CANCER MYTH

Google ‘cancer’ and you’ll be faced with millions of web pages. And the number of YouTube videos you find if you look up ‘cancer cure’ is similarly vast.

The problem is that much of the information out there is at best inaccurate, or at worst dangerously misleading. There are plenty of evidence-based, easy to understand pages about cancer, but there are just as many, if not more, pages spreading myths.

And it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction, as much of the inaccurate information looks and sounds perfectly plausible. But if you scratch the surface and look at the evidence, many continually perpetuated ‘truths’ become unstuck.

In this post, we want to set the record straight on 10 cancer myths we regularly encounter. Driven by the evidence, not by rhetoric or anecdote, we describe what the reality of research actually shows to be true.

• Myth 1: Cancer is a man-made, modern disease
• Myth 2: Superfoods prevent cancer
• Myth 3: ‘Acidic’ diets cause cancer
• Myth 4: Cancer has a sweet tooth
• Myth 5: Cancer is a fungus – and sodium bicarbonate is the cure
• Myth 6: There’s a miracle cancer cure…
• Myth 7: …And Big Pharma are suppressing it
• Myth 8: Cancer treatment kills more than it cures
• Myth 9: We’ve made no progress in fighting cancer
• Myth 10: Sharks don’t get cancer

Myth 1: Cancer is a man-made, modern disease

It might be more prominent in the public consciousness now than in times gone by, but cancer isn’t just a ‘modern’, man-made disease of Western society. Cancer has existed as long as humans have. It was described thousands of years ago by Egyptian and Greek physicians, and researchers have discovered tell-tale signs of cancer in a 3,000-year-old skeleton.

While it’s certainly true that global lifestyle-related diseases like cancer are on the rise, the biggest risk factor for cancer is age.

The simple fact is that more people are living long enough to develop cancer because of our success in tackling infectious diseases and other historical causes of death such as malnutrition. It’s perfectly normal for DNA damage in our cells to build up as we age, and such damage can lead to cancer developing.

We’re also now able to diagnose cancers more accurately, thanks to advances in screening, imaging and pathology.

Yes, lifestyle, diet and other things like air pollution collectively have a huge impact on our risk of cancer – smoking for instance is behind a quarter of all cancer deaths in the UK – but that’s not the same as saying it’s entirely a modern, man-made disease. There are plenty of natural causes of cancer – for example, one in six worldwide cancers is caused by viruses and bacteria.

Myth 2: Superfoods prevent cancer

Blueberries, beetroot, broccoli, garlic, green tea… the list goes on. Despite thousands of websites claiming otherwise, there’s no such thing as a ‘superfood’. It’s a marketing term used to sell products and has no scientific basis.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t think about what you eat. Some foods are clearly healthier than others. The odd blueberry or mug of green tea certainly could be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Stocking up on fruits and veg is a great idea, and eating a range of different veg is helpful too, but the specific vegetables you choose doesn’t really matter.

Our bodies are complex and cancer is too, so it’s gross oversimplification to say that any one food, on its own, could have a major influence over your chance of developing cancer.

We’ve also written extensively on the scientific evidence about anti-oxidants and cancer in these posts – part one,  part two and part three. [Added 28/03/14 KA]

The steady accumulation of evidence over several decades points to a simple, but not very newsworthy fact that the best way to reduce your risk of cancer is by a series of long-term healthy behaviours such as not smoking, keeping active, keeping a healthy body weight and cutting back on alcohol.

Myth 3: ‘Acidic’ diets cause cancer

Some myths about cancer are surprisingly persistent, despite flying in the face of basic biology. One such idea is that overly ‘acidic’ diets cause your blood to become ‘too acidic’, which can increase your risk of cancer. Their proposed answer: increase your intake of healthier ‘alkaline’ foods like green vegetables and fruits (including, paradoxically, lemons).

This is biological nonsense. True, cancer cells can’t live in an overly alkaline environment, but neither can any of the other cells in your body.

Blood is usually slightly alkaline. This is tightly regulated by the kidneys within a very narrow and perfectly healthy range. It can’t be changed for any meaningful amount of time by what you eat. And while eating green veg is certainly healthy, that’s not because of any effect on how acid or alkaline your body is.

There is something called acidosis. This is a physiological condition that happens when your kidneys and lungs can’t keep your body’s pH (a measure of acidity) in balance. It is often the result of serious illness or poisoning. It can be life-threatening and needs urgent medical attention, but it’s not down to overly acidic diets.

We know that the immediate environment around cancer cells (the microenvironment) can become acidic. This is due to differences in the way that tumours create energy and use oxygen compared with healthy tissue. Researchers are working hard to understand how this happens, in order to develop more effective cancer treatments.

But there’s no good evidence to prove that diet can manipulate whole body pH, or that it has an impact on cancer.

Myth 4: Cancer has a sweet tooth

Another idea we see a lot is that sugar apparently ‘feeds cancer cells’, suggesting that it should be completely banished from a patient’s diet.

This is an unhelpful oversimplification of a highly complex area that we’re only just starting to understand.

‘Sugar’ is a catch-all term. It refers to a range of molecules including simple sugars found in plants, glucose and fructose. The white stuff in the bowl on your table is called sucrose and is made from glucose and fructose stuck together. All sugars are carbohydrates, commonly known as carbs – molecules made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Carbs – whether from cake or a carrot – get broken down in our digestive system to release glucose and fructose. These get absorbed into the bloodstream to provide energy for us to live.

All our cells, cancerous or not, use glucose for energy. Because cancer cells are usually growing very fast compared with healthy cells, they have a particularly high demand for this fuel. There’s also evidence that they use glucose and produce energy in a different way from healthy cells.

Researchers are working to understand the differences in energy usage in cancers compared with healthy cells, and trying to exploit them to develop better treatments (including the interesting but far from proven drug DCA).

But all this doesn’t mean that sugar from cakes, sweets and other sugary foods specifically feeds cancer cells, as opposed to any other type of carbohydrate. Our body doesn’t pick and choose which cells get what fuel. It converts pretty much all the carbs we eat to glucose, fructose and other simple sugars, and they get taken up by tissues when they need energy.

While it’s very sensible to limit sugary foods as part of an overall healthy diet and to avoid putting on weight, that’s a far cry from saying that sugary foods specifically feed cancer cells.

Both the ‘acidic diet’ and ‘sugar feeds cancer’ myths distort sensible dietary advice – of course,nobody is saying that eating a healthy diet doesn’t matter when it comes to cancer. You can read about the scientific evidence on diet and cancer on our website.

But dietary advice must be based on nutritional and scientific fact. When it comes to offering diet tips to reduce cancer risk, research shows that the same boring healthy eating advice still holds true. Fruit, vegetables, fibre, white meat and fish are good. Too much fat, salt, sugar, red or processed meat and alcohol are less so.

Also, this post, “What should you eat while you’re being treated for cancer“, is packed with links to evidence-based advice from our CancerHelp UK website. And this post, from the Junkfood Science blog, explores the science behind sugar and cancer in more detail.

[Edited to add more information and links KA 28/03/14]

Myth 5: Cancer is a fungus – and sodium bicarbonate is the cure

This ‘theory’ comes from the not-very-observant observation that “cancer is always white”.

One obvious problem with this idea – apart from the fact that cancer cells are clearly not fungal in origin – is that cancer isn’t always white. Some tumours are. But some aren’t. Ask any pathologist or cancer surgeon, or have a look on Google Image search (but maybe not after lunch…).

Proponents of this theory say that cancer is caused by infection by the fungus candida, and that tumours are actually the body’s attempt at protecting itself from this infection.

But there’s no evidence to show that this is true.

Furthermore, plenty of perfectly healthy people can be infected with candida – it’s part of the very normal array of microbes that live in (and on) all of us. Usually our immune system keeps candida in check, but infections can get more serious in people with compromised immune systems, such as those who are HIV-positive.

The ‘simple solution’ is apparently to inject tumours with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). This isn’t even the treatment used to treat proven fungal infections, let alone cancer. On the contrary,there’s good evidence that high doses of sodium bicarbonate can lead to serious – even fatal – consequences.

Some studies suggest that sodium bicarbonate can affect cancers transplanted into mice or cells grown in the lab, by neutralising the acidity in the microenvironment immediately around a tumour. And researchers in the US are running a small clinical trial investigating whether sodium bicarbonate capsules can help to reduce cancer pain and to find the maximum dose that can be tolerated, rather than testing whether it has any effect on tumours.

As far as we are aware, there have been no published clinical trials of sodium bicarbonate as a treatment for cancer.

It’s also worth pointing out that it’s not clear whether it’s possible to give doses of sodium bicarbonate that can achieve any kind of meaningful effect on cancer in humans, although it’s something that researchers are investigating.

Because the body strongly resists attempts to change its pH, usually by getting rid of bicarbonate through the kidneys, there’s a risk that doses large enough to significantly affect the pH around a tumour might cause a serious condition known as alkalosis.

One estimate suggests that a dose of around 12 grams of baking soda per day (based on a 65 kg adult) would only be able to counteract the acid produced by a tumour roughly one cubic millimetre in size. But doses of more than about 30 grams per day are likely to cause severe health problems – you do the maths.

Myth 6: There’s a miracle cancer cure…

From cannabis to coffee enemas, the internet is awash with videos and personal anecdotes about ‘natural’ ‘miracle’ cures for cancer.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence – YouTube videos and Facebook posts are emphatically not scientific evidence and aren’t the same as good-quality, peer-reviewed evidence.

In many cases it’s impossible to tell whether patients featured in such anecdotal sources have been ‘cured’ by any particular alternative treatment or not. We know nothing about their medical diagnosis, stage of disease or outlook, or even if they actually had cancer in the first place. For instance, we don’t know what other cancer treatments they had.

And we only hear about the success stories – what about the people who have tried it and have not survived? The dead can’t speak, and often people who make bold claims for ‘miracle’ cures only pick their best cases, without presenting the full picture.

This highlights the importance of publishing data from peer-reviewed, scientifically rigorous lab research and clinical trials. Firstly, because conducting proper clinical studies enables researchers to prove that a prospective cancer treatment is safe and effective. And secondly, because publishing these data allows doctors around the world to judge for themselves and use it for the benefit of their patients.

This is the standard to which all cancer treatments should be held.

That’s not to say the natural world isn’t a source of potential treatments, from aspirin (willow bark) to penicillin (mould). For example, the cancer drug taxol was first extracted from the bark and needles of the Pacific Yew tree.

But that’s a far cry from saying you should chew bark to combat a tumour. It’s an effective treatment because the active ingredient has been purified and tested in clinical trials. So we know that it’s safe and effective, and what dose to prescribe.

Of course people with cancer want to beat their disease by any means possible. And it’s completely understandable to be searching high and low for potential cures. But our advice is to be wary of anything labelled a ‘miracle cure’, especially if people are trying to sell it to you.

Wikipedia has this excellent list of ineffective cancer treatments that are often touted as miracle cures, which is worth a browse.

If you want to know about the scientific evidence about cannabis, cannabinoids and cancer– a topic we’re often asked about – please take a look at our extensive blog post on the subject, including information about the clinical trials we’re helping to fund.

And if you’ve seen links to article about scientists in Canada “curing cancer but nobody notices”, these refer to an interesting but currently unproven drug called DCA, which we’ve also written about before.  [Added KA 28/03/14]

Myth 7: … and Big Pharma are suppressing it

Hand in hand with the idea that there is a cornucopia of ‘miracle cures’ is the idea that governments, the pharmaceutical industry and even charities are colluding to hide the cure for cancer because they make so much money out of existing treatments.

Whatever the particular ‘cure’ being touted, the logic is usually the same: it’s readily available, cheap and can’t be patented, so the medical establishment is suppressing it in order to line its own pockets. But, as we’ve written before, there’s no conspiracy – sometimes it just doesn’t work.

There’s no doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has a number of issues with transparency and clinical trials that it needs to address (the book Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre is a handy primer). We push regulators and pharmaceutical companies hard to make sure that effective drugs are made available at a fair price to the NHS – although it’s important to remember that developing and trialling new drugs costs a lot of money, which companies need to recoup.

Problems with conventional medicine don’t automatically prove that alternative ‘cures’ work. To use a metaphor, just because cars sometimes crash doesn’t mean that flying carpets are a viable transport option.

It simply doesn’t make sense that pharmaceutical companies would want to suppress a potential cure. Finding a highly effective therapy would guarantee huge worldwide sales.

And the argument that treatments can’t be patented doesn’t hold up. Pharma companies are not stupid, and they are quick to jump on promising avenues for effective therapies. There are always ways to repackage and patent molecules, which would give them a return on the investment required to develop and test them in clinical trials (a cost that can run into many millions) if the treatment turns out to work.

It’s also worth pointing out that charities such as Cancer Research UK and government-funded scientists are free to investigate promising treatments without a profit motive. And it’s hard to understand why NHS doctors – who often prescribe generic, off-patent drugs – wouldn’t use cheap treatments if they’d been shown to be effective in clinical trials.

For example, we’re funding large-scale trials of aspirin – a drug first made in 1897, and now one of the most widely-used off-patent drugs in the world. We’re researching whether it can prevent bowel cancer in people at high risk, reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, and even prevent cancer coming back and improve survival.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that we are all human – even politicians and Big Pharma executives – and cancer can affect anyone. People in pharmaceutical companies, governments, charities and the wider ‘medical establishment’ all can and do die of cancer too.

Here at Cancer Research UK we have seen loved ones and colleagues go through cancer. Many of them have survived. Many have not. To suggest that we are – collectively and individually – hiding ‘the cure’ is not only absurd, it’s offensive to the global community of dedicated scientists, to the staff and supporters of cancer research organisations such as Cancer Research UK and, most importantly, to cancer patients and their families.

Myth 8: Cancer treatment kills more than it cures

Let’s be clear, cancer treatment – whether chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery – is no walk in the park. The side effects can be tough. After all, treatments that are designed to kill cancer cells will inevitably affect healthy cells too.

And sometimes, sadly, treatment doesn’t work. We know that it’s very difficult to treat late-stage cancer that has spread throughout the body, and while treatment can provide relief from symptoms and prolong life, it’s not going to be a cure for very advanced cancers.

Surgery is still the most effective treatment we have for cancer, provided it’s diagnosed early enough for an operation to be done. And radiotherapy helps cure more people than cancer drugs. Yet chemotherapy and other cancer drugs have a very important part to play in cancer treatment – in some cases helping to cure the disease, and in others helping to prolong survival.

The claims on the internet that chemotherapy is “only 3 per cent effective” are highly misleading and outdated, and are explored in more depth in these two posts from the Science Based Medicine blog.

We also wrote this post in response to concerns that chemotherapy might “encourage cancer”.

It important to point out that in an increasing number of cases, the drugs do work. For example, more than 96 per cent of all men are now cured of testicular cancer, compared to fewer than 70 per cent in the 1970s thanks in part to a drug we helped to develop called cisplatin. And three-quarters of children with cancer are now cured, compared with around a quarter in the late 1960s – most of them are alive today directly thanks to chemotherapy.

We know that we still have a long way to go until we have effective, kinder treatments for all types of cancer. And it’s important that doctors, patients and their families are realistic and honest about the best options for treatment, especially when cancer is very advanced.

It may be better to opt for treatment aimed at reducing pain and symptoms rather than attempting to cure the disease (palliative care). Balancing quality and quantity of life is always going to be an issue in cancer treatment, and it’s one that each patient must decide for themselves.

Myth 9: We’ve made no progress in fighting cancer

This simply isn’t true. Thanks to advances in research, survival from cancer has doubled in the UK over the past 40 years, and death rates have fallen by 10 per cent over the past decade alone. In fact, half of all patients now survive at least ten years.

This article by our chief clinician, Professor Peter Johnson, outlines some of the key facts.

By definition, these figures relate to people treated at least 10 years ago. It’s likely that the patients being diagnosed and treated today have an even better chance of survival.

To see how the picture has changed, make yourself a cuppa and settle down to watch this hour-long documentary we helped to make – The Enemy Within: 50 years of fighting cancer. From the early days of chemotherapy in the 50s and 60s to the latest ‘smart’ drugs and pinpoint-accurate radiotherapy, it highlights how far we’ve come over the years.

There’s still a long way to go. There are some cancers where progress has been much slower – such as lung, brain, pancreatic and oesophageal cancers. And when you lose someone you love to cancer, it can feel as though no progress has been made at all.

That’s why we’re working so hard to beat cancer sooner, to make sure that nobody loses their life prematurely to the disease.

Myth 10: Sharks don’t get cancer

Yes they do.

This excellent article goes into why the myth about the cancer-free shark has been so persistent.

7 anti-aging foods

If you're over 40 and want to defy each passing year while promoting more youthful hair, nails and skin, the below 7 foods will help you stock up on some of the most powerful anti-aging nutrients around.

1.  Olive Oil - Not only do the monounsaturated fats contained in olive oil support healthy arteries and a healthy heart, but olive oil also contains polyphenols, a potent anti-oxidant that may help prevent a number of age-related diseases.  We recommend organic extra virgin olive oil for the most anti-aging bang for your buck.

2.  Red Wine - That's right, a glass of wine daily may indeed have a positive effect on your health due to its resveratrol content, a unique anti-oxidant that can help fight against diabetes, heart disease, and age-related memory loss.

3.  Beans - The unique proteins in beans thicken and strengthen your hair cells, so you can enjoy a full head of hair as you lengthen your years. :)

4.  Brazil Nuts - Brazil nuts are rich in selenium, a mineral which aids in the production of the anti-oxidant glutathione to help slow down the skin aging process.  Just 2 nuts a day will provide you with enough selenium to reap its anti-aging benefits.

5.  Tomatoes - Tomatoes are rich in lycopene, which has been shown to support heart health and healthy cholesterol levels as you age.  Lycopene also acts as a natural sun block to keep skin youthful and protected from harmful UV rays.

6.  Raspberries & Blueberries - These two berries contain important anti-oxidants to help offset inflammation and oxidative stress that contribute to skin aging and wrinkles.  Just one serving of either or these berries contains more anti-oxidants than 10 servings of most other fruits and vegetables!

7.  Organic Eggs - Despite the bad rap eggs get because of their cholesterol content, which is based on completely erroneous science, eggs are rich in biotin and iron which help to promote healthy, youthful skin and hair.

Now, apart from stocking up on anti-oxidants and other anti-aging vitamins and minerals via the above foods, there is one other extremely important nutrient that you won't find in the above foods that very well may hold the key to ULTIMATE health and longevity...

We tell you all about this "super nutrient" at the link below, and how lacking it can really have a devastatingly negative impact on your health.  We also show you exactly how to figure out if you are deficient in this critical nutrient, and if you are, precisely how to correct it so you don't have to worry about all those nasty negative side effects!

Reasons to Switch to Grass-Fed Beef and Dairy

I've often said that the differences between organic, pastured beef and that from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is so great that you're really talking about two completely different animals.

The same applies to other animal meats, and animal products such as dairy and eggs. The Epoch Times1 recently featured an article discussing reasons to switch to grass-fed beef. I'd like to add a couple more, relating to the benefits of switching to raw, grass-fed dairy and eggs as well.

Grass-Fed Beef Does Not Promote Antibiotic-Resistant Disease

In the grand scheme of all that is wrong with modern agriculture, the unnatural transition that turned cattle, which naturally eat only grass, into grain-eatingruminants is definitely toward the top of the list.

CAFO cows are fattened for slaughter in gigantic feedlots as quickly as possible (on average between 14 and 18 months) with the help of grains and growth promoting drugs, including antibiotics.

This routine practice, which is done purely for financial reasons, has led to the current scourge of antibiotic-resistant disease, which now kills at least 23,000 Americans each year. Other growth-promoters commonly used in US beef have been banned in most other countries due to suspected health effects, both in animals and consumers.

When you eat CAFO beef, you're also consuming small amounts of antibiotics and other drugs in each bite. Organic, grass-fed standards, on the other hand, do not permit non-medical use of antibiotics. With antibiotic-resistant disease being a major public health hazard, buying organic meats is an important consideration in more ways than one.

Regularly consuming small doses of antibiotics is a surefire way to destroy your gut health, which in turn will have a detrimental effect on your overall health and immune function. Not only does it make you more susceptible to chronic disease, it also increases your exposure to antibiotic-resistant infections.

Grass-Fed Beef = Better Nutrition

Antibiotics and hard-to-digest grains radically alter the bacterial balance and composition in the animal's gut. The natural diet for ruminant animals, such as cattle, is plain grass. When left to their own devices, cattle will not graze on corn or soybeans. Just as in humans, poor gut health in animals promotes disease.

This radically altered diet also affects the nutritional composition of the meat. For example, when raised on a grass-only diet, levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) are three to five times higher in the meat compared to CAFO beef. CLA has been found to have a wide array of important health benefits, from fighting cancer to decreasing insulin resistance and improving body composition.

Grass-fed beef also tends to be leaner, and have higher levels of vitamins and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. It also has a healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats. So, as noted in the featured article: "When you choose grass-fed beef, lamb or bison, you're eating meats that are more nutritious and antibiotic-free, just as nature intended."

Clean, Happy, Healthy Cows Make for Safer, More Sanitary Beef

CAFOs represent a corporate-controlled system characterized by large-scale, centralized, low profit-margin production, processing, and distribution systems. Traditionally, factory farms are hidden from public view. Certain states have even made making undercover videos taken on such farms — which often show shocking scenes of animal cruelty and filth — illegal.

Quite simply, they don't want you to see what's really going on, because if you did, you would probably turn away in disgust at the mere thought of eating the foods produced there. Grass-fed cows, on the other hand, are free to graze on wide open fields, and are usually tended by farmers who truly care about the health and well-being of their animals—even if they are ultimately destined to become someone's dinner... As noted in the featured article, "grass-fed isn't gross." And it's by far the most humane way to raise food animals.

Contrary to their crowded, confined, stressed-out factory farmed counterparts, organically-raised cattle roam free on open pasture, which makes a tremendous difference when it comes to their health and well-being. As a result, they're rarely sick and hence don't need drug treatment.

Organic farms, which tend to be far smaller in scale, also tend to provide far more sanitary conditions overall, since the animals are not kept in overcrowded barracks day in and day out. As a result, the animals are far less likely to harbor dangerous pathogens, which could contaminate the meat.

Unless labeled as grass-fed, virtually all the meat you buy in the grocery store is CAFO beef, and tests have revealed that nearly half of the meat sold in US stores is contaminated with pathogenic bacteria—including antibiotic-resistant strains. Grass-fed beef is not associated with this high frequency of contamination, and their living conditions have everything to do with this improved safety.

Raw Grass-Fed Milk: Safer and More Nutritious Than Pasteurized CAFO Milk

Many are under the mistaken belief that pasteurized milk is safer than raw milk from a healthy, grass-fed cow, but nothing could be further from the truth. The reason commercial milk needs to be pasteurized is because it comes from sickly cows standing on a rotating assembly line inside a giant metal structure. Since the animals tend to have high rates of disease and contamination, courtesy of the factory farming model, drinking such milk raw would be highly inadvisable! It must to be pasteurized in order to be safe to drink.

This is simply not the case with milk from a grass-fed, pastured cow, raised under clean and healthy conditions. Rather than harboring pathogenic bacteria that must be killed, raw milk from a grass-fed, pastured cow contains a storehouse of nutrition and beneficial bacteria (probiotics) lacking from CAFO milk.

Previous CDC data2 shows there are about 412 confirmed cases of people getting ill from pasteurized milk each year, while only about 116 illnesses a year are linked to raw milk. And research by Dr. Ted Beals,3 MD, featured in the summer 2011 issue ofWise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, shows that you are about 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from organic raw milk. Drinking CAFO milk will also expose you to antibiotics, and in many cases the genetically engineered growth hormone rBGH (unless labeled as being rBGH-free), which has been linked to an increased cancer risk.

Besides that, the pasteurization process also transforms the physical structure of the proteins in milk, such as casein, and alters the shape of the amino acid configuration into a foreign protein that your body is not equipped to handle. Although certainly possible with raw milk, lactose intolerance is typically associated with pasteurized milk. The process also destroys the friendly bacteria found naturally in milk and drastically reduces the micronutrient and vitamin content.

In the end, the milk you drink will only be as healthy as the cow that produced it, so make sure to source your raw milk from a clean, well-run farm that gives its cows access to pasture. Raw milk from grass-fed cows is full of things that your body will thrive on, including healthy bacteria, raw fat, and cancer-fighting conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). It's not uncommon for people who drink raw milk to report improvement or disappearance of troubling health issues – everything from allergies to digestive trouble to skin problems like eczema.

Reasons for Switching to Free-Range Eggs

Eggs are another animal product where free-range pasturing makes all the difference in the world, both in terms of creating superior nutrition and reducing the contamination risk. As with other livestock, the salmonella risk associated with raw eggs is primarily heightened when the hens are raised in unsanitary CAFO conditions. In small organic farms where the chickens are raised in clean, spacious coops, have access to sunlight, and forage for their natural food, salmonella contamination is a very rare occurrence.

One study by the British government found that 23 percent of farms with caged hens tested positive for salmonella, compared to just over four percent in organic flocks and 6.5 percent in free-range flocks. I strongly advise against eating conventional eggs raw for this reason alone.

Unfortunately, egg labels have turned into a confusing muddle. Designations like "organic," "free-range," "pastured," and "cage-free" are often thought to be interchangeable, but really aren't. In many ways, these labels are little more than creative advertising. For example, regulations on the use of the term "free-range" do not specify the amount of time the hens must spend outdoors or the amount of outdoor space each hen must have access to. Nor do they indicate that the hen must have access to a pasture diet... Also, avoid the mistake I almost made when I grabbed a dozen eggs labeled "pasteurized," thinking they were "pastured" eggs. Fortunately, I realized the mistake before I purchased them.

Ideally, what you're really looking for is chicken and eggs that are both certified organic and true pasture-raised. True free-range eggs, now increasingly referred to as "pasture-raised," are from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms. More often than not, you will not find true free-range eggs in your local grocery store as such eggs tend to come from large-scale egg farms that cannot comply with this criteria.

You also want your eggs to be certified organic because that's the only way to guarantee that they're antibiotic-free. Barring organic certification, which is cost-prohibitive for many small farmers, you could just make sure the farmer raises his chickens according to organic, free-range standards, allowing his flock to forage freely for their natural diet, and aren't fed antibiotics, corn, and soy.

Where to Find Grass-Fed Beef, Raw Milk, and Pastured Eggs

Now that you know why it's worth switching over to grass-fed beef and other animal products, the question becomes, where do you find them? Fortunately, it's becoming increasingly easy to find these, and many other organic foods.

• Grass-fed beef: Many grocery chains are now responding to customer demand, and will provide at least a small assortment of grass-fed meats. If your local grocer still doesn't carry any, go ahead and ask the purchasing manager to consider adding it. Some stores, like Publix, will even stock specialty items requested by a single customer. The least expensive way to obtain authentic grass-fed beef is to find a local rancher you can trust, and buy it directly from the farm. Alternatively, you can now purchase grass-fed beef from organic ranchers online, if you don't have access to a local source.
• Raw organic, grass-fed dairy products: Getting your raw milk from a local organic farm or co-op is one of the best ways to ensure you're getting high-quality milk. You can locate a raw milk source near you at the Campaign for Real MilkWebsite.4 The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund5 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.
• Organic, free-range eggs: To locate a free-range pasture farm, try asking your local health food store, or check out the following web listings