Joel Fuhrman - Eat To Live

Eat to Live 73

Understanding the Conflicting and Confusing Cancer Studies

The China Project data also helps explain findings from the Nurses

Study in Boston, which showed that American women who reduced

their fat intake surprisingly did not have a decreased risk of breast

cancer.^17 First of all, those on the lower-fat diet consumed 29 percent

of their calories from fat. This is still a high-fat diet (by my standards)

and even higher than the group with the highest fat intake in China.

It's like cutting back on smoking from three packs a day to two and

expecting to get a significant decrease in lung cancer risk. By the

way, the lowest-fat group in China, whose diet was almost entirely

composed of plants, was getting 6 percent of their calories from fat,

and the high-fat group in China consumed about 24 percent of their

calories from fat.

Second, these women who reported eating less fat in the Nurses

Study actually consumed just as much or more calories from animal

protein than those on the higher-fat diet, and the amount of unre-

fined plant produce did not increase. The low-fat group in China was

not eating anywhere near the quantity of processed foods that we do

in America. Their cancer rates were so low not solely because the

diet was low in fat and animal protein but also because, unlike Amer-

icans, they actually ate lots of vegetables.

Generally speaking, the reason the evidence from the China Proj-

ect is so compelling is that results from population studies in the

West are not very accurate. They generally study adults who have

made some moderate dietary change later in life, and all subjects are

past the age when dietary influence has the most effect. Certain can-

cers, such as breast and prostate cancer, are strongly influenced by

how we eat earlier in life, especially right before and after puberty.

After studying multiple diseases, not just one type of cancer, the

researchers involved in the China Project concluded: "There appears

to be no threshold of plant-food enrichment or minimization of ani-

mal product intake beyond which further disease prevention does

not occur. These findings suggest that even small intakes of foods of

animal origin are associated with significant increases in plasma cho-

lesterol concentration, which are associated, in turn, with significant

increases in chronic degenerative disease mortality rates."^18 In other

words, populations with very low cholesterol levels have not only

low heart-disease rates but low cancer rates as well.