"5-a-day" Questionable Nutrition Strategy?

This is a post I wrote for one of my other blogs, "Body Mind Freedom". I have posted it here in its entirety because I believe it is a perfect example of a system that is fundamentally flawed.

My take may surprise you ...

"New research suggests that "5-a-day" is not all it's cracked up to be.

After tracking half a million people in the UK and Europe for over ten years, this latest study concluded that consuming fruit and vegetables only reduced cancer risk by a paltry 2.5%.

So is the message confusing?

BBC Breakfast interviewed Professor Sikora who has studied cancer for 30 years. While admitting he was surprised, he acknowledged that the study was "the best ever" of its type.

Is that a compliment, or an indictment?

He then went on to state that cancer was a "statistical quirk", the result of genetics (not your fault) and environment (not your fault either, except for smoking which you could quit).

Other notable experts scrambled to do damage control, pointing out that eating fruit and vegetables reduced obesity which was second only to quitting smoking in terms of risk-reduction clout. The point was also made that eating fruit and vegetables has a positive (though unquantifiable) effect on heart disease and stroke risk.

When the dust settled, what should the man on the street be thinking?

Well, if a cancer expert of over three decades is to be believed, then cancer is out of your control and nothing you can do will make a hill of beans difference especially if you already don't smoke.

So why try at all?

Why not just join the millions who are only too happy to abrogate responsibility for their own health?

After all, if you can catch it early then you may be able to survive on a cocktail of drugs for the rest of your wretched existence. Now there's something to look forward to ... a lifetime of medical dependence.

A perfect customer of a system that depends on imperfection for continued credence.

It's illegal to suggest that anything but conventional medical "wisdom" has any answers to the cancer conundrum. Cancer treatment is a multi-billion dollar industry and anyone other than those qualified by the establishment questioning the system are deemed as charlatans and quacks.

What a business model!

If treatment results in "cure" then it's the miracle of modern medicine. If a patient gets sick then that was an inevitability that no-one could have prevented. Remission is always temporary.

So don't bother. Here's your licence to "live" your life as if there is no tomorrow. Consequences are outside your sphere of influence and you are in safe hands if fate does strike.

The three most prevalent cancers (breast, prostate and colon) have increased dramatically in recent years. As our gene pool couldn't have changed that dramatically, we are told that this is because modern medicine is helping people to live longer. Cancer risk increases with age ... and that has nothing to do with the choices you make.

Oh ... and car emissions and bovine flatulance have increased to unprecedented levels! Must be the environment too.

I'm assuming you have read my disclaimer and are clear that my opinion is of absolutely no import whatsover. For an opinion that counts, go see your doctor.

But here's what I think anyway.

1. "5-a-day" is nowhere near enough. It is a start ... but chilled leechies in syrup and canned peas hardly qualify. Saying they do is part of the problem. Poor assumption. Even poorer application.

2. Insufficient quantities of fruit and vegetables combined with excessive quantities of cooked animal products (meat, dairy, eggs) and processed "food" is still a recipe for disaster ... so what did this study really tell us?

3. If a study touted by an expert as "the best ever" is flawed before it ever started because it is based on disinformation and erroneous assumptions to begin with ... then what can we assume about all research? And this is before we take agendas and funding out of the equation.

4. Conventional medicine, including cancer management, is big business. That being the case, there is no money in prevention, only treatment. If you believe the experts, you will always be a victim.

In conclusion, you can add the results of this study to the pile of other meaningless, hugely wasteful and expensive research that we like to proclaim as "evidence-based" science.

Or you can choose to get informed. Sure fate is always a possibility. But that is an entirely different issue.

Knowledge is power ... and freedom."

That's it. I hope you enjoyed it. Please, as with this madness about "organic" being a bunch of baloney ... do not use this as justification to consume less fruit and vegetables.

Eventually people will stop covering their behinds and start telling the full truth. Until then, continue to be vigilant about what we are told should be considered as sacrosanct.

Have an awesome week!