Animal protein may cause cancer

Quoting the World Research Fund of UK, Kathryn's Borg's feature on processed meat and cancer (The Sunday Times, January 11) seems to claim that only processed meats promote cancer.

There is a considerable body of scientific evidence, published in peer-reviewed journals over the last few decades that, in fact, all animal-derived protein and fat (i.e., all meats and dairy produce, including poultry and rabbit) promote cancers of various types, not only the most common ones, like breast, bowel and prostate, but also of others, such as bone marrow cancers and melanoma skin cancer.

Several published American studies on rats (biologically very similar to humans) made prone to cancer by injecting them with carcinogenic chemicals or viruses show, for example, that none of the animals fed a diet containing only five per cent casein (animal milk protein) develop cancer, while similar animals given a 20 per cent casein diet all develop cancer. The same applies to all other types of animal protein tested.

Furthermore, an extensive study on human disease distribution patterns in China conducted 30 years ago by Chinese and American academics, showed that parts of China with diets of high animal-based foods content suffered from 'diseases of affluence', namely, cancers, diabetes, cholesterol problems, heart disease and strokes, obesity, bowel diverticular disease and gall stones.

Parts of China where diet consisted mainly of plant-based foods (vegetables, fruit and whole grains) had very little of these diseases of affluence. Other parts with an abundant diet of plant-based foods had very healthy lean people of good height.

Recommendable plant-based foods do not include white bread, white pasta and pastries made with white flour and fat. Whole grains means unrefined oats, wholemeal bread, brown pasta, and brown, red and black rice. Too many refined carbohydrates in foods made from white flour and white rice contain no fibre and promote blood sugar and cholesterol problems.

For several decades we've been fed scientific and medical misinformation, such as that plant protein is inferior to animal protein for optimal human health and body development. This is now known to be untrue - plant protein combined with fibre, as found abundantly in beans and lentils, is as good as animal protein for body development. Furthermore, plant protein and fibre, unlike animal protein, improve blood cholesterol.

Some vegetables have more calcium than animal milk, and it is simply untrue that bone health needs animal milk products. Some vegetables and whole grains had abundant iron and no meats are needed to prevent anaemia. Vegetables and fruits, particularly the dark and brightly coloured ones, contain many compounds which protect us from cancers and heart disease, and which are still unknown to conventional medicine.

Most Western medical schools ignore all the published evidence that a predominantly plant-based diet with little animal protein and fat, not only protects from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity, but can also reverse heart disease and possibly also some cancers. They have been teaching new generations of doctors little more than how to use pharmaceutical drugs and surgery, which is to the detriment of people's health and to the ever escalating costs of health care.

Readers who are interested in learning more about these claims are referred to The China Study by T. Colin Campbell (ISBN 1-932100-66-0). The author has been directly involved with more than 350 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.