Mom is right

Mom told you to eat your vegetables and she was right. Of course, that didn't keep the US government and Wal-Mart heir John Walton from spending $35 million on a study to show us that she was wrong. The National Cancer Institute study, The Women's Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial, is reported to have found no benefit from recommending that women with breast cancer eat more fruits, vegetables, and less fat.

Once again the media is eagerly reporting the "failure" of "high" consumption of vegetables and fruits to provide health benefits. I saw a movie trailer with one line that has haunted me: There are two sides to every story, but there is only one side to the truth. Think about who has the motivation to prove that the Standard American Diet is good for us and how much money that group has. Now think about who has the motivation to tell us to eat whole unprocessed foods. Now follow the money and decide which side of the story is more likely to be the truth.

Before the media causes you throw up your hands in despair over eating a diet proven repeatedly to be healthier, read this detailed analysis of the study in question. If you are not inclined to do that much reading, let this excerpt from Dr. John McDougall give you some food for thought today instead of a recipe to cook:

Breast cancer is a fatal disease and women will do almost anything to live. They will endure poisoning by toxic chemotherapy, burning with radiation, and mutilation from breast-amputating mastectomy; in the hopes of living a few more days. Obviously, if asked to do so, and given proper support from their doctors and dietitians, they would do something as simple, safe, cost-effective, and enjoyable as eating oatmeal and bean burritos while avoiding beefsteaks and cheese omelets. In The Women’s Healthy Eating and Living (WHEL) Randomized Trial they continued the same meat-, dairy-, oil-, and environmental chemical-laden diet that got them in trouble in the first place, with minor modifications. The investigators, not the women, should be held responsible for the fact that even the instructions to eat, “5 vegetable servings plus 16 oz of vegetable juice; 3 fruit servings; 30 g of fiber; and 15% to 20% of energy intake from fat,” were followed poorly. The full cancer-inhibiting benefits of low-fat, plant-foods were never offered to these women.

A true test of diet for the prevention and treatment of breast cancer would follow the model of the diet of women worldwide who have the least chance of contracting breast cancer and the best chance of surviving it. These are women who follow a diet based on starches, like from rural Asia (rice), Africa (millet), Mexico (corn), New Guinea (sweet potatoes) and Peru (potatoes). The few women, who do get breast cancer in these societies, also live longer than their Western counterparts.