Food Principles for Cancer Prevention & Healing

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hey, it's Nathan Crane, director of the Health and Healing Club and host of the Conquering Cancers Summit. And today, I am honored and excited to welcome you to a very special interview. So Ocean Robbins is a co-founder and CEO of the 600,000 member Food Revolution Network. He's the author of the bestseller, which is 31 Day Food Revolution Heal Your Body, Feel Great, and Transform Your World. Ocean founded youth for Environmental Sanity, which is the acronym is yes. As early as age, 16 years young, he had already founded this incredible organization and directed it for the next 20 years.

He's spoken in person to more than 200,000 people, organize online seminars and events, reaching more than a million people around the world, and facilitated leadership development events for leaders from 65 nations. He served as adjunct professor for Chapman University, and is a recipient of the National Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service. The Freedom's Flame Award, the Harmon Wilkinson Award, and many other honors. It's truly a joy and an honor and a privilege to have ocean here with us.

Make sure to take a look at Food revolution.org to see how you can join the Food Revolution Ocean. Thank you so much for being here. Thrilled to be with you, Nathan. Thanks for doing this. So, you know, you have a fascinating history, family history. We may get into that a little bit as well, but I'd love for us to really open up with, I think one of the most important questions for anybody dealing with cancer or any chronic disease for that matter, which is what does the science actually tell us?

You know, and you've interviewed many of the top researchers and experts and scientists and, and doctors on the planet looking at this research. Right. So what does that science tell us about the foods and the most common foods we have today that are the most toxic to the human body? Well, first of all, let me just give a little bit of context. So a lot of people think cancer comes out of nowhere, but it doesn't. It's the predictable outcome of a lifetime of certain habits and choices. And, you know, if you drive your car into a brick wall, the death certificate might say impalement by brick wall.

But you know and I know that really, it was bad driving that caused that death. And, you know, if you die, if you get cancer,

Cancer Risk Factors and Processed Foods 2:37

it doesn't come with a little flag that says, hey, I'm caused by, you know, this or that lifestyle choice you made over the last 30 or 40 or 50 or 70 years. But the end of the day, reality is that certain choices radically increase the odds or reduce them. Research is telling us that less than 10% of all cases of cancer are essentially caused by genetics. The other 90 plus percent are caused by a combination of diet, lifestyle, and environmental factors. And so let's break that down for a second by diet, essentially, we mean the standard modern American diet, the which is full of up specifically processed foods.

You know, especially processed meats. It's full of pesticides, contaminations of all kinds. It's it's loaded up with sugar and all of these things are linked to increased cancer, likelihood of diagnosis and mortality. And then when we look at lifestyle, we're talking about mainly two things, which is cigaret smoking and also exercise issues. So if you don't smoke and you exercise a bunch and move your body well, and if you eat a healthy lifestyle. You can slash your risk of cancer. And by the way, the third major factor is environmental factors.

And that's has a lot to do with the air we breathe, the water we drink, the contaminants in our homes, and keeping a clean, healthy, safe home can make a world of difference. Even if you don't have the money to buy organically grown couches and clothes and, you know, get rid of synthetic carpeting and all these other things that can all be linked to increased risk of cancer. You can still get an air filter, for example, and purify the air within your home. You know, you don't have to buy super fancy water from Fiji.

It comes in bottles. You can actually get a water filter pretty economically, and then you can get rid of a lot of the contaminants that might enter your body through your water. So there's steps we can take across the board to slash our risk. But we're here to talk today about food. I founded Food Revolution Network and that's my biggest passion. So let's go a little deeper on that piece of it, which represents about a third of our total cancer risk in total. So you could eat the perfect pristine diet and still get cancer, but your odds go down by about a third.

Okay, so the big problem foods that are causing the most issues, again, are going to be sugar processed junk, and especially processed meats, but animal products in general. And then I've got to add alcohol to the mix because it definitely is correlated with increased risk of cancer as well. So you move away from those things, but more importantly you move towards the good things. It was not just this not to say no to the bad. You got to say yes to the good. Okay, let's unpack that for a second.

Especially the process. Right. Because there are plenty of people who, through either learning from your events, my events, reading our books, researching, experimenting, whatever it may be. Learn that, okay, I should do organic, get the chemicals, pesticides. I should go more plant based. Right. And stop having as many animal products. I should I should eat more clean and less processed. And yet when you really look at and I know people who have done this personally, and then you look at what their actual diet is, it is still very unhealthy.

Right. And so maybe you can talk a little bit about that, that it's that, what processed food actually means, because I think when people think of processed food, they're thinking only of some chemically laden, you know, laboratory created, you know, fake food. But there's actually a whole other line of what we might call, like, green washed food that is still very processed and organic and plant based. That actually is not very healthy for you. Right? Yeah. It's true. Well, when we talk about processed foods, we really mean anything that's been radically changed or meaningfully changed from what Mother Nature created.

So, if you couldn't buy it, pick pick it out of the ground and then prepare it in your own kitchen, it's probably processed. And we've got factories that can do stuff nobody could ever do in their kitchen. So, you know, if you blend up some fruit or vegetables in the blender to make a smoothie, I'm not going to call that processed. Although honestly, it is lightly processed at that point because you've broken down the cell walls and you've changed the food somewhat. And it's going to, for example, be absorbed a lot more quickly in your cells, which could have more impact on your blood sugar level.

So there's an impact there, but it's relatively modest. If you sprout seeds, you know, that's not really much processing, but when you get or if you mill grain, you know, and make it into flour, there's some processing there. Every step counts. But when you kick something like oil, bottled oil, there's nothing in nature that that makes oil directly all by itself, isolated from everything else. And you wouldn't be able to do that in your own kitchen without a good deal of mechanics and gear. Right?

Because you're separating off, the oil portion from all the rest of the food, and you're losing the fiber and, a lot of the other critical elements, the protein, the carbohydrates and a lot of the vitamins and minerals, and you're just getting this one refined product. Same with sugar. Sugar cane is one thing, arguably not the healthiest food on the planet. But if you try to eat sugar cane, you're going to spend a good amount of time for every drop of juice you get out of there because it's so fibrous.

But when you take a factory and you separate it all out, you can get this white powder that's highly processed. I mean, speaking of white powder, it's not unlike cocaine, which, you know, the coca plant because have some very mild, hallucinatory or consciousness impacting properties, but it's kind of like less potent than coffee, you know, in terms of its impact on your body. But when you hyper refined it, you get cocaine, which is a whole, whole other thing. Right? So all of these forms of processing and refining create new effects on the body that are not what we were designed for.

Organic Foods and Pesticide Exposure 8:53

And there's something fascinating about evolution. Our bodies are perfectly designed to eat real food the way that nature creates it, but they're not so well designed for the products of the laboratory. And we have a processed food industry that is brilliant at creating flavors and textures and cuisines that are addictive, that are habit forming. There are flavor specialists whose job it is to make us addicted to certain foods, and they're good at it. They can make cherry flavoring that tastes more cherry like than cherries to our brains.

But your body is not fooled. Your brain might be fooled, but your body is not. It knows the difference between real food and something processed. And what we find time and time again is that when things are separated from their wholeness, we lose cofactors that we didn't even know were important. It's like a symphony, you know, somebody can be great at playing the trumpet, but all by itself it might not sound so good. Or if it's not part of the whole orchestra or the drums or any other component.

And so Mother Nature is brilliant in this regard. And processed food essentially means taking anything and extracting it or separating it for whatever characteristics we're aiming for. Usually, health isn't at the top of the list. I have to say. I think that's the best explanation I've ever heard on what processed food is, and I love how you gave the varying levels of it, right? At the most basic level, let's blend some fresh foods together into a smoothie. And it's you're already starting the processing process, you know, and then let's start drawing and then let's start extracting.

And then, you know, by the time it gets to you in the package that it comes to you that you buy at the store, it may have taken 6 or 7 or 8 or 12 iterations of that processing process before it goes into your body. And now we're putting in something that is so foreign into our bodies. You know, there's no wonder that the chronic disease statistics in this country and around the world directly associated with the, onslaught of this kind of conventional, modern, processed, food world that we live in have just astronomically accelerated to the rates that they are, including cancer today.

Now, you know, 1 in 3, women and one and two men just here in the US, for example, are, diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, another, food that's got to be named as hazardous is anything grown with conventional pesticides. There was a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or Jama, their internal medicine journal, in 2018, reporting that there was a 25% decrease in overall cancer risk when people ate high levels of organic foods compared to people who ate little or no organic foods.

After separating out for other co-factors, 25% reduction. And, we've got other studies showing us, that we get reductions in breast cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, all lymphomas. When people reduce their consumption of pesticides by eating more organically growing foods. And in case you're wondering, there's also research that's come out in 2019. Researchers reported in the journal Environmental Research that switching to an organic diet significantly reduced the levels of synthetic pesticides that were found in people's urine extracted from their bodies after just one week, so it can take effect quickly and you're essentially reducing your toxic load now.

And it makes sense in a way, because pesticides are really biocides. They don't just target pests, they target life. And when they're sprayed on our food crops, we're absorbing those into our bodies. And one of the ways that they show effect on low levels taken over time is cancer. You know, high levels. Of course, they'll kill a bug if you just drank pesticides, you'd probably die pretty quickly too. But it low levels of exposure over the course of years and years and years, they can trigger cancer.

And, the good news, of course, is by eating more foods

Inflammation and Pro-Inflammatory Foods 13:13

that are organically grown, you can slash your risk by apparently 25% or more. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge study, you know, and I do want to, you know, sometimes you run into folks that are like, yeah, well, organic. They allow pesticides too. So it doesn't matter. I'll just eat conventional. Right. And the deeper you research into that there, you know, there is evidence that that some of the largest organic, farms, some of the largest organic, producers, they do use some, some form of pesticides that are approved in organic, growing practice.

But even so, I, I challenge people to take a look at it like this. If you have 15 or 20 or 30 pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, chemicals, known carcinogens, probable carcinogens in your food, in your body every single day, right? Versus 1 or 2 or three. Right. Do you think that's going to make a drastic difference 30 versus three. You know, in your body on an ongoing basis and in many cases zero? There are organic farmers that use zero pesticides, especially when you get to know your local farmers that your farmers market, they don't use any sprays whatsoever.

Right? So even so, with that kind of mindset of, well, they use it anyway, it doesn't really apply here because the difference in how much you are being bombarded by these chemicals is significantly different when you choose organic. Yeah. Now let me be clear about one thing here. People often ask me whether if they can't afford organically grown food, should they eat the produce at all? And I want to give a very clear answer to that. Yes, absolutely. There are hundreds, actually thousands of studies published in peer reviewed medical journals that show tremendous health benefits and anti-cancer benefits from eating fruits and vegetables.

Most of the fruits and vegetables in those studies were not growing organically. They were grown with pesticides, and we still saw tremendous benefit. Now I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I would project that if those studies had been done on people who were eating organically, growing fruits and vegetables, they would have had even, better health outcomes than the people who ate the conventionally grown ones. But if you're choosing between an organic donut and non-organic broccoli, go for the broccoli.

Like every time. I love it, it's so simple, so clear, so straightforward. Absolutely. You know, the conventional broccoli is going to do a thousand times more good for your body than the high sugar processed donut. For sure. So, switching gears a little bit, we know that chronic inflammation is scientifically proven to be one of the core causes, not just an indicator, but an actual cause of cancer. I know in talking to people both, in cancer medicine today as well as people who have cancer, that's not very commonly known yet that actually chronic inflammation can cause cancer.

I go into all the science on that in my upcoming masterclass, and in the book. I'm writing, and it's a very we won't get into that because it's quite a complex process. But what we need to know chronic inflammation causes cancer. So with that said, the kind of question for me, right. And I think the question for our audience should be and so I'll pose this question to you, ocean, which is what foods cause the most inflammation in the body? Well, there's the usual suspects of processed foods and sugar, and saturated fats and animal protein seem to be linked to it as well.

But I'll hone in for a moment, particularly also on omega six fatty acids. So a lot of people in the modern world are getting way too much omega sixes and not enough omega threes. The ideal balance is somewhere between 1 to 1 and maybe at most four parts. Omega 6 to 1, part omega three. But in the modern world, most of us are averaging 16 to

Top Anti-Cancer Foods: Mushrooms, Garlic, and Turmeric 17:20

116 parts, omega 6 to 1, part omega three and omega six. Fatty acids are found primarily in certain vegetable oils soy oil, corn oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, etc. and they're, omega threes are found because you want to balance. They're they're found in flaxseeds and chia seeds a little bit in hemp and walnut. And then also in, a lot of seafoods, fish products. And so, you want you want the right balance there. And we want to cut down on excessive omega six consumption as much as possible, which really comes down to your bottled oils.

Now, to be clear, you're not getting much omega sixes in olive oil or avocado oil. Those are mono unsaturated fats that are kind of like a whole other thing. And this may be why we have studies showing us that people who consume avocado and olive oil tend to be healthier. I don't know that it's because they're consuming avocado or olive oil, to be honest with you. Maybe because they're eating them instead of the omega six rich oils that tend to be so inflammatory. At a basic level, omega six creates inflammation, and omega three brings down inflammation.

And again, you want the right balance. Inflammation isn't all bad, but chronic excessive inflammation is devastating. And that's what most of us are dealing with. And omega sixes are a big part of the reason. So, so that's a high level I think. And then definitely sugary beverages, refined carbohydrates like white flowers, white bread, pasta, red meats and processed meats, they're all, linked to inflammation. So our pesticides, by the way. So those are some of the top problem things. So, yeah, this is a good, good point, I think, to transition to, you know, what are some of those top foods that have the most anti-cancer properties?

Yeah, I hope we're going to get there. My favorite topic I love to eat. I love to eat life giving healthy foods. And, you know, honestly, we spend a lot of time in the world looking at what's wrong and what's broken and, and dying the status quo. And I'm also interested in what works and what are the solutions. And this is a place where we have really good news now. So let's start with mushrooms, number one. Okay. Anti-cancer food in the world, in my opinion. In one study, 2000 women conducted over about seven years by researchers at the University of Australia in Western Australia in Perth, they found that women who consumed at least a third of an ounce of fresh mushrooms a day, that's like one mushroom a day, had a 64% drop in their likelihood of developing breast cancer.

And when those same women also consumed green tea daily, their risk of breast cancer dropped by 89% or 89%. I mean, this is just kind of stunning, right? And by the way, they weren't dealing with fancy DNC, $30 a pound mushrooms. They were dealing with whatever type they had. So in most cases we're talking like button mushrooms and the simple types, you know, amazing results there. Mushrooms are thought to protect against breast and other hormone related cancers, especially because they, they inhibit an enzyme called aromatase, which produces estrogen.

And they are one of the few foods that inhibit aromatase. Pomegranate does too, by the way. And so that's that's one of the big things I will say, make sure that you cook your mushrooms because they do have, certain chemicals in them that can be problematic when they're not cooked. So raw mushrooms I'm not recommending here, but cooked mushrooms of all kinds. Fabulous. Now one's going to be garlic, historically used to ward off the, vampires. And it, you know, it does create some aroma on the breath, but, you know, researchers studied 41,000 Iowa women.

They tracked their consumption of 127 different foods over the course of five years. And then they looked at the data and leaf and their health outcomes, and they found that there was one food that was most significant in its decrease in colon cancer. Impact. And that was garlic. They found that the women who ate at least a serving of garlic per week, not a huge quantity here. They had a 35% drop in their risk of getting colon cancer compared to women who consumed it once a month or less. That's you know, you know what I think garlic versus mushrooms, though, that is one of those, medicines, plant medicines.

You do want to eat raw, though, right? Because as you cook it, you really start destroying the medicinal qualities of it. Yeah. Garlic's better raw. And if you're going to cook it, here's a fascinating thing. Mash it up or chop it up and let it sit for ten minutes. First, because there are compounds that are released when it is chopped or chewed, and those get a chance to settle in when it just sits. And then when you cook it, if you do, it will not lose nearly as much of those compounds, but great as a great tip.

Anyone who's ever chewed garlic, you know how how, challenging that is. You know, I don't recommend anyone to to chew it. It burns on the way down. But it is a great, you know, great way to really get the medicine. I love that you said, though, to to chop it up and let it sit for a bit. One of the, natural herbal remedies that I learned from a master herbalist years ago that has worked wonders for us. If you have strep throat, sore throat, any throat problems is you chop it up or mash it up like you said.

But then we add some, some honey, some organic honey or some raw honey, a little bit of cayenne pepper in there, and then mix it together and let it sit in your throat for a bit. You can get rid of strep throat like almost, instantly within like 48 hours. I've seen it gone taking that, you know, 3 or 4 times a day as a natural antibiotic or probiotic, we should say. Yeah, interesting. And I will just add in another study in China conducted over five years, women, who, were given 100 micrograms of selenium every day in conjunction with 200mg of garlic extract.

Had a 33% reduction in all tumor types, 52% reduction in stomach cancer rates. Wow. Just again, garlic and selenium, in that case. So so garlic is great. Mushrooms are great. You can have them together. Cook your mushrooms, add your garlic raw at the end and rock on. We've got to talk about turmeric. I mean I'm sure a lot of people are hearing about turmeric. Maybe we get tired of hearing about turmeric, but, it's incredible anti-inflammatory.

Cruciferous Vegetables and Legumes 24:10

And we have laboratory studies showing that curcumin, which is the primary active compound in turmeric, it's what makes it so bright. Orange, seems able to kill cancer cells and keep them from growing. It's it's been showing effective against breast cancer, bowel cancer, stomach cancer and skin cancer cells in labs. We have abundant studies showing that it helps to bring down, inflammation in the body. And it's also been found to be protective against heavy metal toxicity. It lowers heart disease risk.

It even prevents Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. In fact, many researchers believe that, high turmeric consumption is one of the most important reasons why people in India have among the lowest rates of Alzheimer's in the world. They're like a fraction of what they are in the United States, even adjusting for age. And it may also be because half the Indian population is vegetarian, more or less. So there's a lot less meat eating in India than the US, but their Alzheimer's rates are like just they're minuscule compared to what we have in the United States.

And so the other possible factor, though, is they eat about a teaspoon a day of turmeric, often with garlic and black pepper. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's a good combination. Vegetarian turmeric, black pepper. They eat a lot of natural anti-inflammatory healing spices in their food every day. The teas, the chai tea, which is like all good, you know, healing herbs. Yeah. All good combination. There. Yeah. And then we got to talk about cruciferous vegetables like cabbage and kale and collards and, mustard greens.

The cruciferous veggies are just incredibly potent cancer fighters. And, you know, one of the reasons that this works so well is that they have a compound in them called glucosinolates that, and then there's also an enzyme in them called my Rossini's. And so interestingly, when you chew a cruciferous vegetable, you are releasing the micro sense, and it interacts with the glucosinolates in your mouth and creates a new compound called sulforaphane. And so, for a thing, is probably the most potent anti-cancer compound that we have in the world today.

It's incredible. It's also anti-inflammatory. It's an incredibly powerful antioxidant. And so sulfur often is something that's essentially produced by you when you chew these foods. If they're raw now, if they're cooked, you can still you still probably have some of my ros, an ace in your digestive tract. So you may be able to turn the glucosinolates into that precious sulforaphane in your gut. But not everyone has much of them going on in there, so it's ideal if you can get at least some raw cabbage or other, cruciferous veggies mixed in if you're going to eat cooked.

So if you're having a, big old pot of steamed kale, for example, or collards, see if you can even add a tablespoon of grated cabbage sprinkled in there while you're eating it, or just have a bite to start off with. And then you'll have some an ace in your system. And, you know, so coleslaw mix a little bit of that in with things. Really powerful stuff. So for a fan is amazing. And and there are other compounds, lots of compounds in the cruciferous vegetables that are, that are potent, in fighting cancer, it's been linked.

Cruciferous vegetable consumption specifically has been linked to lower rates of breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer. There are compounds, also in there called ISO Bioscience that have been shown to detoxify, to remove carcinogens and to kill cancer cells and prevent tumor growth. Fantastic. You know what it makes me think of? If you've grown some of these cruciferous vegetables before, they typically tend to be more of the hardy vegetables. Right? And, sometimes grow in some harsher climates.

So it's kind of interesting because in nature, if you look at some of the superfoods we consider superfoods, they're typically the foods that grow in some of the harshest climates. And like, you know, we don't have to pay $30 a pound to get goji berries imported from the Himalayan mountains. You know, you can just grow some cabbage and some kale and, you know, Gurley's in your backyard and you've got a superfood right there. Yeah. Oh and then we got to talk about legumes beans lentils incredible studies here.

So there was an eight year study out of Uruguay involving more than 3500 cancer patients and 2000 people who didn't have cancer. And scientists looked at a lot of data, and they ended up concluding that the highest rates have been in lentil consumption were associated with a 25% reduction in overall cancer rates, 25% right there. And, we have another study, 58,000 men in the Netherlands. Researchers found that the people with the highest intake of legumes had a risk of prostate cancer. That was down by 29% compared with people who had lower intakes.

Studies go on and on and on. Like this. Another study 38% drop in risk of prostate cancer in North America for for men, when they ate lentils and beans. So, they're incredible, potent cancer fighters. They're a rich source of fiber. In fact, interestingly, when you look at the blue zones that places places in the world where people live the longest and healthiest lives, traditionally they eat very different diets. They have very different lifestyles, but they pretty much all have one food group in common as a centerpiece of their diet.

And that's beans. And, you know, beans are cheap, by the way, and it's important to think about this for a second that, you know, as you were just saying, you don't have to spend an arm and a leg. You don't have to buy all these exotic, fancy dancy superfoods to to be healthy and eat healthy food. Beans are sometimes called the poor man's meats because they're a rich source of protein, and they don't cost nearly as much as meat. And that's almost giving them a stigma, you know, as if they're dirtier.

The food for the poor people. Well, guess what?

Grapes, Walnuts, and Celery Benefits 30:10

This food for the poor people happens to help save lives. So, beans are great. You can base your diet around foods like beans and cabbage and cruciferous veggies. You can grow a lot of those things in your garden, you know, throw in some some basic apples and onions, garlic, get some turmeric in there, which is not pricey. I mean, it may be expensive by the pound, but you're not going to eat a gob. A ton of it. A teaspoon a day is not going to cost you much. Based your diet around these kinds of foods with some button mushrooms or some other basic mushrooms in the mix, you can eat really well.

Very little money. Yeah, it's so well said. I'm glad you gave the the beans a better light because they certainly deserve it. Absolutely. Let's talk about red grapes for a second, too. They're, they're amazing. They obviously they're famous for wine. And that's where most of our red grapes go in grapes in general. But you can also eat grapes. And, there are studies showing that, and red wine actually isn't all bad. I'm not a big fan of alcohol, but I will say that compared to vodka, in one study out of Finland with 2500 businessmen, they and I don't know why they chose businessmen for the study, but that's what it was.

They, they found that, they had a 34% lower mortality rate overall. When they drink red wine instead of beer or vodka. Now, that's a low bar. I'm. No one's going to call beer, vodka, health foods. But the bottom line is that, red wine. Certainly. I love all the alcoholic beverages. It's the best. And it's largely because of resveratrol, which is this particular compound that's in the skin of red grapes. That is an extraordinarily potent, cancer fighter. And you can also get that not from red wine, but from red grape juice.

Or you can probably better yet, eat the red grapes yourself and get tremendous benefits. There's a lot of research on this, and, probably more yet to come. Resveratrol is one of those sort of superfood compounds that we'll be hearing more about in the times to come. And then there's walnuts. One study found that when people add two ounces of mushrooms a day, their rates of breast cancer dropped by 50%. And celery to two ounces. You said two ounces of mushrooms. Did you mean two ounces of water? Oh, I did, I misspoke. Well, nuts and nuts.

Well, that's a day which is a pretty good amount. You know, that's that's a lot of walnuts, but a big drop in breast cancer risk. Fascinating data. You know, that's one of the commonalities. Also from many of the blue zones, right. Is that a lot of, certainly, I believe the Linda Loma blue zone. I also, trying to remember one of the other ones that had that commonality among many of the centenarians and people in their 90s with less disease or no disease. They ate a lot of nuts, a lot of different kinds of nuts.

Yeah. Almost every day. Yeah, absolutely. You're nuts if you don't eat nuts. Yeah. Yeah. And then I. I'm sorry. I just get so excited about this, but celery and we've we've got to talk about celery. Especially good at fighting lung cancer by the way, one study found that when people eat two medium stalks of celery 2 or 3 times a week, they reduce their risk of lung cancer by 60%, 60%. Now, the best thing to do if you don't want to get lung cancer is don't smoke. But some people who don't smoke still get lung cancer.

But a lot less if they eat celery a couple stalks couple times a week. We're not talking about gobs and gobs got incredible results. There's also been in vitro study which has found that, that there are certain compounds in celery, especially one called app gene, and that can kill up to 86% of cancer cells in the lungs. Wow. So, yeah. And then other studies show cancer is helpful against ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, as well as, of course, lung cancer.

So, yeah. Amazing stuff right there. Love the celery. So, one you just shared, like, a tremendous amount of simple, affordable, easy, delicious. Different types of foods that we can add to our diet every day. Easily, affordably. Right. You can find in most grocery stores almost anywhere in the world for the most part. That just adding all those together, all those studies you share, you know, reducing cancer risk, reducing cancer is 60%, 80%, 90%, 20%. Right. Just for one food at a time. Now imagine adding all those foods to our diet just about every day.

You know, the compound effect of that is just, amazing, right? What can happen from that? So it really is when you take out, because we're talking about studies that are looking at foods in isolation. Yep. But when you compound taking out the bad stuff with adding in the good stuff and you get a 25% reduction in risk from this food and a 10% reduction from this food and a 30% reduction from this, when you put it all together. I don't think we've even scratched the surface of seeing what's possible for human health.

Absolutely. So if you, I have I have a question interesting question. Like, thank you for sharing all of that. First of all, I think, you know, people, I hope everyone tuning in had been taking notes because you just shared a ton of really valuable information for taking back control of your health. But if you could only, let's say, people didn't have access to your book

Core Food Principles for Health and Longevity 35:40

or the amazing sum that you do every year, or the great work and articles and blogs and interviews you've done, you know, they didn't have access to that, and all they had was access to a set of food principles. So if you could give people a set of some core food principles, you could leave them with, and their main interest was living longer, healthier, with less disease and reducing cancer risk astronomically, what would those principles be? Number one eat less sugar and processed junk. Eat less food from packed plastic packages that's been travel.

That's got ingredients from all over the world with especially any ingredients you don't know how to pronounce. Number two eat less animal products, especially from factory farms and especially processed meats. Number three eat more whole plant foods, especially fruits and vegetables and beans and nuts and seeds. And number four conscious sourcing. Go organic. Eat more local Fairtrade sustainable natural foods instead of foods that are part of the the mass industrialized food system. So you can get away from the pesticides.

And also, by the way, when you do that you will lighten your ecological footprint. You will contribute to a healthier environment for all of us. They will be less glyphosate in our soil, less glyphosate in our water, which is a carcinogen. There will be less pesticides and contamination, less hazardous waste. A more stable climate will have better air to breathe because we'll have more forests. Because when you eat lower on the food chain, you contribute to a healthier planet for all of us by reducing the stress on our ecosystems.

You see, higher food chain equals higher stress, ecologically speaking, because any time a cow or a pig or a chicken is killed, we're where we're extracting all of the resources that went into feeding that animal. And the laws of nature are pretty simple. It takes more calories to produce a pound of flesh than it does to eat the food in the first place, because you're producing huff and hide and bones and feathers and energy the animal uses to move around and manure and waste, all of which are wasted.

So essentially we've got like a protein factory in reverse with the modern industrialized diet. So when you eat lower on the food chain, you're not just doing your own body a good turn. You're also contributing to having more forests, more topsoil, more water for future generations. 83% of the agricultural land on planet Earth today is being used for animal agriculture. If just theoretically, the entire world went vegan. Tomorrow we'd save an area of land equivalent to all of the United States and China and India, the European Union and Australia combined.

That's how much land would be freed up instantly. That's currently being used for animal agriculture, which could be used to sequester carbon or to grow food organically for future generations. So we can have an abundant food more than we know what to do with on this planet. And we could still create carbon sinks that would suck carbon out of the atmosphere and replenish our soil. We could have heaven on earth. Functionally speaking, if we change the way we eat and the way we treat the planet. And it starts, in my view, with what we eat, that truly is the food revolution right there, isn't it?

It really is, you know, and it starts with the food on our plates three times every day. You're voting for the health you want and for the world you want. So you get to decide, do you want to vote for a life of sickness and cancer? Risk and misery, a world in which animals are tortured in factory farms, in which rainforests are chopped down or burnt to create land, to grow cattle feed. Or do you want to contribute to a world with health and vitality for you and for the planet? And the good news is, you can do it all just by changing the food on your plate.

So powerful and so true. Ocean, thank you so much for the great work you do through food revolution, through all of the great work that you do every year through the summit that you that you produce every year. I think you're in your 10th year now Food Revolution Summit through your books, your articles, your blogs, I just honor you and I appreciate you and for taking the time to be here and share all of this with our community. So thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you, Nathan, and thanks for hosting this incredibly important conversation.

Absolutely. So it's time to to reclaim our health and our lives and take the power back into our hands. That's where it belongs. And ultimately, you have you got the power to make an incredible difference in your life and on this planet. Nathan, thanks for thanks for the opportunity. My pleasure, my honor. So well said. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to the Conquering Cancer Summit. Please share this with friends and family. Together, we truly can make a difference for the future of humanity in ending the cancer pandemic.

Thank you and I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Be well.