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...

People love to believe that food can replace medicine. We talked about this in Episode One, where I explained that Hippocrates never said “let food be thy medicine.” Still, the myth endures.

Food does matter. The right eating pattern can lower blood pressure. One of the best-studied is the DASH Diet—short for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It is often called America’s version of the Mediterranean Diet. While the Mediterranean Diet was being mapped out for overall health, the DASH researchers asked a sharper question: what foods can lower blood pressure directly?

Unlike most nutrition studies, the original DASH trial provided all the food to participants. That meant researchers knew exactly what people ate, meal after meal. This is rare and expensive, but it gave them confidence in the results.

The DASH diet emphasizes:

• Fruits and vegetables, especially potassium-rich foods like bananas, beans, and leafy greens
• Whole grains
• Lean proteins, like fish and poultry
• Low-fat dairy
• Less red meat, sweets, and sodium

Because it combined several food groups, DASH worked quickly. Within two weeks, blood pressure dropped.

The results were consistent. People following DASH lowered their systolic blood pressure (the top number) by 8–11 mmHg and their diastolic pressure by 5–6 mmHg. That is about the same as one standard blood pressure pill.

Even more important, DASH showed that sodium reduction matters. Those who cut sodium intake to 1,500–2,300 milligrams per day saw the greatest improvements. This shattered the myth that unlimited salt is safe. Too much sodium raises blood pressure, increases heart disease risk, and fuels strokes.

This is where things get messy. Electrolytes, especially sodium, are necessary during prolonged exercise—typically more than 1–2 hours, in hot weather, or when sweating heavily. Under those conditions, sodium helps prevent hyponatremia, a dangerous drop in blood sodium levels.

However, for most people exercising less than an hour, water is enough. Regular meals will replace lost sodium. Salty drinks or powders aren’t required. In fact, most commercial sports drinks don’t even contain enough sodium to match sweat losses in extreme events.

Here is where the grift appears. Shirtless salesmen on social media love to sell high-priced mango-flavored salt packets as “essential” electrolytes. They promise performance and recovery, but they may actually raise your blood pressure and put you at risk.

Science says otherwise. Electrolyte supplementation should be individualized and used with caution. People at highest risk from unnecessary sodium loading include:

• Those with hypertension, heart failure, or kidney disease
• Women, who are more prone to overhydration and hyponatremia due to smaller body size and lower sweat rates
• Older athletes or those with low body mass
• Recreational athletes who follow outdated advice to “drink as much as possible”

Even ultra-endurance athletes cannot rely on sodium supplements alone. If they drink more than they lose, sodium will not prevent hyponatremia and may make things worse. The best strategy is to drink to thirst and use salty foods or fluids only when truly needed.

How can you follow DASH in real life? Here’s one...

People love to say “food is medicine.” Some even claim Hippocrates himself said it. But here’s the thing: he didn’t. The phrase does not appear in any of his surviving writings. In fact, historians believe the line was created centuries later and then falsely attached to Hippocrates to give it weight.

Still, the idea persists. Even the current head of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has repeated the myth. And when RFK Jr. is your fact-checker, you know you’re in trouble.

Now, as someone certified in Culinary Medicine, I believe food is incredibly powerful. Eating the right foods can prevent disease, improve health, and help you live longer. However, food alone rarely works as well as actual medicine. That is especially true when it comes to cholesterol.

In the early 2000s, Dr. David Jenkins and his team introduced what they called the Portfolio Diet. Instead of focusing on one “superfood,” the diet combines several cholesterol-lowering foods:

• Soy protein
• Nuts, like almonds
• Viscous fibers from oats, barley, or psyllium
• Plant sterols from fortified foods

Each one has a small effect. But when you put them together, the benefits add up.

Why does it work? Cholesterol gets secreted by your liver into bile, then travels into your gut. Normally, most of that cholesterol is reabsorbed into your bloodstream. But fiber and plant sterols bind to cholesterol and drag it out of your body. That’s why bowel movements are brown—bile is brown, and fiber helps carry it out. More fiber means you feed your gut bacteria and flush away cholesterol. It really is a win-win.

The Portfolio Diet has been tested in multiple clinical trials. In one JAMA study, people who followed the diet lowered their LDL cholesterol by about 13 to 14 percent over six months. That translated to a drop of about 24–26 mg/dL.

Other studies show that people who stick with it can lower their LDL by 17 percent on average. Some who were especially diligent saw drops of more than 20 percent at one year. The Portfolio Diet also improves non-HDL cholesterol, apolipoprotein B, and long-term risk for heart disease.

So yes—it works. In fact, the effect is similar to what you get from early statins like lovastatin.

The science sounds great. But how do you actually eat this way? Here’s one example day:

• Breakfast: Oatmeal made with soy milk
• Snack: A handful of almonds (about 25–30 grams)
• Lunch: Lentil soup with whole-grain bread
• Dinner: Tofu stir-fry with vegetables and barley
• Extra: Two grams of plant sterols, often from fortified margarine spreads

That daily pattern gives you soy protein, fiber, nuts, and plant sterols. But here’s the challenge: it takes careful planning to hit the right doses every day. It’s not impossible—but it is hard to sustain.

Many people confuse the Portfolio Diet with the Mediterranean Diet. Both are plant-forward, emphasize nuts, legumes, whole grains, and lower cardiovascular risk. However, the Mediterranean Diet is broader and easier to follow. It includes olive oil, fish, fruits, vegetables, and even moderate wine.

The Portfolio Diet, on the other hand, is very prescriptive. You must hit specific amounts of soy protein, fiber, and sterols daily. Think of the Mediterranean Diet as the entire restaurant, while the Portfolio Diet is just one corner of the menu—focused...

Milk has always been central to survival. When mothers died in childbirth—and this happened often before modern medicine—infants survived only if they had access to another nursing mother or wet nurse. When that wasn’t possible, families sometimes turned to the milk of other mammals.

That discovery helped keep our species alive. However, milk’s role in human survival carried a hidden danger. While milk nourished infants, it also became a deadly carrier of disease.

During the 1800s, raw milk was anything but safe. In New York City, dairies kept cows next to distilleries, feeding them whiskey mash. The resulting milk was bluish and watery. To disguise it, producers added chalk and plaster. Parents unknowingly gave this milk to children. According to estimates, 8,000 infants die a year from contaminated milk in New York alone.

Milk also spreads tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and typhoid. A simple glass of raw milk could kill.

The turning point came with Louis Pasteur, a French chemist who proved microbes spoiled wine and beer. He developed the process of pasteurization: heating a liquid enough to kill pathogens without ruining flavor.

His discovery revolutionized public health. Pasteur’s germ theory of disease proved that invisible microbes caused illness. Applied to milk, this meant heating could save lives. Pasteur’s work inspired sterilization in surgery, the discovery of TB bacteria, and eventually vaccines.

In the U.S., pediatrician Abraham Jacobi urged families to boil milk by the 1870s. Philanthropist Nathan Straus built pasteurized milk stations across New York. Mortality rates for children who drank Straus’s milk dropped by nearly 50%.

Pasteurization was not flashy, but transformative. Alongside clean water and vaccines, it became one of the greatest advances in human health.

Indigenous children in Canada’s residential schools were forced to drink raw milk from cows raised on pasture. The cows looked healthy, but many carried bovine tuberculosis. Children sickened and died. In some schools, mortality reached 30–60% in just five years. Hundreds of unmarked graves discovered in recent decades reveal the human toll.

Even the cleanest farm or happiest cow can carry pathogens. You cannot see tuberculosis or E. coli in a glass of milk. Pasteurization is the only safeguard.

Despite history, raw milk has returned as a “wellness” trend. Politicians like RFK Jr. have promoted it, even doing raw milk “shots” with influencer Paul Saladino in the White House.

But nostalgia doesn’t erase microbiology. Just weeks later, Florida saw 21 people sickened—including six children—by E. coli and Campylobacter from raw milk. Seven were hospitalized. Two developed life-threatening complications.

If someone claims to support children, selling raw milk undermines that promise.

Myth: Raw milk has more nutrients.

Fact: Pasteurization causes <10% vitamin loss. Proteins, calcium, and fats remain intact.

Myth: Raw milk prevents asthma.

Fact: Studies show lower allergy rates in farm kids, but due to the farm environment, not the milk.

Myth: A clean farm means safe milk.

Fact: Even pristine dairies can harbor invisible pathogens like TB, Salmonella, or Listeria.

Myth: Pasteurization “ruins” milk.

Fact: Pasteurized milk is...

Protein powders are everywhere. Walk into a gym, scroll through social media, or visit a health food store, and you’ll see tubs of whey, egg, pea, and soy protein. Add buzzwords like “isolate,” “hydrolysate,” and “grass-fed,” and suddenly these powders sound like liquid gold. But how much of this is science—and how much is hype?

Surgeons were among the first to use modular proteins. In the ICU, when patients couldn’t eat, we relied on early protein formulas. These weren’t the big plastic tubs you see at Costco. They were custom-made, extremely expensive, and delivered directly into the gut through a feeding tube. Proteins like albumin cost thousands of dollars and were carefully monitored.

Over time, science moved forward. Modern protein powders have become more affordable and accessible. What once cost hospitals a fortune is now sold in shiny containers at gyms and supplement shops. That’s progress—although it also opened the door for plenty of marketing nonsense.

The very first protein powders sold to the public in the 1950s were made from eggs. Hollywood stars promoted them as the secret to beauty and muscle. Soon, the “beautiful people” diet drifted into gyms, where bodybuilders grabbed onto the promise of sculpted muscles. Eventually, protein shakes became a middle-America trend.

Today, gyms often make more profit selling supplements than memberships or training. That’s not nutrition—it’s salesmanship.

Remember the nursery rhyme about “curds and whey”? That wasn’t just poetry. Cheese making separates milk into two parts: the solid curds and the liquid whey. For centuries, whey was a waste product. Farmers dumped it or fed it to pigs. Then researchers discovered that whey contained high-quality protein, packed with amino acids.

Now, whey protein is the biggest player in the supplement industry. Isolates and hydrolysates are simply forms of whey with more processing. They’re not magic—they’re filtered versions of what used to be discarded.

Cows aren’t the only animals providing milk protein. Goats produce protein powders, too, often marketed as “easier to digest.” Then there’s pea protein, soy protein, and rice protein, sold to vegans and those with dairy allergies. These plant-based versions can be useful, but they aren’t inherently superior.

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) are another popular product. They sound impressive, but in reality, if you’re eating enough protein in your diet, you already have plenty of BCAAs. Extra scoops don’t turn into extra muscle.

Here’s the irony. While influencers push powders as miracle muscle builders, surgeons actually prescribe them for medical reasons. After weight-loss surgery, patients can’t eat large amounts of food, so modular proteins help meet nutritional needs. In ICU patients with short gut syndrome or severe illness, protein powders save lives.

Doctors used them first—long before gyms turned them into cash cows. The difference? We used them based on data, not marketing hype.

Protein powders are tools, not miracles. They’re convenient, portable, and sometimes necessary. But they’re not a shortcut to health. If you eat enough protein from whole foods, you probably don’t need that expensive tub with the shiny label.

The supplement industry thrives on hype. Science thrives on evidence. And if history has shown us anything, it’s that evidence always wins—eventually.

1. Boirie Y, Dangin M, Gachon P, Vasson M-P,...

Mark Hyman loves a soundbite. One of his favorites is:

It sounds inspiring. Unfortunately, it isn’t true.

I’m certified in culinary medicine, and I live the Mediterranean diet. Good nutrition matters. It lowers risk. It supports treatment. However, it cannot replace medicine for people with established disease.

The DASH trial (Sacks et al., NEJM 2001) proved that eating more fruits and vegetables while cutting sodium lowers blood pressure by the same amount as one blood pressure pill. That’s great news for prevention. But for those with heart disease, diabetes, or kidney problems, nutrition alone can’t cure the condition.

Before the year 1800, even if you survived childhood, your life expectancy was still in your 30s or 40s (Roser et al., Our World in Data). People then ate “organically,” free from dyes and microplastics. They also died young. Modern life expectancy came from clean water, vaccines, and medicine, not kale.

Samoa in 2019 had a diet Instagram influencers dream about — fresh fish, fruit, and root vegetables. Then measles hit.

Two infants had died in 2017 because nurses mixed the MMR vaccine incorrectly. The government suspended vaccinations for nearly a year, and coverage dropped to about 31%. Into that trust gap stepped anti-vaccine activists, including RFK Jr., spreading misinformation.

By late 2019, Samoa had over 5,700 cases and 83 deaths — most in children under five — in a population of just 200,000. Schools closed. Public gatherings stopped. Unvaccinated homes had to hang red flags so mobile teams could find them. Only when vaccination resumed did the outbreak end (WHO, 2019).

Tahiti’s story was similar. Beautiful diet. Fresh food. Yet measles still spread. The only thing that stopped it was vaccination, not nutrition.

Mark Hyman is trained in family medicine. He co-directed Canyon Ranch’s health program, then founded the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine — a role he no longer holds.

His version of “functional medicine” isn’t recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. Chiropractors, dentists, and nurses can buy a certification and call themselves “doctor.” In California, only MDs and DOs can legally use the title “physician,” but in many states, the public gets fooled.

Hyman now uses his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign to give his brand of pseudoscience legitimacy. My Crestor costs $2.36 for three months, and my doctor gets nothing for prescribing it. His supplements? Around $100 for the same time, straight into his pocket.

The Lyon Diet Heart Study (de Lorgeril et al., Circulation 1999) found that a Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of another heart attack by 72% in people who already had heart disease. But those patients were still taking statins, aspirin, and blood pressure meds. Diet complemented medicine; it didn’t replace it.

The JUPITER trial (Ridker et al., NEJM 2008) showed that statins cut cardiovascular events by 44% in people with normal LDL but high CRP. No supplement stack or smoothie matches that.

My dad had a heart attack at 55. Doctors told him not to expect another 20 years.

Five years later, statins came out. He took them faithfully, along with his blood pressure medicine. He...