Feeding the Beast: Could Eating the Right Diet Starve Cancers Like Mine?
Scientists are starting to understand how what you put in your body affects not only healthy cells, but cancerous ones as well. To deal with my own kidney cancer, I turned to the data.
Co-authored by Dana G Smith
Like many people recently diagnosed with cancer, I felt helpless. Surgeons had removed a malignant tumor the size of a tennis ball on my left kidney, but enormous uncertainty about my prognosis remained. Statistically, there was a roughly 50% chance my cancer would return in the coming months, with potentially deadly implications. It felt as though the world was disintegrating around me, so I clung to any sense of agency I felt I still had. My treatment was prescribed by a world-class team, still, I wondered: What could I do outside the medical office that would affect whether I lived or died?
I asked several members of my treatment team, including a cancer nutritionist, what I should be eating, but the answers consistently came back with a degree of regretful uncertainty. There are not many reputable randomized controlled trials looking at diet and cancer outcomes. I was given the advice to eat well, be active, and stay in shape — good…
