Study Confirms a Low-Protein Diet Helps Cancer Patients Live Longer
On June 28, 2023, the journal Nature published a study by the team of scientist Li-Ming at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The study found that changes in protein intake reprogram tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and alter the competition between TAMs and cancer cells.
Li-Ming's team found that, under a normal diet, breast cancer cells overexpressing the oncogene MYC are the competition winners: through competition they cause MYC-low breast cancer cells to die, absorb the nutrients released by the dead cells, and promote their own growth. But once the diet is switched to a low-protein one, the MYC-overexpressing cancer cells become the competition losers, and the TAMs win. As the competition winners, the TAMs do not help the tumor grow but directly phagocytose the apoptotic cancer cells that lost the competition, ultimately controlling tumor growth.
In other words, cancer patients on a low-protein diet live longer than those on a high-protein diet. The scientist Li-Ming, who conducted this research, appears to be of Chinese descent; his work may have been inspired by Chinese food culture. His team designed two diets for experimental mice: one normal diet with 15% protein, and an isocaloric low-protein diet with 2% protein. The results showed that mice on the low-protein diet had slower tumor growth and longer survival.
Chinese ancients have long held that people on a bland diet live longer. This dietary tradition should have been formed from real-life observation; Li-Ming's team has, with modern scientific methods, confirmed the soundness of Chinese traditional food culture. Indeed, in recent years, as living standards in China have risen and people consume more and more high-protein food, the incidence of cancer in China has also risen markedly.
Today, after a cancer diagnosis, patients and their families often like to "tonify" the patient with high-protein foods. Li-Ming's team's study confirms that such tonification not only fails to help the patient live longer but actually shortens a cancer patient's life.
For years I myself have advocated the benefits of a lower-protein diet and urged cancer patients to live on "coarse tea and plain rice," eating more vegetables and fruit and less fish, meat, eggs, and milk. This is because, in practice, I have seen the great harm of high-protein diets. I hope fellow cancer patients will "control their mouths," and I hope patients' families and friends will not buy all kinds of high-protein supplements for them or over-tonify them.