Raw Broccoli, Cabbage Slash Bladder Cancer Risk by 40 Percent; Cooking Destroys Benefits

Friday, July 18, 2008 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Isothiocyanates, raw foods, health news

(NaturalNews) Eating as little as three small servings of raw cruciferous vegetables per month, such as broccoli and cabbage, has been found to decrease the risk of developing bladder cancer by an astonishing 40 percent. This was discovered by researchers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. The study is only one of several that have recently added to the evidence that raw fruits and vegetables dramatically lower cancer risk.

In this study, researchers conducted a survey on the dietary habits of 1,100 people, 275 of whom had bladder cancer. They found that among both smokers and non-smokers, those who ate three or more servings of raw cruciferous vegetables each month had a 40 percent lower risk of developing bladder cancer. Compared with smokers who did not eat that amount, non-smokers who ate three or more servings of raw cruciferous vegetables per month had a 73 percent lower chance of developing bladder cancer.

Keep in mind that this research only involved three small servings a month! That's a ridiculously small amount of vegetable matter, and yet it had a profound anti-cancer effect.

Given that these cruciferous anti-cancer nutrients only stay in the body for about twelve hours, these study subjects only experienced a total of about 36 hours with these nutrients (out of a total of 720 hours in a typical month). In other words, they only had these anti-cancer nutrients in their bodies five percent of the time and yet, astonishingly, their bladder cancer rates plummeted by 40 percent!

Also remarkably, the researchers did not find a protective benefit from eating the same quantity of cooked cruciferous vegetables. This indicates that the anti-cancer properties of cruciferous vegetables are destroyed by cooking.

This is exactly what the leaders of the raw foods movement have been saying for years: Dr. Gabriel Cousens (www.TreeofLife.nu), David Wolfe (www.SunFood.com), the Boutenko family (www.RawFamily.com), David Rain (www.JuiceFeasting.com), Nomi Shannon (www.RawGourmet.com), Angela Stokes (www.RawReform.com), Brian Clement (www.hippocratesinst.com), Max Gerson (www.Gerson.org) and many others.

Keep in mind, too, that conventional medicine pill pushers have derided the raw foods movement for years, claiming raw foods have absolutely no health effects whatsoever on the human body. That outmoded view, of course, is considered hopelessly ancient by all but the most out-of-touch doctors and skeptics. What we're finding today is not only that raw foods are good medicine, but in fact raw foods are the BEST medicine for virtually all the big diseases now devastating Western civilization.

The findings of the Roswell Park study were presented at a meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Philadelphia.

Why raw vegetables not only prevent cancer, but REVERSE cancer

Cruciferous vegetables, also known as vegetables in the mustard or cabbage family, are some of the most widely consumed vegetables in the world, accounting for 10 of the most popular vegetable foods. The family includes not only cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, but also arugula, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, daikon, garden cress, horseradish, kale, kohlrabi, mustard, radish, rape (canola), rapini, rutabaga, tatsoi, turnip, wasabi and watercress.

These vegetables are known to be high in important nutrients such as vitamin C and selenium, and they also contain hundreds of plant compounds that are known to fight cancer. One of these groups, isothiocyanates, has gained enormous attention over the last few years as an anti-cancer "medicine" provided by foods.

There have been 55 key epidemiological studies conducted on the relationship between cruciferous vegetable intake and cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund. Sixty-nine percent of those studies show a positive correlation between cruciferous vegetable intake and lower cancer risk. Interestingly, few of these studies tracked raw vegetable intake vs. cooked intake, and there is little doubt that the 31 percent of the studies showing no cancer risk decrease were likely tracking the intake of cooked vegetables. (Modern nutritional researchers remain ignorant about living foods vs. cooked foods, and they group them all together, oblivious to the fact that cooked foods lack the natural medicine of raw foods...)

Isothiocyanates inhibit both cancer and tumor development by directly blocking the carcinogenic action of free radicals. In other words, they prevent free radicals from attacking healthy cells and turning them cancerous. One specific variety, phenethyl isothiocyanate, has even been shown to induce cell death in certain cancer lines, including those that are resistant to chemotherapy drugs. (Oncologists remain indignant, however, insisting that cancer patients should never use food to treat cancer... that's why they also ran Max Gerson out of the country...)

Heat and irradiation destroys the medicine in foods - just what the FDA wants!

These plant-based medicines, however, are delicate molecules that are easily destroyed by heat. Cooking these foods obliterates the medicine they contain. So does food irradiation, by the way: Microwaving broccoli destroys up to 98% of its phytonutrients, including its anti-cancer nutrients.

The FDA, curiously, wants to pass regulations that would secretly irradiate the national food supply without any requirement whatsoever that such treatment be mentioned on the label of irradiated foods. My recent article, "FDA Leaps from Tomatoes to Peppers in Desperate, Fumbling Fiasco of Failed Food Safety over Salmonella" explains how the FDA is exploiting food safety scares as a way to generate a fear-based public reaction that will ultimately result in a mass irradiation of the entire food supply. See https://www.naturalnews.com/023614.html

Why is that an important goal for the FDA? Because fresh produce is just about the only thing keeping many Americans off pharmaceuticals and out of the hospital. Take away the natural medicine found in fresh produce, and you create a windfall of sickness and disease that doubles or triples the profits of the drug companies. Food irradiation is the FDA's devious plan to sicken the U.S. population and accomplish this financial goal for influential drug companies. (Sound crazy? You don't know the real FDA. Read about it here: www.NaturalNews.com/the_FDA.html )

Listen to Health Ranger Show #52: The Food Irradiation Plot to hear the full story on this. It's available as a downloadable MP3 file here: https://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.ht...

Fortunately for Big Pharma's sick profits, many Americans cook their vegetables right now, destroying their natural medicines and keeping those consumers in a state of chronic degenerative disease. "Cooking can reduce 60 to 90 percent of isothiocyanates," said Li Tang, a lead researcher of the study mentioned above.

Read more about the health benefits of raw foods in my interview with Dr. Gabriel Cousens at: https://www.naturalnews.com/015187.html

Also, be sure to visit the NaturalNews raw foods page at: https://www.naturalnews.com/raw_foods.html

Yet more science shows the anti-cancer benefits of raw vegetables

Another recent Roswell Park study also uncovered evidence of the protective effects of cruciferous vegetables. Researchers took two groups of rats that had been engineered to develop bladder cancer and supplemented the diet of one group with freeze-dried broccoli sprout extract. They found that rats who ate more broccoli sprouts extract had significantly lower rates of bladder cancer.

(For the record, NaturalNews does not condone the use of animals for experiments, especially animals engineered to develop cancer. But at least in this study the rats were receiving nutrients rather than the usual pharmaceutical chemicals injected into them during drug industry trials...)

The researchers found that the isothiocyanates from the broccoli sprouts were processed by the rat's bodies and excreted within 12 hours. According to lead researcher Yuesheng Zhang, this suggests that the chemicals protect the bladder while they are stored there, awaiting excretion.

"The bladder is like a storage bag, and cancers in the bladder occur almost entirely along the inner surface, the epithelium, that faces the urine, presumably because this tissue is assaulted all the time by noxious materials in the urine," Zhang said. Change the liquid being stored in your bladder, and you change your risk of bladder cancer.

In other words, healthy pee keeps you cancer-free!

Healthy poo, by the way, stops colorectal cancer, which is yet another reason to stop eating milk, cheese, beef and other animal products. Soak the inside of your bladder and large intestine with vegetable juices, and cancer just vanishes. Someday, silly oncologists will abandon their toxic chemotherapy drugs and learn to just prescribe broccoli sprouts.

(As a side note, dogs have been trained to smell bladder cancer in human urine. A person who has bladder cancer emits a nasty smell in their urine, and it's not very difficult for dogs to pick up on this.)

Ninety percent of bladder cancers occur along the inner lining. Bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer in men and the ninth most common cancer in women in the United States. More than 47,000 men and 16,000 women nationwide are diagnosed with the disease each year. Chemotherapy is utterly useless against bladder cancer. Five-year survival rates are ZERO percent better than doing nothing at all. In fact, chemotherapy is highly toxic to the bladder and kidneys, causing cellular damage that actually leads to more cancer later on.

Adding to the evidence that uncooked fruits and vegetables help protect against cancer, researchers at Ohio State University found that the eastern black raspberry, Rubus occidentalis, offers protection against cancer of the esophagus.

In this study, human patients with a condition known as Barrett's esophagus, which often leads to esophageal cancer, were fed freeze-dried black raspberries (1.1 ounces for women and 1.6 ounces for men) every day for six months. At the end of that time, researchers measured blood levels of two chemicals that indicate the risk of cancer.

Patients given the raspberries had 58 percent lower levels of 8-isoprostane, which is correlated with cancer risk, and 37 percent higher levels of GSTpi, which is known to protect against the cell damage that leads to cancer.

Black raspberries are particularly high in anthocyanins, a powerful antioxidant found in many other foods, including red cabbage. See www.NaturalNews.com/anthocyanins.html

Anthocyanins are among the pigments that give fruits and vegetables their bright colors. Every bright color found in fresh produce is, in fact, a powerful natural medicine. Studies have shown that anthocyanins protect against not only cancer, but also diabetes, bacterial infections, inflammation, neurological diseases and the symptoms of aging.

The conclusion: Raw foods halt disease and greatly enhance health

The conclusion to all this is that consuming raw fruits and vegetables is an astonishingly powerful way to halt degenerative disease, stop cancer, reverse diabetes, end heart disease and enhance your health. All the pharmaceuticals in the world can't compete with the protective power of the tens of thousands of natural medicines created by Mother Nature and found in the very plants sitting in your local grocery store right now.

This is why juicing fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis is possibly the single most important nutritional strategy you can pursue for protecting yourself against degenerative disease. I juice every single day. My own personal recipe is as follows:

(All produce is organic)
• 2 large bunches of celery
• 4 large carrots
• 1 large bunch of parsley
• 2 medium apples
• 1 medium lemon or grapefruit
• 1 large bunch of kale
• 1 large bunch of spinach or salad greens
• Small pieces of ginger, turmeric root and beet
• 1/2 container of fresh sprouts (alfalfa or clover) - This can be changed to broccoli sprouts for cancer patients.

I juice all this up, creating a beautiful green / orange liquid. Then I blend 2 cups of fruit (strawberries, blueberries, etc.) in my Vita-Mix, keeping the fruit pulp in the blend, then I pour that liquid into the vegetable juice. This creates a delicious fruit-and-vegetable blend that keeps the fruit fiber but juices away the rough vegetable fiber. I like the fruit fiber because many of the natural medicines in fruit are found in the skin, locked into the fiber. So I always blend fruit into my juice and drink this slightly-thickened juice blend. It's absolutely delicious!

For people preventing or battling cancer, simply boost up the anti-cancer ingredients: Turmeric, broccoli, cabbage, kale, sprouts, etc. Cancer simply melts away when bathed in these vegetable juices.

To make the whole thing sweeter, add a bit of stevia to the final blend. If it's still too bitter for you, try adding more lemon or citrus, which masks the bitter taste of vegetables. If it's still too bitter, you are probably a sugar junkie (like I used to be) and your taste buds are all skewed. Get off the sugar for 30 days and everything natural will suddenly taste better.

Adding watermelon to your juice makes it super tasty, but raw foods experts like Dr. Cousens would strongly recommend you avoid watermelon. The glycemic index is too high. People suffering from chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart disease need to stick with low-glycemic juicing for a long, long time, until their metabolism gets healthy again. Only then, when you're fit, active and exercising at least ten hours a week (like me) can you start to take up high-glycemic fruit juices.

Remember, I used to be pre-diabetic. I went through the healing process, repaired my body, and now I have the joy of exercising as much as three hours a day. That affords me the metabolic privilege of drinking just about any fruit juice I want, without any negative blood sugar effects. But that's only because I'm burning calories day and night. If you're obese or overweight, you'll have to steer clear of fruit juices until you get body fat below about 15% for men or 20% for women. Even then, make sure you watch things very carefully. Ideally, you'll do all this under the supervision of a naturopathic physician. Or just go to the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Arizona and get Dr. Cousens to help in person! (www.TreeofLife.nu)

A great resource on how to do juicing is also found at www.JuiceFeasting.com

I created a 6-hour audio CD course with David Rain entitled, The Secret of Juice Feasting, available here: http://www.truthpublishing.com/product_p/cd-...

You can also listen to my audio interview with David Rain, where we discuss Juice Feasting, here: https://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.ht...

I've also got a new interview with Dr. Gabriel Cousens coming soon here on NaturalNews, so watch for that in a few weeks.

Juicing can save your life and get you off dangerous pharmaceuticals

The bottom line to all this, folks, is that juicing vegetables is the secret to reversing disease now and preventing disease for a lifetime. But it has to be fresh, raw, living juice.

Remember, pasteurized vegetable juices purchased in bottles at the store are worthless! That includes all the Naked Juice, V8, Odwalla and other brands that claim to be good for you. While they're not bad for you, they're also DEAD JUICE. That means they have virtually none of the nutritional healing benefits of fresh, living juice. Don't be fooled by healthy-sounding bottled juice products. If it's in a bottle, it's dead. And dead juice doesn't support life.

There is only one way to get fresh, unprocessed, living juice: Make your own juice! This is the simple secret to staying healthy, vibrant and mentally sharp for the rest of your long, enjoyable life: Juice your way to health! (And then supplement with superfoods, herbs, and other targeted nutritional needs.)

Juicing is the future of medicine. It cures cancer. It reverses heart disease. It stabilizes cholesterol and blood pressure. It ends kidney stones and gall stones. It reverses depression and psychosis. It builds strong bones and strong muscles. It absolutely reverses diabetes in a matter of days, and it obliterates obesity in a matter of weeks. And in doing all that, it makes virtually all pharmaceuticals obsolete.

Juicing and raw foods go hand in hand. They are the answers to disease and sickness. No wonder Big Pharma and the FDA don't want you to find out about the true healing power of plant-based nutrition, huh?

Recommended Resources

Raw foods and superfoods: www.SunFood.com

Best consumer juicer: Breville (www.Breville.com)

Best blender: Vita-Mix (www.Vita-Mix.com)

Spiritual Nutrition by Dr. Gabriel Cousens: Free download of book summary at www.HealthBookSummaries.com

NaturalNews page on raw foods: https://www.naturalnews.com/raw_foods.html

Raw Spirit Festival in Sedona (I'll be there!): www.RawSpirit.com

Really raw cashews (and Bliss Mix!): www.TransitionNutrition.com

Delicious Raw Chocolate Bars: www.EverythingRaw.com