The Vegetarian Diet and disease prevention

A vegetarian diet consists of as many fruits and vegetables as you can imagine. They are eaten raw or cooked in aromatic, savory combinations and in any number of ways.

There has been much debate over the value of a vegetarian diet from a nutrition standpoint as well as from the standpoint of the various foods being "preventive" in terms of avoiding certain diseases and ailments.

This article, contributed by the American Institute for Cancer Research, speaks to that issue as it relates to tomatoes.

If tomatoes help fight prostate cancer, why shouldn’t companies that sell processed tomato products print that message on their labels? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the federal health organization responsible for accepting or rejecting the health claims that the food industry wants to make for their products. The FDA decides what health claims can be made based on scientific evidence. Three years ago, FDA reviewed all the scientific evidence from many studies concerning lycopene, a compound found in tomatoes, as a cancer-preventing substance, and determined there wasn’t enough affirmative research to pass this health claim.

Before you think less of the tomato’s health benefits, consider the perspective offered by the cancer experts at The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). They agree with the FDA’s decision because researchers and nutritionists, not marketers, are the most reliable sources of information about a product’s health benefits. In this sense, AICR support the FDA’s decision to deny supplement manufacturers the right to make a health claim that isn’t supported by scientific evidence.

AICR also rejects the concept of “super foods,” which refers to single foods protecting or improving health. Instead, AICR believes vegetables and fruit act together to protect us against cancer when incorporated in our everyday diets. Unlike the FDA, AICR still credits the tomato as a cancer-fighting food when it is included as part of a plant-based diet of vegetables and fruits.

AICR nutritionist Karen Collins, MS, RD, points out that, although the government rejected the claim, there is considerable evidence suggesting tomatoes do help fight cancer. Several lab studies have shown a correlation between tomato consumption and lowered cancer risk. Other studies show that lycopene found in tomatoes stops the reproduction of many types of cancer cells including breast, lung and endometrial.

Collins mentions supporting human studies of populations that who consumed varying amounts of tomatoes as part of a regular diet. The populations that included the most tomatoes in their diet demonstrated lowered cancer risks than populations eating fewer tomatoes.

AICR endorses FDA’s refusal to let tomatoes be promoted as a wonder food, but believes that they do play an important role in cancer prevention. As Collins says, no one type of food is powerful enough to stop cancer on its own. However, eating a combination of various plant-based foods including tomatoes seems to be a highly effective way to reduce cancer risk.