Screening of antiproliferative effect of aqueous extracts of plant foods

[TanyaRD]

This is becoming and interesting discussion. The disease “cancer” probably shouldn’t even be classified as one disease because one cancer vs. another cancer often have little in common and obviously treatments for each have massive differences. What works for one does not always work for another. Rich, you are absolutely right that the ketogenic diet has demonstrated some benefit in certain brain tumors. However, this has not been demonstrated and/or studied in brain mets from breast cancer or any other metastatic disease therefore I would caution any application of that evidence to a metastatic situation. These mutated cells have wide metabolic variations. Some may feed on glucose while others prefer free fatty acids. They body produces glucose even in the absence of carbohydrate intake. In the meantime, patients are tasked with following an extremely restrictive, unpleasant diet causing nutrient deficiencies and huge social impact.

I don’t disagree with eating foods low on the glycemic index, however, it isn’t a perfect system either. The hormonal responses to a diet high in simple sugar are associated with poorer outcomes. As a dietitian I certainly wouldn’t recommend a diet high in simple sugar anyway. With that being said, it is highly unlikely that eliminating all forms of sugar (i.e. fruit, sweet potatoes) from the diet will provide any benefit to most tumor types. In fact, the opposite is more likely and demonstrated in countless nutrition/cancer studies. Note especially the WHEL study findings that demonstrated that breast cancer survivors who ate 5-7 servings of fruits and vegetables per day and got 30 minutes of physical activity on at least 6 days of the week cut their mortality rate in half. The WINS study found that a very low fat diet cut risk of breast cancer recurrence by up to 40%. The women that followed the very low fat diet inevitably increased their fruit and vegetable intake in order to achieve satiety. The World Cancer Research Fund and AICR’s global report provides countless examples of benefit to increasing the intake of plant foods.