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Preventing Cancer with Diet: The Cancer Project sponsors upcoming cooking course in San Pedro to help people fight and prevent cancer.
This piece ran in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News on Jan. 22, 2007
The good news is that cancer deaths have declined for the second straight year, according to the American Cancer Society. However, cancer is still one of the leading causes of death in the country. One in four deaths, says the ACS, is attributed to cancer. While lung cancer is the top killer, causing about 30 percent of cancer deaths, another third of cancer deaths are linked to nutrition and physical activity.
That’s where The Cancer Project comes in.
Based in Washington, D.C., The Cancer Project is a collaborative effort of physicians, researchers and nutritionists who make it their mission to educate the public about the benefits of a healthy diet for cancer prevention and survival. “There are about 30 to 60 percent of cancers that are preventable by diet,” says Jennifer Reilly, a senior nutritionist for The Cancer Project. Reilly helped create the project’s Food for Life Nutrition and Cooking Classes, which sponsors free cooking courses around the country that teach people how to prepare foods that will prevent cancer. “There’s a strong chance that by eating a healthy diet and following a healthy lifestyle they can possibly prevent it or help their body fight it off better.”
The Cancer Project will sponsor a free eight-week course, beginning on Tuesday, Jan. 30, at the YMCA in San Pedro. The program is a vegan-based diet, and participants will learn how to replace meat and dairy products with alternative choices.
“The basic components of a really healthy, cancer-preventive diet is really one that is based on plant foods,” Reilly says. “That’s going to be a diet that is high in fiber and naturally low in fat, and just rich in fruits and vegetables that have natural antioxidants and other cancer fighters.”
Why vegan? Meat products and by-products are void in fiber and high in fat, “which is a negative in cancer prevention,” says Reilly. And when meat is exposed to heat for a period of time, carcinogens — a substance believed to cause cancer — will form. “[Carcinogens] are unique to animal protein,” she says. “You wouldn’t experience [them] with a veggie burger.
“When you consume dairy products,” Reilly adds, “your body produces a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 — and that’s just a result of consuming the product. That doesn’t mean the dairy product necessarily had [added] hormones in it, so even organic dairy would create this response in the body.”
Higher circulating levels of IGF-1 puts men at higher risk for developing prostate cancer and women at higher risk of developing breast cancer. New research, Reilly says, also shows a connection between dairy products and ovarian cancer.
“Ideally, you would want to give up both meat and dairy products and focus on just plant foods,” she says. “For some people that means making that change overnight and for others it can be gradual change … Whatever works best for that individual.”
‘Favoring Fiber’
Packed in the small caf/ at the Wild Oats Market in Long Beach Thursday night, about 30 participants learned the importance of fiber from personal chef and cooking instructor Cobi Kim, who has been with The Cancer Project for a year. Each of the eight classes in the Food for Life course centers on an important cancer-nutrition topic, and Thursday’s class was “Favoring Fiber.”
To properly rid the body of toxins, Kim, who also will teach the San Pedro class, told participants they need to consume 40 grams of fiber each day. “The average American is lucky if they get 12 grams of fiber,” she says. She went on to explain that for every 14 grams of fiber consumed, it will reduce a person’s overall caloric intake by 10 percent. Since fiber is filling, people will eat less. “And that’s good for a lot of reasons,” Kim says.
The importance of fiber in a cancer-preventive diet is that not only does it rid the body of toxins, but also waste hormones and excess cholesterol. Fiber also helps the immune system function properly. “The 40 grams is going to help your body eliminate toxins, have regular bowel movements and keep your body from reabsorbing toxins,” Kim says.
But 40 grams seems like a lot to consume. “Not if you’re eating from the new four food groups and have the servings The Cancer Project recommends,” she says. “It’s very realistic.”
To demonstrate to the class how they can add more fiber to their diet and still enjoy foods people love, Kim created four high-fiber Mexican dishes, including tomato-corn salsa and bean burritos. Since the course is vegan-based, she used absolutely no animal products in the cooking demonstration. “There are two things that I always stress in this class,” she says. “One, animal products always contain cholesterol and, two, fiber hardly ever has cholesterol.”
To “beef” up her burritos, Kim added burgers made of soy. But she warned her students to check the labels of the products they use in their recipes. “What makes some vegetarian burgers different from vegan [burgers] is that vegetarian ‘meat’ will have whey protein, which you want to stay away from if you’re trying to stay vegan.”
When it came time to sample Kim’s dishes, the class literally “ate” them up.
“This is delicious,” comment several of the students.
Some students seemed surprised by this, while others in the class didn’t. Perhaps they have tried Kim’s dishes before.
“People take the class more than once,” Kim says. “Because even if they’ve heard the message one time, they get the support from all the people that are taking it each time. So when they’re transitioning into a vegan lifestyle they have a bunch of people around.”
In Kim’s Long Beach class, she has five students undergoing cancer treatment, five who are cancer survivors and many more with a family history of cancer who want to learn preventative measures.
“The Cancer Project’s mission is to educate the community about nutrition and diet for cancer prevention and survival,” says Kim. “The classes are always free for the attendees and we welcome everyone.”
The Cancer Prevention and Survival Cooking Course will be held Tuesdays beginning Jan. 30 through May 8 at the YMCA, located at 301 S. Bandini St. in San Pedro. Classes are from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. The cost is free. To sign up, call Elizabeth Zaludoff at (310) 832-4211. For more information on The Cancer Project, visit www.cancerproject.org.
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