Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

by T. Colin Campbell

that supports the idea that the foods we eat and the nutrition they provide is far more important in determining cancer than our genetic backgrounds.1 Population studies begun forty to fifty years ago show that when people migrate from one country to another, they acquire the cancer rate of the country to which they move, despite the fact their genes remain the same. This strongly indicates that at least 80 percent to 90 percent—and probably closer to 97 percent to 98 percent—of all cancers are related to diet and lifestyle, not to genes. Also, comparisons of cancer rates among identical twins show that even though both members of a twin pair have the same DNA, most of the time they fail to get the same cancers. If genes alone were sufficient for cancer development, you’d expect them to get the same cancer nearly 100 percent of the time. (For those relatively few twins who do get the same cancer, their dietary similarities could be at least partly responsible.)