Dietary Plans for Cancer Patients Should Vary by Person and by Stage

How should cancer patients eat? Many patients have asked me this; today I write an article specifically to set out my personal views on the question.

First, all cancer patients should avoid foods high in carcinogens and those that may trigger poisoning or allergy risk, including pickled foods, spoiled foods, grilled and fried foods, seafood, and mushrooms of unknown origin.

Pickled foods include the salted vegetables, pickles, fermented bean curd, preserved plum vegetables, zha cai, sauerkraut, salted fish, cured meat, cured chicken, Chinese sausage and pressed duck we commonly eat; all contain nitrosamine carcinogens. China has the world's highest incidence of esophageal and gastric cancer; the high incidence of these digestive-tract tumors is related to the excessive pickled foods in our traditional diet. Such foods may also be toxic; cancer patients who eat them may suffer food poisoning. Mid-to-late cancer patients have poor immunity, and food poisoning can easily become life-threatening in a single episode.

Spoiled food can hardly be guaranteed toxin-free; for example, moldy peanuts, corn, sunflower seeds, sweet potatoes and potatoes may be contaminated with aflatoxin. Some packaged pickled foods may also be contaminated with aflatoxin, such as preserved plum vegetables. Aflatoxin is highly toxic and easily causes vomiting and diarrhea; weak patients who cannot withstand the shock of food poisoning may die.

Grilled and fried foods are also high in carcinogens, the best known being benzo[a]pyrene; besides benzo[a]pyrene they contain other carcinogens as well. Cancer patients should therefore avoid them.

Cancer patients should also avoid, as far as possible, foods that easily cause allergy, such as seafood. Some patients are allergic by constitution and react to many foods: some to peanuts, some to milk, some to wheat products. Such patients should avoid as far as possible the foods that trigger their allergy; cancer already damages the immune system to some degree, and eating allergenic foods may make the disease progress rapidly. One sarcoma patient ate crab in the morning and by afternoon the leg tumor was visibly enlarging.

Cancer patients should follow the principle that all food be as fresh and safe as possible. Some patients crave gustatory pleasure and then, after eating, develop all kinds of unmanageable problems that are extremely hard to treat medically. I often see patients whose liver and kidney function is damaged by careless diet, sometimes so severely as to threaten life.

Fresh vegetables, eggs, meat, milk and yogurt (if not allergic), soy milk and tofu are all acceptable. All vegetables and meat should be thoroughly cooked, but one should not eat food while it is scalding hot. The habit of eating piping-hot food easily damages the oral, esophageal and gastric mucosa and, over time, may even trigger esophageal cancer.

Yogurt deserves special mention; it greatly benefits the body. This year the US FDA listed yogurt as a food that may prevent diabetes, holding that any yogurt (even sugary yogurt) is beneficial for diabetes prevention. Personally I suggest everyone take about 150-200 ml of yogurt daily. The microorganisms in yogurt greatly improve the intestinal environment and are truly a longevity-promoting food.

These are the uniform rules, suitable for all cancer patients.

For cancer patients in rehabilitation, beyond following the above principles, attention should also be paid to the ratio of plant to animal food, preferably eight parts plant to two parts animal. Quality protein may be obtained from meat, eggs, fish and dairy, but the diet should control as far as possible the amounts of sugar, fat and protein. I have written before that a low-fat, low-sugar, low-protein lifestyle benefits the body more; but there is a limit to "low"—the protein that should be supplemented must still be supplemented.

Patients with progressive weight loss due to chemotherapy/radiotherapy or other causes need special handling. Such patients should take digestive enzymes while eating more protein and fat. Otherwise, excessive emaciation will inevitably cause what TCM calls "loss of all substantial flesh" (commonly skin and bones), which is a sign of incurable disease.

Patients with pre-existing anemia should also supplement nutrient-rich foods such as meat, eggs, fish and dairy. Patients with iron-deficiency anemia should eat more iron-rich foods such as wood ear; zinc-deficient patients (prone to oral ulcers) should eat more zinc-rich foods such as shiitake mushrooms, animal liver, pork tripe and beef tripe.

Are alkaline foods better for cancer patients? The answer is no. The body's acid-base balance must stay within a normal range to survive; the claim that alkaline foods fight cancer is paying an "IQ tax." The claim was originally fabricated by an American so-called nutrition guru with a fake degree; he turned this biased idea into a Ponzi scheme and received the legal punishment he deserved in the US. But his Ponzi scheme, built for profit, has caused widespread harm worldwide, and even today many believers still follow it blindly.

Ketogenic anti-cancer diets, wheat-grass juice anti-cancer diets, raw potato juice anti-cancer diets, Morita therapy and the like have each had their vogue; in fact, few have benefited, while many have been harmed. People derive nourishment from food, and the range of ingredients should be broad; one should not fanatically believe that a single restrictive dietary therapy can treat cancer. Often such therapies not only fail to treat cancer but also cause nutritional imbalance.

In short, there is no uniform dietary standard; it depends on the patient's specific situation. One must not rigidly stick to a rule with only one option.