cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Each year over 12 million people across the globe are diagnosed with cancer and 7.6 million succumb to the disease. The numbers are projected to continue rising, with an estimated 12 million deaths by 2030.

Today we have the honor to share the second part of an eight part series featuring excerpts from The Cancer Project’s “Eating Right for Cancer Survival,” a two-set DVD of presentations by esteemed nutrition researcher and author Dr. Neal Barnard, MD that is a companion to the book The Cancer Survivor’s Guide written by Dr. Barnard and registered dietician Jennifer Reilly.

Dr. Barnard is the president of The Cancer Project, a US-based non-profit organization advancing cancer prevention and survival through distribution of information on nutrition and research. Since its founding in 2004, the Project has strived to promote the vegan diet as the answer to cancer.

The Cancer Project is an affiliate of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group created by Dr. Barnard in 1985 that is comprised of physicians and concerned citizens in the US wishing to improve public health. The Committee is also actively involved in raising awareness of the benefits of a plant-based diet through such projects as the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart program and seeking to amend federal nutrition guidelines.

Dr. Barnard has served as the principal investigator on many clinical studies examining the links between diet and health and his work has been published in top scientific and medical journals. He is often interviewed by the national media in the US for his perspectives on important issues in nutrition, health and medicine.

We are now pleased to show the conclusion of Dr. Barnard’s presentation “How Foods Fight Cancer,” and segments from “Fueling Up on Low-Fat Foods,” two chapters from the “Eating Right for Cancer Survival” DVD.

How Foods Fight Cancer from the DVD “Eating Right for Cancer Survival”

Now, that's not all there is to it. When researchers have looked at colon cancer, cancer of the second half of the digestive tract, one of the big factors that seems to play a role is meat consumption and especially when meat is grilled, when it's cooked at very high temperatures. Why would that be?

There's something in the grilled meat called HCA's. You probably have never heard of this, it stands for Heterocyclic amines. And this will not be on the test. But HCA's Heterocyclic amines are cancer-causing chemicals. Dozens and dozens of studies have shown that the more of these that are in the foods you eat, the higher your risk of cancer down the road.

Well, where do they come from? You can go into just about any restaurant and if you order the grilled chicken, grilled chicken sandwich, grilled chicken salad, whatever it is, get that grilled chicken with a nice little, grilling lines on it, send it to a laboratory. They'll tell you, there are HCA's in there. Heterocyclic amines. These are carcinogens. And they come from heating up meat at a high, high temperature.

Within the meat is something called creatine, there are other amino acids, there are sugars, and there are natural fats in it. When the meat is heated to a high temperature and it's kept there for long enough to cook, that's when the carcinogens form. And regrettably, people are trying to be healthy, they don't want to eat the fried chicken, so we're eating all the grilled chicken. And the carcinogens are there.

Americans now we eat, believe or not, about a million chickens per hour. And we are getting quite a load of these carcinogens. If I take a hamburger and I grill it, what happens? Well, the carcinogens are likely to form. If I take chicken breast and I grill that, same thing, the carcinogens are likely to form because it's hot animal muscle.

What if I take a veggie burger and I grill that? What happens? It gets warm. That's about it. It's not an animal muscle so these carcinogens are not likely to form. Now it's important to say that not every food is bad for you. There are plenty of things that are good for you. You know about Beta-carotene? What color is Beta-carotene?

Orange

And where do we find it?

Carrots.

Carrots, cantaloupes, pumpkins, okay, sure. Now, it's an orange coloring that's there to protect the plant. It protects against free-radicals. Free-radicals are chemicals that can lead to cancer. It protects you too. And its cousin is called lycopene. Lycopene is in tomatoes. It's in other reddish plants and it's an even more powerful antioxidant, even than Beta-carotene.

So, how does all this translate into something that I'm going to actually eat? Well I like to use something called the "new four food groups." The new four food groups means: whole grains, vegetables, fruits and the bean group. Or you might call the legume group – beans, peas and lentils.

So those are our ingredients, and on my plate it might start with say, a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, top it with cinnamon and raisins or maybe a half a cantaloupe. Some rye toast, hold the butter.

Now for lunch, let's say I'm at a fast food restaurant. Don't get the greasy, taco dripping with cheese; instead you have the bean burrito or something like that. Instead of the hamburger, have the veggie burger. Have lots of vegetables.

And at dinner, let's say we're out at an Italian place, you're not going to have the meat sauce on your pasta and you're not going to have the Alfredo. But let's say you have the pasta with a lot of marinara sauce and all the doctors leap to their feet and applaud, all that lycopene in your dinner, and have the vegetables on the side. So this isn't suffering but it sure is a healthy way to go!

And if you do it every day, what happens? Vegetarians have about 40% of everybody else's cancer risk. That's the careless vegetarians, the French fry eating vegetarians. If you throw away the French fries and really build in the high fiber foods and lots of vegetables and fruits, you can do better than that.

But wait, there's actually more. Your cholesterol level falls. When people go to this kind of diet they lose weight, on average about a pound per week, and don't get nervous if you're already at your normal weight, you don't keep losing, you don't just blow away.

But if you've got weight to lose, you'll generally lose it. Heart disease, if you have artery blockages, it actually tends to reverse. The arteries actually start opening up. Your energy level improves as well. Digestion gets better. If you have diabetes, your blood sugars fall. If you've got high blood pressure, it tends to come down. And sometimes people find if they've had a little bit of arthritis, that gets better. If they've got migraines, that gets better too. Why is that?

This doesn't happen in every case but it happens sometimes. And I think it's because there are certain foods that tend to trigger these things, and getting away from them allows the body to start to heal. So let me encourage you all to be part of this team. We're learning a lot and we're spreading it around to our loved ones.

People all over the world are test driving this kind of routine, putting it to work and I'd like you to be part of it. If you're thinking, “Well okay, I'll stick my toe in that swimming pool, I'll give it a try," here's what I suggest you do. As a preliminary, just try some new recipes, no long-term commitment. You just give it a try and see what you like and when you're ready, take about a three week period and during that three weeks do it 100%.

Jump in head first, make every meal for the three weeks a really healthy meal. Why do I say that? Because you know it's true. If you have a healthy meal on Monday and another healthy meal on say, Thursday and maybe another one, the following Wednesday, are you going to see any benefit from that at all? No. And are your tastes going to change? No.

But let's say you do it every single meal, every day, even for a short period of time, you find that your tastes actually change. Your body feels different. Most people go through their whole lives never having even a week on the diet their body was actually designed for and this is the chance to really do it.

So give it a go, and if you want to, you can try these transition foods. I'm suggesting you get away from meat. So if you want to have the veggie burgers and the veggie hot dogs in the transition, on your way to simpler foods, go ahead. So, we've covered the basis, I hope that you agree that nutrition is a really powerful force for health. Okay, I think you've got the idea. Thank you.

We now present excerpts from the chapter “Fueling Up on Low-Fat Foods” from the “Eating Right for Cancer Survival” DVD.

Welcome, thanks for joining us. When researchers have looked to find the best means of preventing cancer one of the things they’ve really focused in on, is how people eat in different places around the world and how cancer rates differ sometimes dramatically from one place to another.

And one of the first comparisons that really bore fruit, so to speak, was the comparison between Asia and the Western countries. In Japan the risk that a woman will develop cancer is quite low, at least traditionally, compared to Western countries. And for women who get cancer, survival is much better, again compared to Western countries.

Well, that could be because in Asian countries women tend to be thinner, but it also seems to relate to their diet. There’s a lot less fat in a traditional Asian diet. The staple is rice, noodles there’s a lot of use of vegetables, not much of very fatty foods, and that seemed to play a big difference. But it’s not just all fats really the animal fats, the saturated fats that seem to be a big part of the problem. But, things are changing.

You don’t have to just compare between say Japan and North America. You can stay home in Japan. Bad food comes to you! You’ve now got all kinds of fast food restaurants and meaty diets, the westernization of the diet is causing a change right there, and we’ve seen dramatic differences as this has occurred.

Particularly for two kinds of cancer: The digestive cancers, you know what I’m talking about, colon cancers especially. And also the hormone related cancers. In man this would mean prostate cancer, in women breast cancer and uterine cancer especially. And the reason seems to be that when a woman is on a high fat diet, and a low fiber diet, her hormones change.

There’s more estrogen in her bloodstream and that seems to fuel the growth of cancers. Same for men if he is on a diet without much fiber and with a lot of fat his testosterone level rises. It does not make him more macho, what it’s going to do is increase his likelihood of getting cancer.

The differences are huge! A study of Japanese women compared those who are affluent, and had westernized their diets early on, compared them to women who are less affluent and stuck with their traditional diet of rice and noodles and that sort of thing. The difference in breast cancer was 900%. Those women who westernized their diets were nine times more likely to develop this condition compared to the other women.

Now, it even matters after a person has been diagnosed. If a woman has breast cancer, if she has more fat in her diet, numerous studies have shown, her survival is likely to be shorter, that cancer is more likely, after treatment it’s more likely to come back.

There was an important study at the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA). What they did, it wasn’t a treatment study, they were just following the women who were getting treatment separately. It was about 900 women and they tracked their fat intake and then how they did over the next 12 years. What they found was dramatic.

The likelihood of dying at any time point down the road was increased by 40% for every thousand grams of fat the women were eating per month. Well, what does that mean? If I take a typical American diet and I add up all the fat that’s in that diet day after day after day for a whole month.

And I compare that to say a vegetarian diet, so there’s no animal fat and I keep the vegetable oils really low, those two diets differ by about 1000 to 1500 grams of fat per month. That’s good for a 40 to 60% difference in whether you’re dead or alive at any time point down the road. So it makes a huge difference.

Now in men, same story. If a man reduces fat intake and increases the fiber intake, well his testosterone level will come down just a little bit. He’s still got enough testosterone but those excesses that increase the risk of cancer will be gone. Now a lot of people are aware of this. They think, “Well I’m cutting back fatty foods. I’m switching from beef to chicken, I’m eating more fish.” You hear people say that.

Well, here’s the bad news for you. The leanest beef is about 29% fat as a percentage of its calories, which is what dieticians care about. The leanest chicken is not much lower, it’s about 23 (percent). Now fish vary, some are lower, some are higher, some are a lot higher. Chinook salmon, 50% fat or even higher, but broccoli is eight percent fat, beans are about four percent fat, rice is one to five (percent) depending on the type.

A potato is one percent fat, until it comes out of the oven and then of course at that point we put on the butter and the sour cream and Cheez Doodles and Bac-O-Bits, and suddenly it’s back up to where you started. But you get the point, that there are certain foods that are very low in fat, they’re very high in fiber and that will help you. Does it make a difference? You bet!

Our gratitude Dr. Neal Barnard for dedicating your career to informing people how a plant-based diet keeps us fit and full of vitality. May you continue your important contributions to the advancement of public health for many years to come.

For more details on The Cancer Project, please visit www.CancerProject.org
The two-set DVD “Eating Right for Cancer Survival” and The Cancer Survivor’s Guide, a free to download e-book, are available at the same website

Thank you admirable viewers, for being with us on today’s program. Please join us the third Monday of each month on Healthy Living for the remainder of this eight part series, including the conclusion of Dr. Barnard’s presentation “Fueling Up on Low-Fat Foods.” Up next is Science and Spirituality, after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May you always enjoy the very best of health.