WHY CANCER BEGINS IN YOUR SHOPPING CART

In my post titled "Race For the Cure???"(also on this blog) I said that for far too many people, cancer begins in their grocery store shopping cart, and that the majority of them are unaware of that fact. They do not know that one of the greatest areas of control over cancer they have lies in what kind of food and drink they put on their table.

Here are the cancer-promoting grocery items I mentioned in my previous post: doughnuts, pepperoni, sausage, hot dogs, "lunch meats," smoked foods, white bread, white crackers, white spaghetti, white pastries and all white flour and otherwise refined flour products, white sugar, brown sugar, dextrose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, refined honey, candy, cookies, pasteurized, homogenized milk, potato chips, high fat cheeses, nearly all margarines, sugar-sweetened jams and jellies, ice cream, soda-pop,(diet or non-diet), antibiotic and hormone-laden beef, chicken and pork, farm-raised fish and non-organically produced items that are boxed, canned, bottled or otherwise processed and preserved.


Now, here are some reasons the above items are cancer-promoting, or carcinogenic:
Pepperoni, sausage, hot dogs and "lunch meats" contain nitrates or nitrites, artificial food coloring, loads of saturated fat, (meaning loads of heart-injurious calories), loads of salt, and miscellaneous animal parts---possibly even cancerous animal parts. Close-up photographs of hot dogs and bologna show the nasty globs of fat, as well as particles of unidentifiable "black stuff" that does not appear to be black pepper...

The danger of nitrates and nitrites is that they convert to nitrosamines in your body, and nitrosamines are potent carcinogens. They have long been suspected of being a cause of stomach cancer. You can buy nitrate/nitrite-free hot dogs in the health-food section of the grocery store, but they will still contain plenty of fat, loads of salt and unidentified animal parts and other "stuff."

Nearly all smoked foods you buy at the grocery store also contain nitrates/nitrites, but they also contain something else: "polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons" (PAH's.) PAH's are formed whenever there is incomplete combustion or burning. This incomplete burning occurs in cigarettes, and PAH's are the main cancer causers in cigarettes. But such incomplete burning also takes place in charcoal grills and in the smoking of food. The fat drops on the charcoal, partially burns and spatters up onto the meat. Charcoal grilled meat contains large quantities of such chemicals, which the body mistakes for cholesterol, and so pumps it to every vessel and organ. Some researchers have found that one large char-broiled steak provides the amount of PAH's you'd get from smoking a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes.

That's not to say you should never again eat char-grilled or gas-grilled steak, hamburger, chicken or pork. Just be aware that when you do, you're ingesting carcinogens, so don't make a regular habit of it, and be especially careful not to feed your children lots of char-broiled or gas-grilled meat.

Broiling meats in the oven, where the heat source is above, rather than below, the food, does not allow partially burned juices to spatter up onto the meat, and so does not produce PAH's. Also, keep an eye out for a product called the "Safe Grill," in which the heat source is above, rather than below the food being cooked, so that the drippings do not spatter up onto the meat from the flames below.

"White" products provide you with precious little nutrition, which of course you know you need, and almost no fiber, which you may or may not know you need. If you do know you need fiber in your diet, you very likely don't know how much fiber you need.

For good health, you need 30 to 50 grams,(about 1-2 ounces), of fiber a day. But chances are very good you're like most Americans, who get only 4 to 12 grams,(1/7th to 3/7ths of an ounce) of fiber daily. If that's the case, chances are good you suffer from constipation at least occasionally, in which case you're increasing your chances of developing diverticulitis,(a very serious inflammation of the intestines), and colon cancer. But you're also increasing your chance of diabetes, heart problems, arthritis, high blood pressure and a host of other serious illnesses. Please paste this link into your browser and read as much as you like about refined white foods: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=white+flour+cancer&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&oq= Then, if you still want to go on eating white, refined foods, at least you will no longer be doing so in ignorance.

What's the alternative to white bread, white rolls, white spaghetti, white crackers and other white flour products? It's not something you're not already aware of. It's whole flour products---whole wheat, of course, but also whole rye, whole oat, whole corn and other ground grain products that haven't been meddled with so as to remove the nutrition and fiber from them.

Don't be fooled by the word "enriched" on white bread and other white flour products. It's ridiculous for baking companies to make their bread from flour that's been stripped of its nourishment, and then to try to add back that nourishment with artificial vitamins and minerals. Also, "enriched" refined flour products still won't provide your body with the fiber it needs.

Here's a link to an E-book, (written by T. L. CLEAVE, M.R.C.P. Surgeon-Captain Royal Navy (Retd.)Formerly Director of Medical Research, Institute of Naval Medicine), about the very serious health problems associated with the refined diet the majority of Americans eat. Please paste it into your browser and click "enter":

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Cleave/cleave_toc.html#Preface

Cleave, whose responsibility it was to keep the sailors on naval vessels healthy, gives very credible evidence that eating a refined diet is responsible for dis-eases of the colon, for hemorrhoids, varicose veins, deep vein thrombosis, dental caries, obesity, diabetes, coronary dis-ease and peptic ulcers. A couple of excellent points he makes are that:

1) The use of machinery for refining grain and sugar-containing plants is so very recent that the human body has had virtually no time to adapt to processing and properly utilizing the resultant concentrated and devitalized white flour and white sugar.

2) The amount of refined, concentrated sugar the average American eats daily---both straight and baked or processed into foodstuffs---is about 7 ounces---nearly half a pound---and is equivalent to the sugar contained in 18 apples, 16 medium bananas, 2.5 pounds of red grapes or 21 oranges. No one would eat that much fruit in one day, but the average American eats the sugar contained in that much fruit in concentrated form every day. That is a terrible assault on the pancreas and the rest of the body!

Incidentally, refined white flour products are equivalent to eating sugar, so when, for instance, you eat a piece of birthday cake with icing, you're ingesting straight sugar. Or when you eat a chocolate-covered doughnut, you're ingesting straight sugar, as well as carcinogens that were produced when the dough was fried in extraordinarily hot fat so as to produce the doughnut.

If you are not aware of the damage white sugar does to your health, here's just a bit about it and the harm it does:

The average American consumes between two and three pounds of sugar every week, (approximately 105-156 pounds a year.) The sugar is being processed into a great many foods we eat, foods that are not just sweets. Sugar in large quantities can be found in peanut butter, mayonnaise, bread, ketchup and many other categorically “non-sweets” products.
Refined Sugar havoc on the insulin level in your blood. Raised blood insulin levels depress the immune system. If your immune system is depressed then your ability to fight disease is weakened.

Raised blood insulin levels can cause weight gain. Insulin promotes the storage of fat; so, when you eat foods high in refined sugar,(and refined flour), you increase fat storage. Obviously, the result is rapid weight gain.

Refined Sugar contains no vitamins or minerals, so in order for sugar to be metabolized, it must draw on the body’s reserve of vitamins and minerals. When these reserves are depleted, metabolization of cholesterol and fatty acid is impeded, contributing to higher blood serum triglycerides and cholesterol, promoting obesity due to higher fatty acid storage around organs.

Sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to high breast cancer rates, particularly in older women. Not only can a diet high in sugar and refined flour boost the risk of type 2 diabetes and contribute to obesity, it may also lead to colon cancer.

For another 50 reasons to stay away from white sugar, white flour and foods that contain white sugar, paste this link into your browser and click "enter": http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-is-Refined-Sugar---Known-As-White-Sugar---Bad-for-You?&id=119462 Be aware, however, that brown sugar, refined honey, high fructose corn syrup, fructose, dextrose and all other such sweeteners are no different from white sugar.


Here are some other names for refined sugar: barley malt beet sugar, brown sugar, buttered syrup, cane-juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, carob syrup, corn syrup, corn-syrup solids, date sugar, dextran, diastase, diastatic malt, ethyl maltol, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice, fruit-juice concentrate, glucose, glucose solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, honey, invert sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, mannitol, molasses, raw sugar, refiner's syrup, sorbitol, sorghum syrup, sucrose, turbinado sugar.
Don't be fooled by names.

Also, these sugar substitutes for white sugar---aspartame, saccharine and sucralose---are not safe, either.

However, don't lose hope. You can still "have your sweetener and eat it too" because there are two sugar substitutes that thus far, appear to be safe: "Stevia," which is an extract from a particularly sweet-tasting herb, and "Xylitol," which is made from birch trees. Stevia is mainly good for sweetening tea and other beverages, while xylitol, in granulated form, is easy to cook with, because 1 measure of xyletol is equivalent to 1 measure of refined sugar.

Pasteurized/homogenized milk from the grocery store contains hormones and antibiotics with which the cows have been injected, and the pasteurization and homogenation processes change the whole milk as it came from the cow into something very difficult for your body to digest. A great many people do not even have the enzyme in their body they must have to be able to digest milk. Also, feeding cow's milk to young children has been linked to type 1 diabetes.

Potato chips are simple carbohydrates,(no better than sugar), that have been fried in hot oil that has likely been used many times over. They and "french fries" have definitely been linked to cancer.

High fat cheeses don't need much of an explanation. Though they taste good, they are 100% fat, and are obviously not good for your health, contributing to high cholesterol, obesity, heart ailments, constipation and colon cancer.

Nearly all margarines are something the body does not know what to do with. Margarine can scarcely be considered a food, as it is almost entirely man-made. Butter, in reasonable amounts, is certainly better. Extra virgin olive oil, canola oil, grape seed oil, avocado oil and walnut oil are all good for you in reasonable amounts.

Ice cream is another one of those foods that taste wonderful, but contain much refined sugar and fat. You're far better off making your own fruit ice or sherbert at home. It's a fun thing to do, either by yourself, or with the children. Sugar-sweetened jams and jellies contain much sugar, of course. So if you are going to eat jams and jellies, at least buy the 100% fruit kind, and don't overdo it.

Soda-pop contains either large amounts of sugar or nutra-sweet/aspartame, both of which are harmful. If you drink four 12-oz colas you have already met your average of 7 ounces of daily sugar. Also, the carbonation in soda-pop is harmful over the long run. It's an excellent idea to go back to and get used to drinking pure water. Pure water is what we were originally meant to drink, and it's the very best thing for your body when it comes to carrying out its millions of daily functions that keep you healthy.

Unless you specifically look for wording on the label that says otherwise, the beef, chicken and pork you buy at the grocery store has hormone and antibiotic residues in it that you don't want yourself or your family to be eating. Also, the health standards for large, commercial beef, chicken and pork industries are more lax than they ought to be. I have read that those who work in meat packing plants are allowed to cut out any cancer they find and use the rest of the animal. Whether or not that's true, wouldn't you rather spend a little more and buy your meat and poultry locally, so as to know how it's been raised, what's been done to it, and that it's clean?


Be careful also of farm-raised salmon and other fish, because they are raised in close quarters so that the water in which they live is unclean. Also, in order to guard against infection, they're given antibiotics.


That's not nearly all I could include in this post about cancer-promoting/cancer-causing foods, but I have to end somewhere. The next post will be about foods and beverages, as well as personal behaviors, that help lessen your chance of developing cancer.