Most Cancer Patients Eating Wrong

[Guest guest]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, September 30, 2008

 

 

Most Cancer Patients Eating Wrong

Hot Dogs Promote Cancer; Vitamins Prevent Cancer

 

 

(OMNS, September 30, 2008) 75% of all Americans do not even eat five

servings a day of fruits or vegetables. That is bad enough. It is even worse

with

cancer patients. A study of over 9,000 survivors of six different types of

cancer showed that only 15% to 19% were meeting the " 5-A-Day " recommendation.

That means that 81% to 85% were not. The researchers commented that these

findings indicate that even a cancer diagnosis may fail to improve fruit and

vegetable consumption. (1)

 

Better nutrition helps cancer patients live longer. This may seem too

obvious to state, but its significance is still hidden from the people who most

need to know it: the cancer patients themselves. Another study found that " The

majority of new patients with cancer presenting to a medical oncologist are at

risk of malnutrition or malnourished. " (2) Specifically, 66% of patients

were either at risk for malnutrition or malnourished. In other words, two out

of

three new cancer patients are eating wrong. Perhaps very wrong.

 

The best solution is prevention, and prevention has to start long before

cancer. In fact, it starts before birth. A recent review looked at 45 years of

research on the protective effect of prenatal vitamin supplementation on the

frequency of childhood cancer. It concluded that " maternal ingestion of

prenatal multivitamins is associated with a decreased risk for pediatric brain

tumors, neuroblastoma, and leukemia. " (3) Vitamin supplements reduced the chance

of a brain tumor by 27 percent. Vitamins lowered children's leukemia risk by

39 percent. Risk of neuroblastoma was cut in half. Clearly, prenatal vitamin

supplements are very important cancer fighters.

 

Prevention must then be continued throughout childhood. To illustrate how

extraordinarily important vitamin supplements are, consider this: Children who

eat hot dogs once a week actually double their risk of a brain tumor. Kids

eating more than twelve hot dogs a month have nearly ten times the risk of

leukemia as children who eat none. (4) However, hot-dog-eating children taking

supplemental vitamins were shown to have a reduced risk of cancer. (5)

 

Although this research was done over 14 years ago, remarkably little has

been said of it in the news media. Howard Straus of the Gerson Institute

comments: " When children die from small toy parts, the toys are instantly

recalled.

When the connection between hot dogs, ham and lunch meat is manifest, and it

has been documented numerous times, silence. " (6)

 

But hot dogs? Just how important a factor are hot dogs?

 

Americans eat an estimated 20 billion hot dogs per year. According to the

American Meat Institute's " National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, " on a single

July 4 day alone, Americans eat " 150 million hot dogs, enough to stretch from

D.C. to L.A. over five times. During Hot Dog Season, Memorial Day to Labor

Day, Americans typically consume 7 billion hot dogs or 818 hot dogs consumed

every second during that period. " (7) That is a lot of exposure.

 

What are hot dog eaters exposed to? Hot dogs and other " cured " meat products

typically contain chemical additives such as sodium nitrite, a color and

anti-bacterial preservative that has long been suspected as promoting cancer.

(8, 9) Now there is a controversial television commercial that spotlights the

risks to children. You can watch the commercial at

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