Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World (5 page)

I love Ben’s story because he got an unexpected benefit when he changed his diet to vegan. He made the switch because he loved animals, and the weight loss just came naturally, as a side effect. He demonstrates so well that “leaning in” to a new way of eating—in his case by “veganizing” his favorite foods—works easily.

I decided to lead with weight loss because it’s an issue on so many people’s minds, and they don’t always know how easy it is to lose weight by cutting out animal-derived foods (and processed junk). That’s the truth of it; when we choose to eat in ways that support our health and vitality, our bodies naturally find their ideal weight. (And if you don’t need to lose weight, you won’t; remember, your body has an inborn system of checks and balances that, once unburdened by the unnatural fatty diet full of animal protein, will keep you right where you are supposed to be.) The really great thing is that eating plant-based foods means you can ditch the scale and stop worrying about controlling every calorie and carb. On every level, your body will feel the difference. And, as you’ll see when you turn to Promise 2, you’ll be arming yourself against the great killer diseases of our time. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Did you know?

• One out of every three children born after 2000 will develop type 2 diabetes, a disease preventable through diet and lifestyle choices.
  
• Animal protein (meat, dairy, and eggs) creates an acidic environment in the body, alters the mix of hormones to favor cell growth, modifies important enzyme activities to increase activation of carcinogens, and causes inflammation and cell proliferation—all of which create an ideal environment for cancer to thrive.
  
• You can reduce your chances of getting cancer by 40 percent, heart disease by 50 percent, and diabetes by 60 percent by changing your diet to a whole foods, vegetarian diet.
  
• Within days of switching to a plant-based diet, weight starts to drop away; within a week, blood sugar starts to fall; within two weeks, blood pressure improves; and within a month, cholesterol improves significantly.
  
• Switching to a vegan diet and making some other important lifestyle changes (such as stress reduction and smoking cessation) seem to be
  the
  ticket to preventing and reversing major diseases.
  

You’ve heard it before: if things keep going the way they are,
half
of us will get cancer or heart disease and die from it. One out of every three children born after 2000 will develop type 2 diabetes, a disease that is almost entirely preventable. The diabetes epidemic is a rapidly emerging crisis, the seriousness of which I’m not sure we have yet recognized. The good news is, the means to prevent and heal disease seems to be right in front of us. It’s in our food. Honestly, our food choices can either kill us—which mounting studies say that they are—or they can lift us right out of the disease process and into soaring health.

Here’s what the latest science tells us: according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, you can reduce your chances of getting cancer by 40 percent, heart disease by 50 percent, and diabetes by 60 percent simply by following a whole foods, vegetarian diet (the odds are even better when you cut out eggs and dairy), and these are conservative numbers. On top of this, a plant-based diet can help people with all these conditions recover more quickly and fully. And even more startling: such diets can be catalysts in
curing
some of the most serious diseases we face. That’s right,
curing
.

What this science is telling us is that we have to rethink all our assumptions about deadly diseases. No longer are pharmaceuticals or drastic medical procedures your only option; there is so much hope on your plate and in your pantry.

Shifting to a vegan diet and making some other important lifestyle changes (such as stress reduction and smoking cessation) seems to be
the
ticket to preventing, reversing, even curing disease.

In this chapter we’ll look at cancer, heart disease, and diabetes in turn to better understand how what we eat can make a difference.

Conquering Cancer

I am very fortunate to know T. Colin Campbell, PhD, professor emeritus of Cornell University and coauthor of the ground-breaking
The China Study.
I strongly recommend this book; it’s an expansive and hugely informative work on the effects of food on health. Campbell’s work is regarded by many as the definitive epidemiological examination of the relationship between diet and disease. He has received more than seventy grant years of peer-reviewed research funding (the gold standard of research), much of it from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and he has authored more than 300 research papers. Dr. Campbell grew up on a dairy farm and believed wholeheartedly in the health value of eating animal protein. Indeed, he set out in his career to investigate how to produce more and better animal protein. Troublesome to his preconceived opinion about the goodness of dairy, Campbell kept running up against results that pointed to a different truth: that animal protein is disastrous to human health.

Through a variety of experimental study designs, epidemiological evidence (studies of what affects the illness and health of populations), and observation of real-life conditions that had rational, biological explanations, Dr. Campbell has made a direct and powerful correlation between cancer and animal protein. For this book I asked Dr. Campbell to explain a little about how and why nutrition (both good and bad) affects cancer in our bodies.

He explains that at various times throughout our lives, cancer cells pop up in all of us. (Yes, you read that right.) But what “feeds” the cancer and fortifies it is, among other things, animal protein. Why is that? Because animal protein (all meat, dairy, and eggs) creates an acidic environment in the body, alters the mix of hormones to favor cell growth, modifies important enzyme activities to increase activation of carcinogens, and causes inflammation and cell proliferation—all of which creates an ideal environment for cancer to thrive.

On the other hand, when you eat a plant-based (vegan) diet, you are getting the antioxidants inherent in vegetables and fruits that are critical to neutralizing cancer-causing free radicals in the body, along with fiber, which acts like a scrub brush as it moves through your body. A varied, plant-based diet, he claims, is a protective diet—sufficient in amino acids for protein needs; high in fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals; and low in saturated fats.

The following is a conversation I had with Dr. Campbell to better understand this dynamic.

Straight from the Source: T. Colin Campbell, PhD, on Diet and Cancer

KF:
What happens in the body when cancer develops? What is the actual process?

TCC:
Cancer generally develops over a long period of time, which can be divided into three stages: initiation, promotion, and progression.

Initiation
occurs when chemicals or other agents attack the genes of normal cells to produce genetically modified cells capable of eventually causing cancer. The body generally repairs most such damage, but if the cell reproduces itself before it is repaired, its new (daughter) cell retains this genetic damage. This process may occur within minutes and, to some extent, is thought to be occurring most of the time in most of our tissues.

Promotion
occurs when the initiated cells continue to replicate themselves and grow into cell masses that eventually will be diagnosed. This is a long growth phase occurring over months or years and is known to be reversible.

Progression
occurs when the growing cancer masses invade neighboring tissues and/or break away from the tissue of origin (metastasis) and travel to distant tissues when they are capable of growing independently, at which point they are considered to be malignant.

KF:
Why do some people get cancer and others don’t? What percentage is genetic, and what percentage has to do with diet?

TCC:
Although the initiated cells are not considered to be reversible, the cells growing through the promotion stage usually are, which is a very exciting concept. This is the stage that especially responds to nutritional factors. For example, the nutrients from animal-based foods, especially the protein, promote the development of the cancer, whereas the nutrients from plant-based foods, especially the antioxidants, reverse the promotion stage. This is a very promising observation because cancer proceeds forward or backward as a function of the balance of promoting and anti-promoting factors found in the diet. Thus, consuming anti-cancer-promoting, plant-based foods tends to keep the cancer from going forward, perhaps even reversing the promotion. The difference between individuals is almost entirely related to their diet and lifestyle practices.

Although all cancers and other diseases begin with genes, this is not the reason why the disease actually appears. If people do the right thing during the promotion stage, perhaps even during the progression stage, cancer will not appear, and if it does, it might even be resolved. Most estimates suggest that not more than 2 to 3 percent of cancers are due entirely to genes; almost all the rest is due to diet and lifestyle factors. [Note from Kathy: Which is not to say that anyone is to blame for “creating their cancer,” but rather that we have a powerful tool available to us to prevent further damage and possibly to reverse the damage already in motion.]

Consuming plant-based foods offers the best hope of avoiding cancer, perhaps even reversing cancer once it is diagnosed. Believing that cancer is attributed to genes is a fatalistic idea, but believing that cancer can be controlled by nutrition is a far more hopeful one.

KF:
You said that initially something attacks the genes—chemicals or other agents. Like what?

TCC:
Cancer, like every other biological event—good or bad—begins with genes. In the case of cancer, gene[s] that give rise to cancer either may be present when we are born or, during our lifetimes, normal genes may be converted into cancer genes by certain highly reactive chemicals (i.e., carcinogens).

Consider “cancer genes” as seeds that grow into tumor masses only if they are “fed.” The “feeding” comes from wrongful nutrition. It’s like growing a lawn. We plant seeds, but they don’t grow into grass (or weeds) unless they are provided water, sunlight, and nutrients. So it is with cancer. In reality, we are planting seeds all throughout our lifetime, not only for cancer but also for other events as well. But this mostly does not matter unless we “nourish” their growth.

The chemicals that create these cancer genes are called carcinogens. Most carcinogens of years past have been those that attack normal genes to create cancer genes. These are initiating carcinogens, or initiators. But more recently, carcinogens also may be those that promote cancer growth. They are promoting carcinogens, or promoters.

Our work showed that casein, an animal protein widely used in research studies, is the most relevant cancer promoter ever used in a laboratory. This striking research observation was then used to investigate whether it was consistent with practical diets, and we found, both biochemically and epidemiologically, that all diets rich in animal foods and low in whole plant-based foods had the same effect, thus indicating all animal protein, not just casein.

The most important point to consider is that we cannot do much about preventing initiation, but we can do a lot about preventing promotion.

KF:
What exactly is so bad about animal protein?

TCC:
I wouldn’t say “exactly,” because it suggests something very specific. Rather, animal protein causes a broad spectrum of adverse effects.

Among other fundamental effects, it makes the body more acidic, alters the mix of hormones, and modifies important enzyme activities, each of which can cause a broad array of more specific effects. One of these effects is its ability to promote cancer growth (by operating on key enzyme systems, by increasing hormone growth factors, and by modifying the tissue acidity). Another is its ability to increase blood cholesterol (by modifying enzyme activities) and to enhance atherogenesis, which is the early stage of cardiovascular disease.

KF:
Okay, so I am clear that it’s wise to avoid casein, which is intrinsic in dairy (milk and cheese), but how is other animal protein, such as chicken, steak, or pork, implicated in the cause and growth of cancer?

TCC:
I would first say that casein is not just “intrinsic” but
is the main protein of cow milk, representing about 87 percent of the milk protein.

The biochemical systems that underlie the adverse effects of casein are also common to other animal-based proteins. Also, the amino acid composition of casein, which is the characteristic primarily responsible for its cancer-promoting property, is similar to most other animal-based proteins. They all have what we call high “biological value,” in comparison, for example, with plant-based proteins, which is why animal protein promotes cancer growth and plant protein doesn’t.

KF:
Isn’t anything in moderation okay, as long as we don’t overdo it?

TCC:
I rather like the expression used by my friend Caldwell Esselstyn, the Cleveland Clinic surgeon who reversed heart disease and who says, “Moderation kills!” I prefer to go the whole way, not because we have foolproof evidence showing that 100 percent is better than, say, 95 percent for every single person for every single condition, but that it is easier to avoid straying off on an excursion that too often becomes a slippery slope back to our old ways. Moreover, going the whole way allows us to adapt to new unrealized tastes and to rid ourselves of some old addictions. And finally, moderation often means very different things for different people.

KF:
Are you saying that if one changes their diet from animal-based protein to plant-based food that the disease process of cancer can be halted and reversed?

TCC:
Yes, this is what our experimental research shows. I also have become aware of many anecdotal claims by people who have said that their switch to a plant-based diet stopped or even reversed their disease. One study on melanoma has been published in the peer-reviewed literature that shows convincing evidence that it is substantially halted with this diet.