The Dietary Therapy of Japanese Anticancer Star Tetsuo Kamio

Tetsuo Kamio is a Japanese chef and culinary researcher. In 2003 he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, with cancer cells already metastasized to bone and lymph nodes. Doctors gave him standard hormone therapy for prostate cancer, but these therapies had no effect on his condition.

In sheer desperation, Kamio tried the macrobiotic diet for two years, and his condition improved somewhat. The staple of the macrobiotic diet is brown rice, accompanied mainly by seasonal vegetables and seaweed, along with some soups. The macrobiotic diet holds that the body and its local environment are as one (“body and soil are not two”), maintaining that the human body is closely bound to the local natural environment; it therefore advocates eating local, seasonal vegetables.

The macrobiotic diet also requires eating the whole vegetable, so as to absorb all of its nutrients. It also advocates attending to the “yin-yang nature” of food (Japanese people, like Chinese, are deeply influenced by the concept of yin and yang; the Japanese call foods that cool the body “yin foods” and foods that warm the body “yang foods.” Kamio advocated eating more yang foods and fewer yin foods, which in effect is what Chinese medicine calls avoiding cold and cooling foods).

Because the macrobiotic diet centers on high-quality plant protein and controls animal protein intake, after two years on it Kamio felt that although his condition had improved considerably, he felt very weak. Kamio realized that if he remained chronically weak, he would lack the strength to suppress the cancer—this is very much like the Chinese medicine view that when righteous qi is insufficient, one cannot ward off pathogenic evil.

So after two years on the macrobiotic diet, Kamio decided to pursue dietary therapy according to his own ideas. Thereafter, relying on the dietary method he worked out himself, he fought his cancer and, miraculously, lived another 12 years. In 2017 he wrote down his anticancer dietary experience in a book; its Chinese translation is titled Eat This Way After Cancer: I Lived Another 14 Years.

In this book, Kamio puts forward seven propositions. The first is to eat local, seasonal ingredients; the second is to eat the whole ingredient—skin, leaves, roots, pits, flesh, and seeds—to obtain all its nutrients; the third is to actively take in yang foods that warm the body. These three are borrowed from the macrobiotic diet, already introduced above, and need not be repeated here.

Kamio’s fourth dietary principle is a balanced, varied omnivorous diet, which he believes works better against cancer. He does not advocate fighting cancer with a single food, but holds that the variety of foods should be rich.

Kamio’s fifth principle is to eat naturally grown vegetables—what we often call green food. Of course, this is difficult for many people, because few city dwellers now have their own garden; growing vegetables oneself is unrealistic, and truly green vegetables in supermarkets are expensive. Agriculture worldwide has now been affected by pesticides and chemical fertilizers; even Sri Lanka, which once swore to uphold green agriculture, had to abandon its commitment this year, so in reality it is indeed hard to find ideal green vegetables.

Kamio’s sixth principle is moderate intake of animal protein; he does not advocate a purely vegan diet. He holds that protein is the material basis of the body’s immune function; if protein intake is insufficient, tissue repair is impaired and immunity lowered. So after two years of a vegan diet, having found himself constantly weak, Kamio gave up vegetarianism.

Kamio’s seventh principle is to avoid food additives. Had I not read Kamio’s book, I could hardly have imagined that we ingest hundreds of food additives in daily life. The various foods, cooking oils, salt, and seasonings we buy from supermarkets are full of flavor enhancers, colorants, preservatives, bactericides, bleaching agents, nutritional additives, color-developing agents, whitening agents, emulsifiers, thickeners, mildew inhibitors, antioxidants, and more. As a culinary expert, he knows these food additives inside out and is well aware of their great effect on the human body.

Reading his book gave me much inspiration. Kamio mentions that after eating all kinds of unhealthy ingredients and food additives, he and his wife often developed oral ulcers and gastrointestinal ulcers, but that after choosing a healthy diet, these problems resolved on their own without treatment. From such obvious change, we can see how serious the problems in our daily eating habits are.

I recommend readers read this book of Kamio’s, which has sold 160,000 copies in Japan, and draw some lessons from his dietary anticancer method. The causes of cancer are complex, and fighting cancer is a systematic project; only by acting on many fronts at once can one achieve a comparatively ideal anticancer result.