Guidelines for an anti-cancer diet.
Over the last 25 years, cancer research has produced dietary guidelines that have become conventional wisdom when it comes to cancer prevention. Among the most common of these guidelines are: reduce unhealthy dietary fat, remove known carcinogens from your diet, eat food with ample nutrients shown to prevent cancer, limit or eliminate consumption of alcoholic beverages, and take vitamin and mineral supplements when necessary.
The following tips will help you to make smart food choices:
- Don’t eat moldy foods: They likely contain aflatoxin, a potent liver carcinogen. Aflatoxin is most commonly found on peanuts.
- Never cook oils with high heat: Low-heat cooking or baking (less than 240 degrees) prevents oils or fats from turning carcinogenic. When possible, replace heating and frying with boiling or steaming.
- Avoid cured and preserved meats. Nitrosamines are found in cooked bacon and sausage, cured pork, and dried beef. They are known to be a potent carcinogen. Nitrosamines are also formed during the drying process when beer is manufactured. The highest levels are found in dark beers.
- Minimize your intake of barbecued foods. Burning or charring meats creates substances called heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which are released when high heat is applied to a compound called creatine, found in animal blood and tissue. HCAs are most often associated with cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.
- Smoked foods are a bad idea. Carcinogenic substances called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) form on the surface of food during the smoking process.
- Whenever possible, buy organic. Additives and pesticides found in commercially grown produce and processed foods are also suspected carcinogens. It is best to buy organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible.
Taking the above points into consideration, a healthy diet for cancer prevention emphasizes the following foods:
- Consume five servings of fruits and vegetables each day. A recent report sponsored by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Study estimated that eating 400 or more grams daily of fruits and vegetables could prevent at least 20 percent or more of all cancers.
- Select foods from plant sources. This includes breads, cereals, grain products, rice, or beans several times each day
- Eat plenty of fiber. Fiber moves cancer-causing compounds out of the body before they can create harm.
- Healthy fats are good for you, in moderation. Olive oil, for instance, has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer. The human body needs fat for normal cellular functioning. So when you eat fat, replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats.