Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 5 days ago
Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
Stories of cancer-causing chemicals regularly appear in the press. Acrylamide, artificial sweeteners, nitrosamines, nitrites, Alar, heterocyclic amines and aflatoxin have all been linked to cancer in experimental studies.
There is a widely held perception that cancer is caused by toxic chemicals that make their way into our bodies in a sinister way. For example, people often cite health concerns to justify their opposition to pumping antibiotics and hormones into farm animals. The assumption is that the meat would be safe to eat if it didn’t have those unnatural chemicals in it. The real danger of the meat, however, is the nutrient imbalances, regardless of the presence or absence of those nasty chemicals. Long before modern chemicals were introduced into our food, people still began to experience more cancer and more heart disease when they started to eat more animal-based foods.
It is useful to think of this principle in another way: a chronic disease like cancer takes years to develop. Those chemicals that initiate cancer are often the ones that make headlines. What does not make headlines, however, is the fact that the disease process continues long after initiation, and can be accelerated or repressed during its promotion stage by nutrition. In other words, nutrition primarily determines whether the disease will ever do its damage.
Read more: nutritionstudies.org/eating-right-8-principles-food-health
Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
Stories of cancer-causing chemicals regularly appear in the press. Acrylamide, artificial sweeteners, nitrosamines, nitrites, Alar, heterocyclic amines and aflatoxin have all been linked to cancer in experimental studies.
There is a widely held perception that cancer is caused by toxic chemicals that make their way into our bodies in a sinister way. For example, people often cite health concerns to justify their opposition to pumping antibiotics and hormones into farm animals. The assumption is that the meat would be safe to eat if it didn’t have those unnatural chemicals in it. The real danger of the meat, however, is the nutrient imbalances, regardless of the presence or absence of those nasty chemicals. Long before modern chemicals were introduced into our food, people still began to experience more cancer and more heart disease when they started to eat more animal-based foods.
It is useful to think of this principle in another way: a chronic disease like cancer takes years to develop. Those chemicals that initiate cancer are often the ones that make headlines. What does not make headlines, however, is the fact that the disease process continues long after initiation, and can be accelerated or repressed during its promotion stage by nutrition. In other words, nutrition primarily determines whether the disease will ever do its damage.
Read more: nutritionstudies.org/eating-right-8-principles-food-health
