Spinach….Collards….Dandelions….Kale….Sprouts….YUCK!!! This is not always my reaction anymore, but this was definitely how I felt at the beginning of my anti-cancer protocol. Why is organic, raw, and vegan so important?

Organic- Since I didn’t eat vegetables to begin with, whether they had pesticides or not didn’t concern me… That is, until cancer became an issue. Buying organic is essential to the anti-cancer diet or any healthy diet. It is common knowledge that when pesticides are sprayed on produce, many of those fruits and vegetables actually absorb the chemicals. They essentially become a part of the fruit or veggie. Some of these more chemical prone veggies known as the “Dirty Dozen” are peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, imported grapes, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes (some studies also include blueberries.) Also, buying organic ensures that you are not getting a genetically modified (GMO) product. When fighting cancer with food as your medicine, you want your food to have come from the ground, not from the lab.

Raw- This one is pretty simple. Eating as closely to God’s creation is the way to go. When I first began my anti-cancer diet my 5^th grade students had a list of things they would ask me if I could or could not eat. I summed it up by saying “I can only eat things that come from the ground.” When we cook food we destroy a lot of its enzymes. Enzymes are naturally in raw fruits and vegetables and help them digest much easier rather than force our digestive tracts to do all the work. Living, raw foods also contain the optimal amount of vitamins and minerals. Uncooked fruits and veggies also boost your body’s alkalinity. This has been shown to deter cancer which thrives in an acidic environment.

Vegan- Having to digest animal products makes your body work harder. When fighting cancer you need all the energy you have working towards eliminating cancer. There’s a more scientific explanation behind this, but for right now I think that simplifies it. Plant products practically digest themselves and contain tons of fiber to clean out your colon to allow for optimal absobtion of nutrients. Meat is dead. That means your body has to do all the work to digest it. There are no enzymes to help. Most dairy products are also dead since much of their nutrients have been destroyed in the pasteurization process. The only exception to this is raw milk from healthy grass-fed cows and cultured dairy such as cottage cheese, no-added sugar yogurt, and kefir. The raw milk has its original enzymes and the cultured products contain live organisms (probiotics) which help with digestion. During my anti-cancer diet the only dairy I consumed was cottage cheese, part of the “CCFO” protocol I will write about tomorrow.

An excellent, complete resource to read more about the benefits of the raw vegan diet is “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell. Now that I am cancer free I try to eat about 90% vegan, of that 60% raw, and no processed foods, sugars, or trans-fats.

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