Nutrition in Cancer Prevention
Of course, protection from a multifaceted chronic disease such as cancer requires a multifaceted perspective. Managing stress, having physical activity, being protected from environmental toxins are some of the factors that should be considered in order to keep the risk of cancer at a minimum. In this article, we will look at nutrition, another factor in cancer prevention.
In order to understand the nutrition that can be described as cancer-protective nutrition, we must first learn the expectation of the body from food. The body expects two types of nutrients from food: macronutrients and micronutrients. macronutrients; carbohydrates, proteins and fats. With macronutrients, the body produces energy, produces hormones, repairs cells, or performs one of countless other biological events in the body. Although micronutrients are mostly vitamins and minerals, they also include numerous antioxidant molecules, phytochemicals and pigments found in foods. A cancer-protective diet is achieved when adequate macronutrients and micronutrients enter the body’s cells by the “cleanest” way. Here let’s see what the “cleanest” way will look like.
Consume naturally produced foods as much as possible.
Industrialization in food production has had two consequences. First, food began to come with more toxic waste. While fruits and vegetables entered the markets with chemicals used in agriculture, animal products began to enter our tables with pharmaceutical wastes used in livestock. The second is that we start to take less micronutrients from agricultural products as the soil quality decreases and the diversity of the ecosystem deteriorates. Although we are not lacking in calories, our vitamin deficiencies and antioxidant deficiencies have emerged. These two situations not only expose us to a greater toxin load, but also offer less food sources to combat this toxin load. In order to be protected from cancer, we need to do the opposite. A diet without industrial waste, low in toxins and rich in micronutrients can be a “clean” diet. For this reason, we should try to consume organic foods as far as possible from industrial production.
Keep your food variety rich.
The greatest benefit of food diversity is that it brings the micronutrient diversity that the body needs. Micronutrients are so numerous that it has not been possible for nutritional science to find every micronutrient in every food until now. Phytochemicals, which are new to the category of micronutrients, are bioactive molecules in plants and they support the body in countless different ways from cell repair to reducing free radicals, activating longevity genes to more effective energy production. Incorporating different foods into your diet is an important part of a cancer prevention diet as it will provide the body with all the micronutrient diversity needed. By diversity we mean, of course, plant diversity; We should diversify the vegetables and fruits that we include in our diet.
Do not consume processed food.
Avoiding processed and packaged foods with extended shelf-life in your diet is a cancer-preventive approach. If a food contains ingredients such as white sugar, fructose syrup, preservatives, flavors, white flour, and unfamiliar food additives, it is an indication that food has been processed and will do more harm than good to your body. Industrial foods and the ingredients of these foods have been in our lives for the last 100 years. Considering the evolution of life, this is a very short time, and therefore the human body does not recognize these foods or their ingredients. This situation causes industrial foods not to be tolerated well, wastes cannot be disposed of, and causes damage to all body cells, especially the intestine. Processed foods are both nutritionally deficient and highly toxic in terms of additives. They are not “clean” sources for obtaining macronutrients or micronutrients. Processed and packaged foods have no place in a cancer-preventing diet.
When you consume naturally produced foods, create a varied nutrition plan, and remove processed foods from your life, you add a cancer-protective diet plan to your life. Despite this, as we said at the beginning, cancer is a multi-faceted chronic disease and therefore we must always consider factors other than nutrition.
