Food is powerful. Eating well lowers your risk of many diseases, including cancer. Yet food is not chemotherapy. Still, the idea that broccoli or green tea could replace cancer treatment is tempting. It feels safe, natural, and hopeful.

However, cancer is not treated with vegetables or tea. Cancer is treated with medicine. Let’s break down what food can and cannot do when it comes to cancer.

Broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and other cruciferous vegetables contain natural compounds like sulforaphane. In lab studies, these compounds slow cancer cell growth. That is promising.

Furthermore, population studies show that people who regularly eat cruciferous vegetables often have a lower risk of colon, lung, and breast cancers. So, broccoli can help lower risk.

But here is the key point: broccoli does not cure cancer. No oncologist prescribes broccoli as chemotherapy. Prevention is not the same as treatment.

Green tea is another food often linked to cancer prevention. It contains catechins, such as EGCG, which in test tubes can slow cancer cell growth. Some studies even suggest that people who drink green tea regularly may have slightly lower cancer rates.

But again, that is prevention. Once cancer begins, drinking green tea will not stop it. And when taken as concentrated supplements, green tea extracts can actually harm the liver.

So, green tea is a fine beverage. But it is not chemotherapy. Personally, I prefer black tea — green tea tastes a little too much like pond water for me.

Sadly, the gap between prevention and treatment is where scams thrive. You’ve probably heard of things like:

• Gerson Therapy: organic juices and coffee enemas, still promoted in Mexico. No evidence, high risk.
• Apricot pits and soursop: marketed as natural cures, but linked to toxicity.
• Ivermectin: useful for parasites, but not proven in cancer.

Then there’s the Warburg effect. Otto Warburg correctly observed that cancer cells use sugar differently. But modern science has shown cancer is not a “sugar disease.” It is a DNA disease caused by mutations. Cancer cells can grow on sugar, ketones, and even vitamins. You cannot starve cancer with diet.

Now, let’s talk about the real success stories.

Chemotherapy in the past was harsh, like carpet bombing. Yet it saved lives. My brother Jimmy was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s disease in 1969. Thanks to experimental chemotherapy and radiation, he lived 37 more years.

Today, treatment is even better. We have:

• Targeted therapies that hit the exact mutation in a tumor.
• Immunotherapy drugs that unleash the body’s own defenses.
• Combination therapies that extend survival with fewer side effects.

And vaccines are changing everything. The HPV vaccine prevents cervical, anal, and many oral cancers. It may even help lower melanoma risk. Researchers are now studying vaccines for brain cancers like glioblastoma and even for pancreatic cancer.

No apricot pit will ever do that.

We should not ignore food. A poor diet filled with ultra-processed foods and low in fiber increases cancer risk. In fact, the rise in colon cancer among younger adults is likely tied to diets low in fiber and high in processed foods.

The Mediterranean diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, olive oil, and legumes, does more than prevent cancer. The large EPIC studies show it also lowers the risk of cancer coming back after treatment. That makes it...

Food shapes our health. Eating beans, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains can lower the risk of diabetes and other chronic conditions. Yet food does not replace medicine. Clearly, diets high in ultra-processed foods make diabetes worse. And yes, eating better is the most empowering thing anyone can do.

Still, some claim that modern food is the only reason we have chronic diseases like diabetes. They argue that if people only ate “real food,” there would be no need for medicine. History proves otherwise.

In the early 1920s, Dr. Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin in Toronto. At the time, children with type 1 diabetes had no future. Families were told to put their kids on starvation diets, hoping to add a few months to their lives. Death was certain.

Then came insulin. Doctors injected it into children already in comas. One by one, they woke up. They sat up, asked for food, and hugged their parents. What had been a hospital ward of silence turned into a place of joy.

Insulin was the fastest-adopted drug in history. Banting became the youngest Nobel Prize winner at the time. That discovery did not come from food. It came from science and medicine.

There are two main types of diabetes.

• Type 1 diabetes happens when the pancreas loses all ability to make insulin. Without insulin, sugar cannot move into cells, and life cannot continue. That is why every person with type 1 diabetes needs insulin from the first day of diagnosis.
• Type 2 diabetes is different. In this case, the body still makes insulin, but the cells resist it. Over time, the pancreas wears out. That is why many people with type 2 eventually need insulin too. It is not failure. It is simply how the disease progresses.

Food can help manage both types, but food alone is never enough.

Beans are one of the best foods for blood sugar. They are full of soluble fiber, which slows down glucose absorption. They also provide plant protein and have a low glycemic index. That means they don’t spike blood sugar the way soda or white bread does.

Research shows that eating beans regularly can lower hemoglobin A1c — the measure of long-term blood sugar — by about 0.3 to 0.5 percent. That is a real effect from food.

Beans are also practical. They are inexpensive, found almost everywhere, and have been eaten by humans longer than almost any other protein source.

Now let’s compare beans to metformin.

Metformin is the first-line drug for type 2 diabetes. It lowers A1c by 1 to 2 percent. That’s two to four times more than beans. Metformin also lowers the risk of heart disease and has decades of safety data behind it.

So while beans help, they are not metformin. If blood sugar is high, no amount of hummus or chili will bring it back to safe levels. Medicine is needed. Food lays the foundation, but medicine does the heavy lifting.

When it comes to diet, the evidence is clear. The Mediterranean diet is the best overall eating plan for diabetes.

This diet includes:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Olive oil
• Nuts
• Legumes (yes, beans!)
• Whole grains

Now, some people push back against whole grains. That may be because they grew up in the low-carb era, when grains were unfairly blamed for every health problem. But whole grains are healthy, especially for people with diabetes. They are far better for the body than bacon or butter.

The Mediterranean...

Heart disease was four times more deadly than it is today. In those days, we had no statins, no stents, and no bypass surgery. Food was the only weapon doctors had.

Pharmacies in Rome and Greece even stocked extra virgin olive oil for patients with “hardening of the arteries.” Doctors sent people to pick up bottles, almost like prescriptions. Olive oil wasn’t curing clogged arteries, but it showed an early recognition that diet mattered.

Then scientists noticed something bigger. In certain Mediterranean villages, people lived longer with far less heart disease. It wasn’t genetic. Relatives who moved to cities and switched to Western diets developed heart disease much earlier.

Researchers didn’t stop there. They followed men in villages across Europe and the Mediterranean for decades. Some communities ate diets heavy in saturated fats. They developed clogged arteries and heart disease quickly. Other communities ate diets rich in fruits, vegetables, legumes, fish, nuts, and olive oil. They had much lower rates of heart disease. This pattern became the foundation of what we now call the Mediterranean Diet.

At that time, diet gave us hope. But today, we know that food alone is not enough.

The Lyon Diet Heart Study proved how powerful diet could be. Conducted just as statins came onto the market, it showed that patients with heart attacks who switched to a Mediterranean-style diet had a 70% lower risk of another cardiac event. That meant fewer heart attacks and fewer deaths.

Later, the PREDIMED trial confirmed these results. In high-risk adults, the Mediterranean Diet reduced major cardiovascular events by about 30%. That’s impressive, but it also raises a question: can people sustain it? Adherence usually means sticking with the diet about 70 percent of the time. That’s not perfect.

Here’s a personal example. I have hypercholesterolemia and a strong family history of heart disease. I follow the Mediterranean Diet carefully. But even with strong adherence, my LDL cholesterol never dropped below 180. With two drugs — Zetia and Crestor — my LDL is now in the 40s. Food helps. Medicine saves.

The PESA Heart Study showed why this matters. Researchers in Spain followed adults who felt perfectly healthy. Using advanced imaging, they found more than 60 percent already had plaque in their arteries. Atherosclerosis begins silently, and often decades before symptoms appear.

The JUPITER trial with rosuvastatin (Crestor) proved what medicine can do. Statins reduced cardiovascular events by 44 percent, and the study had to stop early because the benefit was so strong.

And then there’s Dean Ornish. His program is often called the “diet that reverses heart disease.” But it was never just a diet. His patients quit smoking, took statins, took blood pressure medications, and practiced yoga. Ornish proved that lifestyle matters — but it was food and medicine together that made the difference.

Meanwhile, scammers still sell false hope. Barbara O’Neill, banned from giving health advice in Australia, charges thousands for seminars where she claims cayenne pepper “opens arteries.” That’s pure fiction. Cayenne is a spice, not a stent. She also claims cholesterol guidelines only exist to enrich drug companies. Yet my three-month supply of Crestor costs $2.36, while she profits thousands. The real con is clear.

So here’s the truth: salmon is healthy, but it isn’t a stent. Olive oil helps, but it isn’t a statin. Food prevents disease. Medicine treats it. Together, food and medicine are...