There are several things that are mentioned over and over, for people who have cancer or who want to avoid getting it, and much of it is in agreement with the Hay diet.

First, good quality, seasonal, preferably organic, natural foods, especially raw foods. Exercise (but not overdone), filtered, clean water, avoid sugars, have vitamin C and D.

If you have cancer, they all seem to recommend a vegan diet and things like coffee enemas.

The second talk on day 2 was the most comprehensive on diet for avoiding cancer, which is what I’m interested in, and the following is my summary:

• raw foods where possible
• exercise every day
• regular juices, especially greens
• keep the system alkaline
• drink lots of filtered water
• no sugar (except that in fruit)
• no GMOs, so no soy or canola oil
• lots of vegetables
• animal protein from wild animals/fish, or organic, free range animals not taking hormones
• no drinks like diet coke etc
• eat foods in season
• Brazil nuts (for selenium)
• curcumin and turmeric
• take milk thistle, vitamin C, fish oil, vitamin D
• green tea
• rosveretrol from red wine (but obviously not overdone)
• milk thistle

This lady was the most impressive so far. More info at: http://drconnealy.com/

None of this is incompatible with the Hay diet, and it seems to be a simple way to stay on the right track.

It appears to follow then that these foods have anti-cancer effects of their own, and so we should eat a diet including lots of these things (without going overboard on any of them).

They are:
apples*
salad greens such as rocket (arugula), mustard greens, watercress
green vegetables, such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale
berries, such as blueberries, cranberries,
cauliflower
celery
leeks and onions
grapes and grape juice
green tea, red tea
horseradish, turmeric**
fish, such as mackerel, salmon, wild sardines (but avoid fish oil)
olive oil

*Apple seeds contain vitamin B17, said to be a powerful anti-cancer chemical (see, for example

http://www.worldwithoutcancer.org.uk/aspreventative.html

. Eating a lot of apple seeds is probably going to poison you, but eating the seeds of an apple you’re eating could be a good idea.

**Turmeric is supposed to protect the brain from chemotherapy [1], so it stands to reason it probably protects the brain from other toxic chemicals.

[1]

http://foodforbreastcancer.com/articles/what-should-breast-cancer-patients-eat-during-taxol-(paclitaxel)-chemotherapy%3F

If there’s a way to prevent cancers, I’m in for it! This is one reason why I like the Hay diet, because of its abundance of fruits and vegetables, and its emphasis on natural foods. It seems such a healthy, sensible diet to me.

I’ve learned of some free talks on cancer prevention and alternative treatments for cancer available here: http://www.icnr.com/articles/ischemotherapyeffective.html

I obviously haven’t heard the talks as they haven’t started yet, but I have registered and will listen in. It’s free, so there’s nothing to lose. I’m not an affiliate or anything like that, but I think it’s wise to listen to all kinds of people and see what they have to say.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1348333.htm
[2] http://www.icnr.com/articles/ischemotherapyeffective.ht

PS. Apologies for the multiple updates, but I didn’t realise at first that the URLs weren’t visible. The links still aren’t working for some reason, so you will need to copy and paste them.

There are a few problems with this. Firstly, there is no proven link between saturated fat consumption and heart disease or strokes (1,2,3). Secondly, our bodies evolved to digest natural foods from animals and plants and not unnatural foods from factories. Thirdly, most margarines made today contain polyunsaturated fats, which are linked with a suppression of the immune system and with cancer (4,5).

Recent studies in the US have shown that heart disease worsened in those who switched from butter to polyunsaturated margarines. In one study of 85,000 nurses, those who ate four teaspoons of polyunsaturated margarine a day had a sixty-six percent increased risk of heart disease compared to those who ate none.

How butter is made

To make butter milk a cow and let the milk settle. Scoop the cream off the top. (If you don’t have a cow or access to raw milk, start here.) Leave the cream at room temperature a few hours to sour a little. Shake the cream to separate the buttermilk (great for cooking) from the butterfat, and then rinse the butterfat and shake again to remove more of the buttermilk. The solid is called butter.

The ingredients of butter

The ingredients of butter are: milk fat (cream), salt (unless unsalted).

Making butter at home

Here’s a neat video showing you how to make butter at home:

How margarine is made

Margarine is made by first manufacturing oils from animal fats, or more usually these days, from vegetables or seeds, such as safflower, corn or soy beans. (One margarine is even made from tree bark!) To extract the oil at the vegetable oil factory, use a combination of mechanical and chemical means such as hexane solvent extraction. (Hexane is derived from refining crude oil.) Treat the oil with caustic soda (usually made by electrolysis of a salt solution) to remove free fatty acids, and then leave it to dry. (It may or may not be bleached at this stage using charcoal and bleaching earth.)

Take the oil to a margarine factory and subject it to high pressure at temperatures of around 260°C, and force hydrogen (usually made by the steam reforming of methane or natural gas) into the mixture to hydrogenate and harden it. Add catalysts such as nickel oxide (usually made by digging up nickel deposits and heating the nickel powder to over 400°C in the presence of oxygen) to help the process along.

The result is rather smelly, so deodorise it using high temperatures and chemical additives. Then add chemicals to change the colour from the “natural” grey to yellow to make it look less disgusting, and then add chemical flavourings to make it taste a bit like butter.

(There are actually several other processes involved in making margarine that I missed out.)

The ingredients of margarine

The ingredients of margarine may include combinations of the following (depending on the oil used): 3,5,trimethylhexanal, annatto extracts, ascorbyl palmitate, butylated hydroxyanisole, canthaxanthin, curcumin, diacetyltartaric and fatty acid esters of glycerol, disodium guanylate, edible fats, edible oils, mono- and di-glycerides of fat-forming fatty acids, phospholipids, propyl, octyl or dodecyl gallate (or mixtures of them), propylene glycol mono- and di-esters, salt or potassium chloride, skim milk powder, ß-apo-carotenoic acid methyl or ethyl ester, sucrose esters of fatty acids, tartaric acid, tert-butylhydroquinone, tocopherols, vitamins A and D, xanthophylls (5).

So which is better?

At the beginning of the 20th century everyone ate butter, lard and dripping. There was a type of margarine (made from animal fats such as whale blubber), but most ate the real thing. Everyone fried their foods, had delicious bacon and egg for breakfast and toast with lashings of butter. And yet heart disease was almost unknown.

There is nothing wrong with saturated fats (in moderation like everything else), and butter is far better than margarine.

If you want to avoid heart disease and clogged arteries, lose weight if you need to, eat a balanced diet with plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy products, eggs, meat and fish; eat little or no sugar, cut out processed foods, and get moving! Turn off the TV and go for a walk, take the stairs instead of escalators or lifts; walk or cycle to work; go dancing, or get out and do some gardening. Also, stop smoking, and cut alcohol consumption.

References:

(1) Patterns of coronary heart disease mortality over the 20th century in England and Wales: Possible plateaus in the rate of decline http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/8/148

(2) What if bad fat isn’t so bad? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22116724/

(3) Saturated Fat Intake vs Heart Attack and Stroke http://freetheanimal.com/2009/09/saturated-fat-intake-vs-heart-disease-stroke.html

(4) Polyunsaturated Oils Increase Cancer Risk: http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fats_and_cancer.html

(5) Part 2: Dietary Fats and Heart Disease http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_2.html

(6) Robert Krampf: How to make butter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oropJD0CUxI

(7) MARGARINE: Healthy to eat grey plastic?http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/margarine.html
(8) Butter and margarine: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Butter-and-Margarine.html
(9) Refined vegetable oil: http://www.healthy-eating-politics.com/vegetable-oil.html

Article reprinted with permission from Eating and Health.

The main aim of the Hay diet is to ensure your blood is alkaline rather than acidic, because it is acidic conditions that tend to lead to conditions such as arthritis, and the way to do this is to make sure you have at least one “alkaline” meal a day. This is a meal based solely on fruit, vegetables or salads, but to make it more interesting you can add a small amount of milk, soy milk, or yoghurt. It’s often easiest to have this for breakfast, but a mixed salad at lunch or vegetable stir-fry or vegetable soup is also good.

Your remaining meals can be one protein meal and one starch meal, which means your meal can have a concentrated protein source (such as meat, fish, chicken, eggs, cheese), or a concentrated starch source (such as bread, pasta, rice, potatoes). In either meal the amount of protein or starch is small (3-4 oz), and about 70-80% of the meal is taken up with vegetables, fruits or salad.

If you are overweight you will lose weight on this diet, but once you are at your ideal weight you will stay there. There are many people who have been on this diet for over 70 years.

A good book I would recommend is called The Food Combining for Health Cookbook, by Jean Joice and Jackie Le Tissier. It’s a sensible book with great recipes, and unlike some books it doesn’t over-complicate things with hundreds of silly rules.

Here are some ideas. A = Alkaline meal, S = Starch, P= Protein.

Day 1:
Breakfast: Alkaline muesli (see below) – A
Lunch: Pumpkin soup with a good wholemeal or rye bread – S
Dinner: Creamed chicken with steamed vegetables, followed by fruit salad and cream or yoghurt– P

Day 2:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs or better still, Jean Joice’s Egg Savoury with some cherry tomatoes– P
Lunch: Baked beans on toast (homemade without tomato sauce), or mushrooms on toast – S
Dinner: Parsnip and Swede bake, followed by baked apples with ginger – A

Day 3:
Breakfast: Fruit and yoghurt – A
Lunch: Small steak and large salad – P
Dinner: Lentil and herb burgers with mashed potato and vegetables – S

Note: no alcohol with an alkaline meal. Wine is fine with a protein meal, and beer or cider are fine with a starch meal, but all alcohol is in strict moderation.

Alkaline muesli
This recipe uses a tablespoon of oats, but since it is such a small amount it can still be classed as an alkaline meal. For one serving:

1 tblsp oats (not instant), soaked overnight in 3 tblsp water (preferably spring water)
1 eating apple
juice of 1 lemon or 1/2 an orange
1 tblsp well-chopped almonds
3 tblsp milk
fruit or berries in season (if desired)

Soak the oats overnight, then add the grated apple, lemon juice, almonds and milk. Add any fruit you like, if desired. Mix and serve.

Snacks
If you want snacks during the day, try a piece of fruit or a FEW nuts.

The Hay diet concentrates on an abundance of fruits and vegetables and reduces the carbohydrates and proteins (by confining them to one meal each), so it’s almost automatically a rainbow diet, but seeking to deliberately eat foods of as many different colours is definitely a good move, and absolutely in keeping with the principles of the Hay diet.

There was an old saying that you should eat something yellow, something green and something red at every meal, but why not add purple, blue, pink, orange, dark green, light green, cream, and every other colour you can imagine. It’s also another way to diversify the diet, which has to be a good thing.

So this year I’ve decided to maximise the number of species I eat by making sure I always try new things, and experiment with foods I’ve never tried before. It’s fun, and I’m sure already I’m increasing the variety of minerals and vitamins in my food, and since I take no pills (and don’t believe anyone needs to if their diet is good) this is important.

They say that the “old diet” is a good one, with lots to recommend it, as it’s “chock full of healthy, fresh fruit and veg.” By any standards, the review says, it’s a healthy diet, and of course I would agree with that!

I don’t agree with the book recommendation however, as I found Jackie Habgood’s book to be nowhere near as good as others because it over-complicates everything. The diet is really simple to follow and there’s no need to make it difficult to follow.

I also disagree with the idea that it’s an expensive diet, because fruit and vegetables tend to be cheaper than meats, and you eat more of the former and less of the latter. It is probably more expensive than your current diet if you’re eating a lot of junk food — but you’ll pay for that kind of diet down the track through medical bills.

Another celeb. who was on the Hay diet for a time at least, was Princess Diana, but then she probably tried every diet under the sun.

Man Ray, the American artist, was also a notable follower of the Hay Diet, as were Elizabeth Hurley and Catherine Zeta Jones.

Basically, you mix a teaspoon of tahini with a half teaspoon of miso, a dash of paprika and pepper. Then mix in two large beaten eggs, and scramble the mixture in melted butter.

Served on slices of fresh tomato and cucumber with a few sprigs of parsley and mizuna or rocket, it’s to die for!