Because of my family history and genetic make up, I am always on the look out for good information on cancer prevention. I was reading through some articles the other day and found Carolyn Katzin M.S.P.H., C.N.S. She is a nutritionist with 25 years experience. She is a lead volunteer with the American Cancer Society. She started working with cancer patients in 1985 and still remains on the professional advisory board at the Wellness Community in Santa Monica.
She has a website http://www.cancernutrition.com .She also sells a nutrition handbook for cancer patients and family members to use.
I read through her site and was excited to find these articles on her “cancer and nutrition: what is the connection?” page:
“Which foods are important for health?
Foods that come from the plant kingdom rather than the animal kingdom have many protective botanical factors: plants cannot move away from danger, unlike animals. These phyto (meaning plant) nutrients can be beneficial to us also. Antioxidants, anticarcinogens and bioflavonoids are some of the terms used to describe the actions of phytonutrients. Foods rich in botanical factors or phytonutrients include berries, dark green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, legumes (beans of all sorts including soy) and whole grains.
Which foods are less important for health?
If we emphasize those that are supportive to our health then we will find ourselves eating less of the foods that contain “empty” nutrients. These foods may provide pleasure so we need to keep them in our diet at low levels only. Such foods include desserts, cakes, candies and many items made with saturated animal fats. I prefer to think of the 80:20 rule when selecting foods. 80% of the time we should choose healthful foods from the plant kingdom such as those listed above, and 20% of the time we can choose foods that provide pleasure and may not be quite as healthful.
Why should we “eat our broccoli”?
Broccoli is one of the group of vegetables called cruciferous (from the word for cross as the flowers are in the shape of a cross and Brussels sprouts also grow out crosswise from the stalk). These vegetables contain isothiocyanates that are protective against carcinogenesis in laboratory studies. Other vegetables in this grouping include cabbage, cauliflower, Swiss chard, watercress and kale.”
There is a lot more information on her website, but I was excited to find someone who is “allowed” to admit desserts, cakes, candies and many items made with saturated animal fats are not just “not good for us”, but not good for us in correlation with CANCER.
I wish the information was more out there and in your face like all the “yummy” commercials we see advertising food that will eventually kill us.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we didn’t need to look for a cure for cancer because we could prevent it?
Source: WFM Blog – 2