WALL STREET JOURNAL: THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER is READY for ITS (MEATLESS) CLOSE - UP

 

By
Kurt Soller June 14, 2016
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-impossible-burger-is-ready-for-its-meatless-close-up-1465912323

A long-awaited vegan burger from Silicon Valley startup Impossible Foods hits select restaurants this month. But can coconut oil and potato proteins compete with the red-blooded original?

Silicon Valley’s Impossible Foods is on a mission to replace the All-American burger with a plant-based alternative to ground beef—that bleeds. Photo: Stephanie Gonot for The Wall Street Journal

FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE HEADQUARTERS of Impossible Foods looks like the set of “Office Space”: a one-story Redwood City, Calif., industrial park with blacked-out windows, fronted by rows of plugged-in electric cars. Inside, there’s none of that sleek, airy aesthetic for which Silicon Valley has become infamous. Rows of drab desks lead to back rooms packed with scientific equipment. “For four years, nobody outside the building knew we existed, which is how we wanted it,” says CEO and founder Patrick O. Brown. Brown’s father was in the CIA; a clandestine work environment may be in his blood. As we continue our tour, Lance Ignon, a communications consultant, quips: “It’s not like investors are complaining about us wasting money on art.”

Investors have hardly been an issue so far. The company, founded in 2011, is one of the best-funded food startups of the decade, with $182 million over four rounds from top venture-capital firms and Bill Gates, who joined the latest round in 2015. “This has all gone a lot easier for Pat because he has so much credibility,” says Samir Kaul, a founding partner at Khosla Ventures, which was the only investor during the first round and has participated in every subsequent one.

Today, Brown works just a few miles from the Stanford campus, where he spent almost three decades as a top biochemist. At 61, he bears a passing resemblance to Apple CEO Tim Cook. A regular marathoner, he’s spry and trim in his wardrobe of dad jeans, T-shirts branded with his company’s logo (they’re free to visitors) and a hoodie from American Giant, which Slate once called “the best sweatshirt known to man.” He’s casual in his manner, occasionally sarcastic, prone to delivering research-driven soliloquies while avoiding eye contact. While at Stanford in the 1990s, he pioneered a new type of DNA mapping called microarray, which some in his field believe could one day earn him a Nobel Prize.


At Impossible Foods, Brown, along with 125 colleagues—pedigreed scientists, nutritionists, techno-marketing experts — is working to perfect a vegan version of the all-American ground-beef patty. His elevator pitch is straight-up Silicon Valley: meatless burgers as a “platform to disrupt” the international meat supply. Cows, according to Brown, are “an inefficient technology” requiring too many inputs to create beef, an output that hasn’t evolved since the Paleolithic age. “The whole mission of this company is to make eating animals unnecessary,” he says. “So, we don’t want our product to just be delicious, we want it to be as delicious as meat.” He would never describe his innovation as “a veggie burger,” which conjures images of bland, frozen constellations of grains and beans. His patty is officially “a combination of proteins, fats, amino acids and vitamins derived from wheat, the roots of soybean plants, coconuts, potatoes and other plant sources.” The goal? To reverse-engineer flavors and textures heretofore exclusive to cows.

Brown’s meat-disrupting motivations are manifold. Industrial animal farming uses a third of the planet’s land, while also destroying millions of trees and sucking up one-third of our water supply; methane gases expelled by cows are contributing to climate change. These problems scale up as countries like China and India develop a taste for beef and the global population as a whole continues to skyrocket. Brown is confident that everyone knows this stuff, but thinks no one is taking it seriously. “We’re getting into this very scarily unstable area where we’ve never gone before in terms of pushing the boundaries of a stable planetary system,” he says. “We’re driving toward the cliff with our foot on the accelerator — and nobody was working on this as a solvable problem.”

But in fact, there’s a cottage industry of technology companies attempting to save the planet by redirecting our food supply. Hampton Creek successfully lobbied the Food and Drug Administration to name its canola-oil-based, egg-free spread Just Mayo; Memphis Meats is using stem cells to culture pork and beef, though an edible product is likely years away. The furthest along is Beyond Meat, which sells plant-based “chicken,” “meatballs” and Beyond Beef beefy crumbles in cute resealable packages, plus a new Beyond Burger, being rolled out in a few Whole Foods stores and sold fresh in the meat aisle.

The Impossible Burger is also sold raw, intended for cooking, and engineered to mimic the taste, textures and chemical characteristics of ground beef. “It’s the single biggest category of meat in the U.S.,” Brown says. “We never thought about launching with some feeble, easy, low-impact thing.” Brown is, unsurprisingly, a vegan and hasn’t eaten the sort of burger he’s trying to emulate in at least 40 years. Still, he’s focused on carnivores and uninterested in appealing to his fellow abstainers. “We can have a successful product that would sell to people who are looking for meat alternatives,” he says. “We’re not interested in that.”

Don’t call it a veggie burger. The Impossible Foods patty is derived from wheat, the roots of soybean plants, coconuts, potatoes and other plant sources.

AS WE PUT ON HAIRNETS TO ENTER THE LAB, Brown points out two women working on a melty, vegan version of American cheese. Behind them sits a giant kettle filled with sweet-smelling yeast similar to that used to make Belgian beer. It’s here that Impossible Foods is refining its secret sauce: a compound called heme, which helps meat taste meaty — and which Brown credits for conferring the same property on the Impossible Burger. Heme shows up in animal muscles as myoglobin, and it’s the reason raw beef is red and bloody. It’s also a catalyst for imbuing vitamins, sugars and amino acids with a richer taste. “I knew that in all of the things we call meat, they have s---loads of heme in them,” Brown says. He also knew, from his years as a biochemist, that nitrogen-fixing legumes — like clovers or soybeans — also contain heme. But according to Brown, no one had isolated the compound for flavoring purposes. “It was surprising to me that this was still left to be discovered, given that people have been eating meat for millions of years,” he says.

The team’s next task was to identify plant proteins and other vegan components that work in tandem with heme to approximate ground beef. Rather than picking vegetables with an inherent beefiness, like mushrooms or carrots, “we started with a bunch of ingredients that in no way resembled a burger,” Brown says. His staff used a machine that isolates compounds on a molecular level so scientists could determine which plants might lend desirable properties. Potatoes were selected for a protein that firms up when heated, giving the Impossible Burger that essential exterior crust. Coconut oil, which starts as a solid and melts as it cooks, adds fat and juiciness. Another machine, used to identify specific scents — the scientific equivalent of Smell-O-Vision — helped researchers determine that something in honeydew melon mirrors the scent of cooked beef.

But smell and taste aren’t the only reasons meat is entrenched in the human diet. In most of the world, beef is a luxury good — a uniquely efficient source of protein, iron and calories in a deliciously convenient package. The cattle industry has made it available at a relatively low cost. For the Impossible Burger to have a shot, it needs to replicate the sensory experience, dietary benefits and affordability of ground beef.

Nutrition was the easiest part. Brown had his burger tested to make sure its plant-based protein is just as abundant and “bio-available” as the protein in beef. A four-ounce Impossible Burger contains more sodium and saturated fat than its red-meat inspiration, along with 10 fewer calories. But it lacks cholesterol, hormones, antibiotics, fecal matter, “pink slime” and other unsavory byproducts of industrial meat production.

Cleanliness and eco-friendliness come at a price; in 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that a single patty cost about $20 to produce (and tasted like a turkey burger). Impossible Foods said that number “has dropped substantially,” but declined to give specifics. The company expects production costs to decrease further when its Oakland, Calif., production facility ramps up over the next six months, but the burger will be launching, like other Silicon Valley breakthroughs, as a niche product for the rich.

Brown, of course, understands that pricing will be the barrier to wide adoption. This year, the company surveyed 600 “hard core middle America burger lovers,” as he calls them, about their eating habits and asked them whether they’d choose a plant-based burger if it was identical—in taste and cost—to the beef version. Nearly 70% said they would. “People are addicted to meat, and it’s going to be a long time before they move away from it,” he says. “But what that tells you is that the fact that meat’s made from an animal is not part of its value proposition.” And that was before the company mentioned that the Impossible Burger also emits 75% less greenhouse gas than its beefy competitor and uses up a comparatively tiny fraction of both water and land.

This July, a half-decade after the project began, the Impossible Burger will become available for public consumption. Jardinière, a tony San Francisco restaurant, will begin by offering burgers on special occasions, and a small number of restaurants will start selling the Impossible Burger later this summer, starting in New York. Production is limited—the company could manufacture a million pounds this year, less than a tenth of a percent of U.S. beef consumption — so the rollout is calibrated to target high-end diners first. According to Impossible Foods, the retail price has not been set.

By the time the Impossible Burger hits supermarkets — “in the next few years,” according to the company — Brown hopes to have built enough buzz that grocers will display his meat prominently in the butcher’s case, instead of hiding it in the frozen-food aisle. He’s following the model used to launch Kite Hill, a brand of nut-milk products he co-founded in 2014, which is now among the few nondairy lines stocked in cheese cases at Whole Foods. WFM 0.43 % The idea is to grow slowly, ensuring his burger is increasingly in demand among consumers while the company itself remains small enough to fly under the radar of beef lobbyists. “My feeling is, right now, that we’re in the fortunate position where the beef industry is not inclined to feel threatened by anyone like us,” Brown says. “We’re not having a war of aggression on the meat industry — at least overtly.”

I LEAVE THE IMPOSSIBLE FOODS LAB with a lunchbox full of raw, slider-size burgers and head to the San Francisco restaurant Jardinière. Chef-owner Traci Des Jardins is a consulting chef at Impossible Foods, where she has spent the past year developing recipes and teaching scientists about flavors and cooking techniques. Today, she’s making a version of the Impossible Burger that she plans to serve in July.

The patty sizzles like beef in the pan, which gets my appetite going. But the burger Des Jardins delivers to the dining room is improbably loaded with condiments. Inside a small potato roll, a seared patty is covered with dijonnaise — made with vegan Just Mayo, of course — avocado slices, mashed avocado, caramelized onions, tomato and gem lettuce. If a burger needs this many add-ons, how good can it be?

Surprisingly good, it turns out. The rich crust gives way to a soft, slightly tannic pink center. The taste is complex — fruitier, funkier and more barnyardy than any other plant-based veggie burger. The aroma, which accounts for about 80% of what we experience as taste, is exactly like cooked beef. But the texture is slightly off. When I roll a crumb of burger between my fingers, it goes grainy, lacking meat’s melty quality. Still, there’s a bona fide beefiness to the patty; Des Jardins’s accoutrements aren’t hiding anything. I ask for the chef’s opinion. “There’s a little bit of a cereal note to it,” she says. “But I equate this to when grass-fed beef first hit the market. Initially consumers were skeptical, but now some prefer it.”

‘The taste is complex—fruitier, funkier and more barnyardy than any other plant-based veggie burger. The aroma, which accounts for about 80% of what we experience as taste, is exactly like cooked beef.’

Part of grass-fed beef’s appeal is its artisanal nature and the way it varies from purveyor to purveyor, which is something an engineered mix of isolated compounds can never provide. So the Impossible Burger lacks the elemental excitement of a burger blend made from what was once live animals. To Brown, that idea of tastiness is arcane. “We’re going into completely unexplored territories, where there might be flavors and qualities humans have never experienced before,” he says.

Already, his team has accidentally veered into pork territory a few times, then set those experiments aside. They’re entirely focused on replicating 80% lean, 20% fat, middle-of-the-road ground beef. But in chasing that goal, Impossible Foods may have optimized itself into a corner. The burger is designed for a crisp char and sears nicely in a pan, but Des Jardins admits it hasn’t worked as well when cooked over a grill. Supermarket beef is far from an ideal product, and an engineered, Silicon Valley version is…what, exactly? It’s a vegan take on carnivorism — delicious, admirable and still somewhat anemic.

Later, as I’m driving to the airport, I notice that my hands are sticky with juices that seeped from the burger at lunch. Tentatively, I lick my fingers, expecting beef, but finding nothing. In that moment, I’m convinced that the Impossible Burger is a simulacrum, a brilliantly concocted facsimile of the real thing. When a simulation comes this close to reality, the shortcomings are impossible to ignore. Especially since, as a flight attendant distributes tiny bags of pretzels, I realize that I still want lunch.

Corrections & Amplifications

Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat both make plant-based burgers that are raw and intended for cooking. An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested the Impossible Burger was the only such burger. (June 17, 2016)

Read the WSJ article at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-impossible-burger-is-ready-for-its-meatless-close-up-1465912323
_____________________________________________________________________

1.) GOOGLE WANTS the  WORLD to GO MEAT - FREE: Internet Giant tried to Buy Impossible Foods
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/08/read-about-next-big-thing-impossible.html

2.) EARTH DAY: WELCOME to FACTORY FARM HELL
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/welcome-to-factory-farm-hell.html

3.) BILL MAHER OP/EDNEW YORK TIMES: Free the Hens Costco!
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/07/i-like-costco.html

4.) ANTI - CANCER DIET - by Dr. Richard Beliveau
http://www.richardbeliveau.org/en/cancer-prevention.html?showall=1

5.) VEGAN DIETS: FIGHTING ARTHRITIS & CANCER
http://scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-diet-alleviates-arthritis.html

6.) FOODS & ARTHRITIS -  PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE for RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/foods-and-arthritis 

7.) PETA PRIME: Can a Plant-Based Diet Cure Cancer?
http://prime.peta.org/2009/12/can-a-plant-based-diet-cure-cancer

8.) VEGAN DIETS FIGHT CANCER! - from the Huffington Post with Kathy Freston http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html

9.) VEGAN DIETS REVERSE DISEASES - from Scott's Buddhism & Vegetarian Blog
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/vegan-diets-reverse-diseases.html

10.) VIVA! - Plant-based Diets & Cardiovascular Disease Fact Sheet
http://www.vivahealth.org.uk/resources/your-health-your-hands/plant-based-diets-and-cardiovascular-disease-fact-sheet-online

11.) THE PLANT - POWERED DIET - scientific reasons to adopt a plant-based diet
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-plant-based-diet-scientific-reasons.html

12.) PALEO DIET: DEAD LIKE a CAVEMAN
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-end-of-dieting-in-progress-by-dr.html

12.) KILLING is BAD KARMA: EASTERN VS. WESTERN VIEWS of ANIMALS
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/this-essay-wasoriginally-posted-on.html

BEAT CANCER: A Book About Beating Cancer with a Vegan Diet

BEAT CANCER - THE TRUTH at LAST 
Author:
Juliet Gellatley of Viva!
 

Almost one in two of us will get cancer at some point in our lives. Why is it rampaging out of control and how can we fight it? To find out, Viva! founder Juliet Gellatley met Professor Mustafa Djamgoz, Professor of Cancer Biology at Imperial College, London, and co-author (with Professor Jane Plant) of the book Beat Cancer.

“Welcome Juliet, please have a seat." Professor Mustafa Djamgoz proffers a chair in what appears to be a storage room packed floor to ceiling with boxes, papers and books. I jokingly asked if it was his office – it was! “But I can find anything within two minutes!” he smiled.

We’re in Imperial College, arguably the world’s best university for science. Mustafa was a neurobiologist for over 20 years before turning his sharp and brilliant mind to fighting cancer.

He has published more than 200 scientific papers, won several awards, including the Huxley
Memorial Medal, and been awarded the Freedom of the City of London. I was excited to meet an eminent cancer biologist, whose new book, Beat Cancer (co-authored with Viva! Patron and geochemist, Professor Jane Plant), calls for all cancer patients, and those at high risk, to go vegan. Not only that, but Professor Sir Graeme Catto, president of the College of Medicine and former president of the General Medical Council, wrote the foreword and says: “I recommend the book highly not only to cancer patients and their supporters but also the health professionals… I hope they read the book and take on board its key messages to help us all beat cancer.” Finally, UK academics are publicly acknowledging that a vegan diet helps to protect us from cancer and that high levels of meat and dairy are linked to colorectal, oesophageal, bladder, breast, prostate, gastric, ovarian, kidney and pancreatic cancers – amongst others.,

This is truly a eureka moment. Although many of us develop cancer, our chances of survival are better than ever, particularly with early diagnosis. Beat Cancer shows that prevention is becoming a reality and explains what you can do to boost your odds of beating cancer. Divided into 10 self-contained steps, it helps us to understand what cancer is, how to prevent it and how to manage it when diagnosed. I found the book empowering and fascinating.


About cancer

The first step is to understand what cancer is. It is not a single disease! There are more than 200 types, some driven by hormones, others not. They vary in their biochemical properties and how fast they grow and spread. “Not surprising then”, says Mustafa, “there is no single therapy or treatment that works for all cancers.” Cancer rates vary wildly across the world and the differences are so stark that we now refer to cancers of affluence or of poverty. In the West, hormone-related cancers, such as breast and prostate, are amongst the most common. In poorer nations, cancers caused by stomach, liver and cervical infections are far more prevalent. There are also differences between East and West. Mustafa explains: “The incidence of prostate cancer in Japanese men is one of the lowest in the world yet when they move to the West and eat a Western diet, their risk rapidly rises to the same level as the locals. It cannot be wholly genetic but is related to lifestyle”. In fact, the World Health Organisation say 30-40 per cent of cancers are preventable by a change in diet.


Cells behaving badly

Cancer is our own cells behaving badly. Beat Cancer explains how we are made of more than 100 trillion tiny cells, most of which are constantly reproducing themselves (or we would wear out!).

“Cancer happens”, says Mustafa, “when the systems that regulate these processes go wrong – cells lose control and multiply in an uncontrolled way.” Healthy cells divide 50 to 70 times before dying but cancerous cells can divide indefinitely. Their molecular brakes don’t work and they lack the mechanism that triggers cell suicide. Cancer cells invade surrounding healthy tissue and can spread to other areas of the body (metastasise) via the bloodstream or lymph vessels:

“It is the ability to spread that makes cancer so dangerous and most cancer deaths are from the metastatic disease, not the original tumour. This is why early detection and vigilance are so important”, says Mustafa. Solid cancers develop in three stages: initiation, promotion and progression.

Initiation – when the genes that control cell reproduction are damaged, for example by tobacco smoke.

Promotion – when the damaged cells multiply to form a primary tumour.

Progression – when the primary tumour develops further and starts to spread.

Crucially, promotion is not inevitable. Imagine the initiated cells as seeds ready to germinate but needing the right conditions to grow. They require water, nutrients, sunlight… otherwise they lie dormant. Cancerprone cells also need certain conditions to multiply. Beat Cancer explains that research links cancer promotion to high levels of growth factors in the bloodstream and, with hormone dependent cancers, high levels of oestrogen and testosterone. In fact, oestrogen levels are a critical determinant of breast cancer risk and directly participate in the cancer process. Oestrogens are contained in meat and eggs but the main sources are cow’s milk and dairy products, which account for 60 to 80 per cent of all the oestrogens consumed. Mustafa tells me: “Oestrogen is very hard to break down naturally and it passes from cows’ milk to us. Some people think they are protected by pasteurisation but this process does not destroy oestrogen or some growth factors.”


Milk – it’s got the lot!

A cow is milked until seven months into her nine-month pregnancy and then again shortly after giving birth. This ensures that milk contains many biologically active molecules. In a typical glass of milk or bite of cheese, there are 35 hormones and 11 growth factors, including IGF-1, oestrogen and progesterone, gonadal, adrenal, pituitary, hypothalamic and other hormones.


IGF wot not?

IGF-1 stands for insulin-like growth factor -1. It is a growth hormone that controls growth and development in both cows and people but each species has very different rates of growth. IGF-1 in cows’ milk crosses our intestinal wall and enters our blood where, it is thought, it encourages our body to produce more of our own IGF-1. Even small increases raise the risk of several common cancers, including breast, prostate, lung and colon. Mustafa also explains that another, particularly dangerous growth factor is VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) which is strongly implicated in the spread of cancer and hence a target for cancer drugs. VEGF also has a vital role in fighting infection by making tissue more permeable, enabling the movement of white blood cells to areas of infection. In the UK, one-third of dairy cows at any given time have the udder disease, mastitis. Their natural VEGF is vital in fighting this so, unsurprisingly, it is found in their milk. Milk is not the only culprit when it comes to cancer as colon cancer development, for example, is linked to a high intake of red and processed meat.


Bad diet, bad genes

Astonishingly, humans have only 22,000 genes, whilst a banana has 36,000! How? The answer is because 98 per cent of our DNA is made of regulatory proteins that determine which genes are expressed and to what extent. Just because you have a gene, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be turned on. We are enormously influenced by our environment in this. Mustafa explains: “Think of genes as a string of lights. We used to think that cancer happened when one or more lights in a string was damaged but we now know that some lights can be turned up (up-regulated genes) or turned down (down-regulated genes), switched on or off or somewhere in between”. So, we now know that cancer depends not just on individual genes but on the interaction between our genes and their surroundings determined by our lifestyle and environment.

Mustafa mentioned a stunning trial that demonstrated the power of food in turning on and off genes. Dean Ornish MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, showed that early stage prostate cancer could be reversed by diet and lifestyle changes. The trial, conducted with world-leading microbiologist, Craig Venter, discovered that after only three months on a vegan diet, over 450 cancer genes had been downregulated and 48 protective genes had been up-regulated. Patients with otherwise untreated, early prostate cancer were put into remission.

Beat Cancer gives helpful tables showing what foods to eat, advocating a healthy, varied vegan diet filled with organic fresh fruit and veg, nuts and seeds, pulses and wholegrains. In eating to beat cancer we’re advised to cut out dairy products, processed meats, refined sugar, refined oils prepared at high temperatures, foods containing preservatives, colourings and artificial flavourings and replace white bread, pasta and rice etc. with wholegrains. We should also cut out or vastly limit the amount of meat, fish, eggs, alcohol and coffee. And most definitely, get rid of salt!


Mustafa and the salt connection

I was intrigued to learn about Mustafa’s motivation – what made him study physics and why, as an eminent neurobiologist, he switched to cancer biology:

“I was from an early age fascinated by the body’s electrical characteristics when I built a radio transmitter and got several electric shocks! I studied physics and it taught me to understand the physical universe. I then moved into biophysics and studied electrical signals in the brain, which taught me how to understand the biological universe. And now I’m dealing with a pathological universe: cancer.” Mustafa continued: “It is accepted that electrical signals are important in the brain, heart and muscles so I wanted to know, 1, do cancer cells generate electrical signals and, 2, do aggressive cancer cells differ from those that are benign?”

Research by Mustafa and others has shown that aggressive cancer cells – those capable of spreading – are electrically excitable and it is this that makes them hyperactive, invasive and able to spread.

“Aggressive cancer cells act like nerve cells in a state of seizure in an epileptic brain,” he tells me. This happens because those cancer cell genes that control the sodium channel are turned on and sodium floods inside, making them excitable. “So, now we’re developing drugs to block the sodium channel and control the metastatic spread. The good news is that the drugs are not chemotherapy (the side effects are not so severe). A cancer cell will not reproduce out of control without this mechanism.”

Mustafa believes we need to change our attitude to cancer and accept that we can live with a primary tumour, so long as it is under control and cannot spread.

He also points out: “Our main dietary source of sodium is salt - it's a good idea to eat a low salt diet!”

Also, guess what increases the expression of the sodium channel gene? Hormones and growth factors, most of which we consume from dairy products.

Foods which naturally block the sodium channels include chilli peppers, red grape skins and green tea.

In 2002, Mustafa established a charity which runs the Amber Care Centre in North London, a drop-in centre for anyone affected by cancer. He believes the best cure is prevention and we should all adopt healthier lifestyles – not only a better diet but also, for example, increase our exercise (which amongst other things, modifies the action of hormones and growth factors), and reduce our consumption of alcohol and exposure to pesticides, perfumes and plastics. And, of course, we should stop smoking!

He also believes passionately in vigilance and tells the story of a relative who, in his late 30s, called Mustafa and mentioned that he recently had a little blood in his urine and what should he do about it? Mustafa replied that as it hadn’t recurred he could do nothing; on the other hand, it was not normal so it was better to take action. Two weeks later, Mustafa sat with his relative in a London hospital looking at his X rays. He says: “One kidney was the size of a tennis ball, the other cancerous and the size of a football, looking like it was going to explode. They operated and he’s still very much alive and kicking! One bit of blood in his urine saved his life.” If you have cancer, it is imperative to seek specialist care from an oncologist – and ideally one in a teaching hospital that is doing active research.

Never try to treat cancer through lifestyle changes, complementary therapies or diet alone. “Cancer is like a juggernaut rampaging through the body uncontrolled. Diet is only one element in helping to stop it but on its own, is not enough.” It is vital that cancer patients seek conventional therapies which very often do work, alongside suitable complementary therapies and psychological support.

Finally, I asked Mustafa if he believed health and cancer charities do enough to prevent cancer through dietary advice. He declared: “The government and health charities say ‘eat a healthy diet’ and it’s meaningless – it is not good enough. It’s an easy option but what does it mean?” So I ask whether GPs and oncologists would ever explain to patients the links between animal products and cancer?

“At the end of the day, what will count is scientific evidence. Even the pharmaceutical industry, with its power to manipulate evidence to their advantage, will not stop the truth, it will just take longer.”

Read this article at: http://www.viva.org.uk/cancer-truth-last

Beat Cancer by Prof. Mustafa Djamgoz & Prof. Jane Plant is published
by Vermilion and is available from Viva! (£14.99 plus £3.95 p&p). Call
0117 944 1000 (Mon-Fri) or send a cheque with your order and address
to Viva!, 8 York Ct, Wilder St, Bristol BS2 8QH or buy online
www.vivashop.org.uk/books/beat-cancer

__________________________________________________________________________

1.) ANTI - CANCER DIET - by Dr. Richard Beliveau
http://www.richardbeliveau.org/en/cancer-prevention.html?showall=1

2.) VEGAN DIETS: FIGHTING ARTHRITIS & CANCER
http://scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-diet-alleviates-arthritis.html

3.) FOODS & ARTHRITIS -  PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE for RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/foods-and-arthritis 

4.) PETA PRIME: Can a Plant-Based Diet Cure Cancer?
http://prime.peta.org/2009/12/can-a-plant-based-diet-cure-cancer

5.) VEGAN DIETS FIGHT CANCER! - from the Huffington Post with Kathy Freston http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html

6.) VEGAN DIETS REVERSE DISEASES - from Scott's Buddhism & Vegetarian Blog
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/vegan-diets-reverse-diseases.html

7.) THE PLANT - POWERED DIET - scientific reasons to adopt a plant-based diet
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-plant-based-diet-scientific-reasons.html

8.) PALEO DIET: DEAD LIKE a CAVEMAN
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-end-of-dieting-in-progress-by-dr.html

9.) VIVA! - Plant-based Diets & Cardiovascular Disease Fact Sheet
http://www.vivahealth.org.uk/resources/your-health-your-hands/plant-based-diets-and-cardiovascular-disease-fact-sheet-online

NEW YORK TIMES: THE MYTH of HIGH - PROTEIN DIETS - by Dr. Dean Ornish

THE MYTH of HIGH - PROTEIN DIETS - by Dr. Dean Ornish

MANY people have been making the case that Americans have grown fat because they eat too much starch and sugar, and not enough meat, fat and eggs. Recently, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee lifted recommendations that consumption of dietary cholesterol should be restricted, citing research that dietary cholesterol does not have a major effect on blood cholesterol levels. The predictable headlines followed: “Back to Eggs and Bacon?”

But, alas, bacon and egg yolks are not health foods.

Although people have been told for decades to eat less meat and fat, Americans actually consumed 67 percent more added fat, 39 percent more sugar, and 41 percent more meat in 2000 than they had in 1950 and 24.5 percent more calories than they had in 1970, according to the Agriculture Department. Not surprisingly, we are fatter and unhealthier.

The debate is not as simple as low-fat versus low-carb. Research shows that animal protein may significantly increase the risk of premature mortality from all causes, among them cardiovascular disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes. Heavy consumption of saturated fat and trans fats may double the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

A study published last March found a 75 percent increase in premature deaths from all causes, and a 400 percent increase in deaths from cancer and Type 2 diabetes, among heavy consumers of animal protein under the age of 65 — those who got 20 percent or more of their calories from animal protein.

Low-carb, high-animal-protein diets promote heart disease via mechanisms other than just their effects on cholesterol levels. Arterial blockages may be caused by animal-protein-induced elevations in free fatty acids and insulin levels and decreased production of endothelial progenitor cells (which help keep arteries clean). Egg yolks and red meat appear to significantly increase the risk of coronary heart disease and cancer due to increased production of trimethylamine N-oxide, or TMAO, a metabolite of meat and egg yolks linked to the clogging of arteries. (Egg whites have neither cholesterol nor TMAO.)

Animal protein increases IGF-1, an insulin-like growth hormone, and chronic inflammation, an underlying factor in many chronic diseases. Also, red meat is high in Neu5Gc, a tumor-forming sugar that is linked to chronic inflammation and an increased risk of cancer. A plant-based diet may prolong life by blocking the mTOR protein, which is linked to aging. When fat calories were carefully controlled, patients lost 67 percent more body fat than when carbohydrates were controlled. An optimal diet for preventing disease is a whole-foods, plant-based diet that is naturally low in animal protein, harmful fats and refined carbohydrates. What that means in practice is little or no red meat; mostly vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes and soy products in their natural forms; very few simple and refined carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour; and sufficient “good fats” such as fish oil or flax oil, seeds and nuts. A healthful diet should be low in “bad fats,” meaning trans fats, saturated fats and hydrogenated fats. Finally, we need more quality and less quantity.

My colleagues and I at the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, have conducted clinical research proving the many benefits of a whole-foods, plant-based diet on reversing chronic diseases, not just on reducing risk factors such as cholesterol. Our interventions also included stress management techniques, moderate exercise like walking and social support.

We showed in randomized, controlled trials that these diet and lifestyle changes can reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease. Episodes of chest pain decreased by 91 percent after only a few weeks. After five years there were 2.5 times fewer cardiac events. Blood flow to the heart improved by over 300 percent.

Other physicians, including Dr. Kim A. Williams, the president of the American College of Cardiology, are also finding that these diet and lifestyle changes can reduce the need for a lifetime of medications and transform people’s lives. These changes may also slow, stop or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer, judging from results in a randomized controlled trial.

These changes may also alter your genes, turning on genes that keep you healthy, and turning off genes that promote disease. They may even lengthen telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control aging.

The more people adhered to these recommendations (including reducing the amount of fat and cholesterol they consumed), the more improvement we measured — at any age. But for reversing disease, a whole-foods, plant-based diet seems to be necessary.

Dean Ornish is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and the founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute.
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A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 23, 2015, on page
A21 of the New York edition with the headline: The Myth of
High-Protein Diets. Today's Paper|Subscribe

Read the entire New York Times Op-ed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/opinion/the-myth-of-high-protein-diets.html
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1.) FOODS & ARTHRITIS -  PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE for RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE
http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/foods-and-arthritis

2.) VEGAN DIETS: FIGHTING ARTHRITIS & CANCER
http://scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/vegan-diet-alleviates-arthritis.html

3.) PETA PRIME: Can a Plant-Based Diet Cure Cancer?
http://prime.peta.org/2009/12/can-a-plant-based-diet-cure-cancer

4.) VEGAN DIETS FIGHT CANCER! - from the Huffington Post with Kathy Freston http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052.html

5.) VEGAN DIETS REVERSE DISEASES - from Scott's Buddhism & Vegetarian Blog
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/03/vegan-diets-reverse-diseases.html

6.) ANTI - CANCER DIET - by Dr. Richard Beliveau
http://www.richardbeliveau.org/en/cancer-prevention.html?showall=1

7.) THE PLANT - POWERED DIET - scientific reasons to adopt a plant-based diet
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-plant-based-diet-scientific-reasons.html

8.) FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD: Movie Trailer & Joe's Fascinating Story
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/11/fat-sick-nearly-dead-movie-trailer-and.html

9.) TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE: WHO REPORT on MEAT CAUSES CANCER
http://scottsbuddhisttveg.blogspot.com/2015/12/time-magazine-article-who-report-on.html

10.) PALEO DIET: DEAD LIKE a CAVEMAN
http://www.scottsbuddhistiveg.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-end-of-dieting-in-progress-by-dr.html

11.) PHYSICIANS COMMITTEE for RESPONSIBLE MEDICINE : PREVENTING & REVERSING HEART DISEASE: https://www.pcrm.org/about/volunteer/preventing-and-reversing-heart-disease

12.) DR. DEAN ORNISH: Undo Heart Disease with Ornish
https://www.ornish.com/participant-stories/undo-heart-disease-ornish-linda-participant/

13.) VIVA! - Plant-based Diets & Cardiovascular Disease Fact Sheet
http://www.vivahealth.org.uk/resources/your-health-your-hands/plant-based-diets-and-cardiovascular-disease-fact-sheet-online
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