Eat to Beat Cancer
A Research Scientist Explains How To Avoid Up To 90% Of All Cancers

By J. Robert Hatherill, Ph.D.
Renaissance Books, 1998 Hardcover, $22.95
Book Review: Septmeber 1999

It’s not only what you eat, it’s what you don’t eat that is the key to beating cancer. For many years it was thought that cancer and heart disease were misfortunes that you braced for in later life and simply learned to accept. However, research shows that we don’t have to sit back and wait as helpless victims. Current-day diets have become unhealthy largely because of processed and synthetic foods.

Eat to Beat Cancer can help you convert your diet into a defensive, anti-cancer solution. Throughout this book you will be given practical techniques for solving the health problems that arise from eating a Western diet. Eat to Beat Cancer has identified the most protective, beneficial foods from around the globe and placed them in one simple, straightforward diet.

A noted research toxicologist at the University of Santa Barbara at California, Dr. Hatherill has written an important and highly compelling book. He shows that by emphasizing disease-beating foods and avoiding foods that cause or promote illness, you not only greatly decrease your chances of developing heart disease and cancer, you can even offset damage being done by unhealthful habits such as smoking and drinking.

Japan has one of the highest per capita cigarette consumption rates, yet it has one of the lowest lung cancer rates in the world. Why? The answer, Dr. Hatherill explains, lies in the “chemo-preventive” properties of foods commonly found in the traditional Japanese diet — fresh fruits and vegetables.

Two to five percent of all cancers are caused by viruses, another five percent by genetic factors; the balance — 90% — are caused by the environment, including the foods we eat.

Dr. Hatherill explains that 30% of all cancer in the United States is caused by smoking, while a whopping 60% is caused by food. In the last twenty years, a staggering amount of scientific evidence has clearly shown that certain compounds in foods can provide significant protection against heart disease, toxicity, and cancer.

Perhaps the most valuable information in Dr. Hatherill’s book, then, is his list of the “Super Eight Food Groups” — eight different families of foods, each of which contains unique substances that work to prevent most major diseases.

Fresh fruits and vegetables provide a veritable feast of thousands of substances that you simply cannot get from eating processed foods or by taking pills. Natural plant agents, or phytochemicals, have been meticulously crafted by plants for millions of years in response to stresses like drought, extreme temperatures, plant-eating insects, and intense sunlight. This exclusive group of plant compounds holds the secret to good health and forms the basis of the Super Eight Food Groups.

The elements of the Super Eight Food Groups were protecting animals long before bands of our apelike ancestors appeared on and began roaming the Serengeti plains. Modern-day cancer is actually a response to present-day diets which lack these diverse, health-sustaining agents.

After reading this book, you will want to regularly consume foods in all of the Super Eight Food Groups. Dr. Hatherill likens eating Super Eight Foods to wearing your full anti-cancer body armor; each part of the armor provides an exclusive form of defense that is not duplicated by other segments, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Dr. Hatherill also discusses a wide variety of easy, straightforward ways to protect yourself against a polluted planet, to get off the disease-inducing pesticide treadmill, to avoid quackery and certain dangerous supplements common in the U.S., to combat breast and prostate cancer, and to minimize exposure to a host of toxic substances prevalent in modern life. The book also contains recipes, menu ideas, and a list of useful resources. Looking for a way to help prevent cancer? Dr. Hatherill teaches us in this highly readable work that the answer is right under our noses: we can eat to beat cancer.