In this article, Mike Anderson shares on cancer, diet and global warming. Mike Anderson, is a medical researcher, author of The Rave Diet and film maker/producer of “Eating” and “Healing Cancer from the Inside Out.”
Kevin: So, Mike. If all this stuff isn’t working, what is?
Mike: Food. I site some studies in the film… the Office of Technology Assessment funded the Gerson Therapy. It beat the pants off conventional treatments. This was in different stages of melanoma. It just beat the pants off of conventional treatments. They don’t like these studies. They don’t want to fund them. It’s very hard.
Macrobiotics went in front of the NIH, National Institute of Health and they tried to get funding because they presented six terminal cases, cancer cases, where the cancers were totally reversed. They were all biopsied and they were all confirmed and everything. Now, wouldn’t you think that people should be interested in this? That they should fund more studies? No, they can’t get any money for anymore funding for any.
You know allopathic medicine doesn’t, their history is to shut down any nutritional approach because they are so threatened by it. Even, this was around the turn of the century, 2001 or so. It’s on the website, the Sushi Institute. Anyway, they’re totally threatened because it does work. It is more effective. Instead of destroying the body, you’re trying to build it up.
I specifically included Macrobiotics because they have a long history, 100- year history. In fact, the founder of Macrobiotics reversed cancer. But they have a long history of reversing cancers. So I look at Macrobiotics and that’s almost 100% cooked. Then I look at raw, and that’s 100% raw, uncooked. And I think the bottom line here is that, the common ground is that they are all plant-based, 100% plant-based. They are all organic. Organic is very, very important because organic food is much higher in micronutrients, the anti-oxidant families. Those are the ones that are going to fight cancer effectively. It’s a whole-foods organic diet and that’s it. Whether it’s raw or whether it’s cooked is partly personal preference, in terms of case and stuff.
Kevin: You knew that this film was going to cause some waves. So, one, how did you prepare for it? Two, what kind of feedback have you gotten from people who were not happy?
Mike: I actually did not prepare very much for it. What I did was try and make it as credible as I can and close the loop on all the arguments. To make it as tight as possible. I’ll tell you a story. I don’t know if Brian Clement wants me to tell this or not, he was interviewed in the film, but he and his wife watched it for seven hours, seven hours looking for a loophole. They were primarily looking at some angle conventional doctors could use to attack me and they couldn’t find it. So my approach was just make it as tight as possible and as credible as possible. As a result of that, I haven’t had much negative feedback except that people don’t want to talk to me.
I have been on KPFK, they are a nonprofit, local station here in L.A. I’ve been on there and they were very receptive and so was the audience. I mean, people are hungry for this new. But getting it out there is very, very difficult.
People will say, “Oh, my gosh. You should be on major news shows,” and stuff like that. And I say, “Well, have you looked at the sponsors of those news shows? They’ll never have me on.” You know, you’ve got meat and dairy and drugs and I’m preaching against all of those. So, it’s difficult to get it out, but word of mouth is extraordinarily strong; it’s pushing this whole thing. And thanks to shows like your and others, more and more people are getting on the bandwagon.
I was at the Raw Spirit Festival in Sedona this weekend and I had a lady and her husband come out, specifically to see me. They flew out from Tampa. And it was because they saw “Healing Cancer” a month ago. Her father started off with colon cancer, it spread to his liver, now it’s in his lungs. He’s had one round of chemo; he couldn’t take it anymore. So they were looking for something. They put him on the diet and within a month all of his cancer markers had dropped dramatically. They were just thrilled by the whole thing. They wanted to fly out and just thank me because of it.
The strange thing is most people they have it in their mind that cancer is this dreaded disease that kills people. Well, you know, cardio vascular disease kills over twice as many people a cancer, that’s a pretty scary disease. But people have it in their minds that cancer is more scary, but it’s not. It can be controlled through food. People have this idea that, well, gee, cancer’s a dangerous disease you need strong medicine. You need something that will make people’s hair fall out and make them throw up all day for days on end and make them just sick. That’s strong medicine. You need just the opposite. You need something that’s going to build up the body. People, if they’ll get off this toxic diet they’re on and get on a good diet, they’ll see miraculous things happening. Not just with cancer, but the whole body will be healing.
Kevin: Let’s talk a little bit about the Rave diet. There’s a lot of people who are on this call who don’t know what that is. So, let’s give a little bit of information on that and…
Mike: OK. I wrote the book primarily because people were asking me for something to accompany the “Eating” DVD. Because after they see the “Eating” DVD, they’ll say, “OK, I’m ready to change my diet, but what do I do?” And even though I list, at the end of the film, all kinds of books, and on the website even more, they wanted something from me. So, I put it together primarily as a very short, it reads very easily, very short guide, if you will, to how to change to this diet.
I have a transitional diet, too, because sometimes it’s difficult for people to go on the full Rave diet. So I have an easier transitional diet so they can evolve into it. One guy, for example, it was too much for him because he had been eating processed foods all of his life and he had horrendous gas because of all the fiber. So I tell people, “Ease up on it. You can go slowly,” you know, unless you have some terrible disease you’re fighting. But what it stands for, Rave is an acronym, it means no refined foods. The A is no animal foods, the V, which gets me in trouble with most people all the time, means no vegetable oils; the E means no exceptions and exercise. There are a number of sub-rules within that. It’s not just that acronym alone. Like, eat at least half of your food uncooked type of thing. Also ingredients lists, it’s got a whole explanation of how to read ingredient lists and so forth. But it’s done very well.
Kevin: No oil. Let’s talk about that.
Mike: OK. I got this primarily, started out if you look at Ornish, Essylstyn, Furman, a lot of doctors who actually reversed heart disease and have studies to prove it; they all specifically exclude vegetable oils. There are clinical studies, it tears up the arteries. Essylstyn says it’s as good for your arteries as roast beef. If you look at nutrient scales, the key to a good diet is getting the maximum amount of nutrients per calorie that you can. If you look at vegetable oils, they have the lowest nutrient value of any food on the planet. It’s all fat, very few nutrient values per calorie on it.
It’s a refined food, on top of it; the molecules in vegetable oils are unstable. They produce free radicals. It’s a promoter of some cancers, particularly skin cancers, and on and on and on. So, I just say there are substitutes for it. If you’re cooking and you want to brown potatoes or something, use applesauce or apple juice or vegetable broth or something. You have to cook it slower, but it browns just as good. So, that’s the schtook on vegetable oils. I’m telling people in the beginning with this, “Hey, you get on this you can reverse your heart disease.” I’m not going to go against all the doctors who have proven successfully through tests that you can reverse heart disease. They all exclude the vegetable oils.
Kevin: Yeah, I think it makes sense to follow the research of people that you have mentioned, like Furman and Essylstyn and these guys, instead of recreating the wheel on a theory.
Mike: Right, right. I have to follow; these guys are my heroes. I can’t challenge them and I want to, if someone comes out with a study of heart disease reversal which specifically includes vegetable oils, then I’ll take a second look at it, as will they. But so far that hasn’t happened.
Kevin: Who do you think you’ve learned the most from?
Mike: Geez, I don’t know. That’s hard. Everyone’s saying the same thing, essentially, in different ways and they’re doing their own thing. In the beginning, there were John Robbins, the emotional aspect of it, environmental, in particular. He was huge. McDougall, he was huge, too. He was giving all this reinforcement to the health. Then, of course, Fuhrman and Ornish and a number of others, Esselston. I would say probably McDougall and, in the very beginning, McDougall and John Robbins.
Kevin: Great. You mentioned global warming, again, and I think we should probably talk about that because it was an added portion of the film, “Eating.” What are some of the implications of the way we eat, as related to global warming and the environment?
Mike: It’s methane, that’s the major thing that’s been overlooked. I’m no expert in it, but what I did was summarize what the experts have said. It’s hard for people to visualize this, but there are hundreds of millions of cows, and other livestock out there, that emit methane, both through the mouths and their rear ends. It goes into the atmosphere and methane is a powerful heat-trapper, much more powerful than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide will stay in the atmosphere much longer, but methane really traps heat. Studies have shown that, in fact, methane has caused nearly half of the global warming to-date. The number one source of methane is the animals we raise and eventually eat. So, the good thing about methane is that it only stays in the atmosphere for eight years. If people would cut back on their consumption of animal products, you could recycle out very quickly. There could be a more immediate impact on global warming, on cooling. That’s not going to happen, but, say, everyone in the world cut back 1/3 of their meat consumption and reduced the livestock accordingly. That could have a major impact on global warming, and quite soon. Whereas carbon dioxide that stays in the atmosphere for so long. It’s not going to have such an immediate impact on it and that’s what we need is an immediate impact, because we’re right there, as they call the tipping point.