Eating Healthy – Part II

An article in last week’s Economist magazine, titled ‘Better than Cure’ discusses a study led by Dean Cornish at UCSF which looked at the impact of vegetarian diet on prostate cancer. They found that a low-fat vegetarian diet, with whole grains, for a period of three months led to the switching off of oncogenes (cancer causing genes) and the turning on of disease-preventing genes in a group of 30 men who were in the beginning stages of prostate cancer. While there are some questions about the study (there was no control group, small number of subjects, etc), it nonetheless is a step towards the validation of healthy diets and decreased incidences of diseases and the continuing notion of an apple a day keeping the doctor and his/her meds away. Source (full article): Cancer and Diet (click here)