It is no exaggeration to say that the world is entering an era of cancer proliferation. The American Cancer Society’s Global Cancer Facts and Figures states that in 2008, 12.7 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed worldwide, and an estimated 7.6 million people died of cancer that year (that’s 21,000 people killed by cancer every day). By 2030, 21.4 million people will have developed cancer worldwide and 13.2 million will have died from it. In China, cancer is already the leading cause of death in both urban and rural areas. Such a background is giving rise to a market that is in full swing and tempting to both supply and demand: anti-cancer food. The public, out of fear of cancer, and cancer patients, out of their strong desire to live, often welcome these so-called “miracle anti-cancer foods” unconditionally. Next, let’s talk about this beautiful-looking “anti-cancer food”. Cancer is the result of a combination of factors People’s expectation of anti-cancer food is that if they eat it, they will not get cancer, and if they get cancer, they will be cured. The advertisements of certain anti-cancer foods cater to this mentality: “After eating XXX anti-cancer food, the tumor miraculously disappeared! –Is that really true? In four words: very wrong. One of the fundamental reasons why cancer is so troublesome to modern medicine is that, despite the increasing understanding of cancer, the exact pathogenesis of cancer is still an unsolved mystery in general. In layman’s terms, we have not really understood how people get cancer. All we know is that cancer is the result of a series of intricate factors such as age, gender, weight, genetic factors, environment, nature of occupation, lifestyle, exercise, diet, viral or bacterial infection, human immunity, etc., all acting together over the years, and even luck is among the influencing factors. It is nonsense to say that one or several foods alone can prevent or cure cancer. Let’s start with cancer prevention. No matter how glamorous the advertisements are, the principles claimed are nothing but anti-inflammatory response, antioxidant, immune system improvement, detoxification, etc. This looks beautiful, yet it is simply not true. This may look beautiful, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. First of all, there are many foods with anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, such as deep-sea fish, grains and cereals, dark green vegetables, nuts and soybeans, and so on. Secondly, the concept of improving immunity is a vague one: there is almost no rigorous scientific research on how much immunity can be improved by eating what kind of food. Detoxification is a famous “pseudoscientific” term with no exact basis. These two points show that the so-called anti-cancer foods are either commercially packaged and hyped, or they are ordinary foods that are based on a rigid concept and do not have any magic in their essence. Even if they do have some anti-cancer value due to antioxidant or anti-inflammatory responses, these effects are far from covering the great complexity of cancer causation as a whole. For example, many people in the West see blueberries as a miracle cancer-fighting food, believed to be effective in preventing colon cancer. But the problem is that, on the one hand, other fiber-rich vegetables have the same or even better effect; on the other hand, if a person who eats blueberries every day suffers from familial multiple colon polyps, and does not go to the hospital to receive treatment and monitoring, and is obese and never exercises, then his future risk of colon cancer is still much higher than the average person, the effect of blueberries is very small or almost negligible. And then there’s the cancer cure. The other half of anti-cancer foods is the claim that they can cure cancer, based on the principle that XX foods can inhibit or kill cancer cells. This claim is even more absurd – if it really can effectively inhibit or kill tumor cells without toxic side effects that outweigh the benefits, then this food is not just an anti-cancer food, but would have been upgraded to an “anti-cancer drug”, right? However, in fact, real anti-cancer drugs need very strict clinical trials to prove their effectiveness and safety, and there are no studies to prove that these so-called anti-cancer foods have definite cancer treatment effects. If you have a cancer patient at home, don’t let him or her believe in some miracle anti-cancer food, but miss the vital regular treatment. Effective in animal experiments ≠ effective in humans “Animal experiments show that it works! The advertising slogan is majestic and confident. Of course, this is one of the tricks used by many so-called anti-cancer food manufacturers to fool their target audience by borrowing the threshold of professional field. But is this really the case? Not really. So-called animal experiments are often effective: malignant tumors are planted on experimental mice and then fed with a certain anti-cancer food, and the tumor growth is observed to be inhibited and the life span of the mice is extended, which then becomes the basis for advertising. But in fact, the absorption and metabolism of the same orally ingested substances is not the same in mice as in humans, where the metabolism is more complex and the differences can be huge. It is entirely possible that a food that works in mice will have no effect in humans. In addition, animal experiments are managed under strict and uniform conditions. In order to determine the effect of a particular anti-cancer food, the nutrient content of the base diet usually needs to be kept to a minimum: for example, to examine the anti-tumor effect of dietary fiber, the amount of dietary fiber in the base diet needs to be strictly controlled, otherwise the effect may not be visible. But how can the same treatment be applied to humans? Therefore, what works in animals does not necessarily mean that it works in humans. Also because clinical trials on humans must consider ethical issues and a variety of differences and limitations, the so-called evidence for not only anti-cancer foods, but also almost all anti-cancer supplements, almost always stops at the stage of animal testing, or even lower-level in vitro trials. However, in advertisements, the brainwashing propaganda of “effective for human cancer too” has started, which needs special attention. Containing anti-cancer substances is not the same as anti-cancer food This is another common trap of thinking. Take red wine as an example: animal experiments have found that red wine contains a substance called resveratrol, which has an inhibitory effect on malignant melanoma, a sinister form of skin cancer. See here whether you plan to start drinking red wine? Hold on – no one in the world can enjoy the benefits of resveratrol by drinking red wine. That’s because if you wanted to get the same dose of resveratrol from red wine as you did in animal studies, you would have died from alcohol poisoning many times over. Each ounce (about 28 milliliters) of red wine contains about 160 micrograms of resveratrol, assuming that each glass of red wine is about 5 ounces, or 800 micrograms per glass (which is actually a very large glass of wine). The range of resveratrol in animal studies is 2 to 5 grams. Assuming you only need 2 grams of resveratrol and your wine glass is large enough, that still means drinking a full 2,500 glasses of red wine to get the supposedly cancer-fighting resveratrol. And that’s just purely a matter of dose. In addition, the composition of food is very complex, this ingredient anti-cancer does not mean that other ingredients will not necessarily cause cancer. Take red wine as an example – you want to drink 2,500 glasses of red wine to fight malignant melanoma, but red wine is also rich in alcohol. And alcohol, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer “handpicked” one of the number one carcinogen. In recent years, rigorous studies have suggested that even a small amount of alcohol can increase the risk of breast cancer. Korean kimchi is also touted by many manufacturers as a star anti-cancer food rich in antioxidants. But the flip side of kimchi is that it is high in salt and nitrites, which increase the risk of stomach cancer later in life. There is no anti-cancer food, but there is a healthy diet. Despite all the hype in the media, there is no one particular miracle anti-cancer food, it is just marketing jargon used to sell the product without scientific basis. Just because there is no magic anti-cancer food does not mean there is no healthy diet. According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, a balanced diet with a greater proportion and variety of fruits and vegetables can effectively reduce the risk of cancer in general. You just don’t need to stick to one of them, it doesn’t really matter. For healthy people, instead of believing in a particular cancer-fighting food, they should improve their lifestyles early. For those who are suffering from cancer, it is understandable that they are eager to cure their disease and want to try anything that has a little effect. But don’t be misled by various anti-cancer food advertisements and become the prey of some businessmen, so that you will spend money and miss the treatment, and regret in the end.