What if I told you that each and every one on this earth has Cancer cells in their bodies, but not all of us would actually get cancer? And what if I told you that each person controls a large part of their own likelihood of getting cancer or not?

"Cancer lies dormant in all of us. Like all living organisms, our bodies are making defective cells all the time. That's how tumors are born. But our bodies are also equipped with a number of mechanisms that detect and keep such cells in check. In the West, one person in four will die of cancer but 3 in four will not," stated Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, author of the international best seller, Anti Cancer: A New Way of Life.

So many of us live under the false intuition that cancer is just a game of luck. Faulty genetic makeup only partly determines whether our fate lies hostage to cancer. More important is how our way of life creates an environment for mutated and possibly cancerous cells to grow or not.

All day everyday we are making choices and putting ourselves in environments that will either protect us from getting cancer or will make us more susceptible to the disease. Our eating habits are one of the major factors that will give to cancer growth or cancer starvation and elimination. Three to five times each day we eat meals. That is three to five times a day that we mentally decide what we are putting in our bodies. We need certain nutrients and proteins to function, but sometimes what our bodies need and what our taste buds want don't exactly align.

Current Western surveys of nutrition show that 56% of our calories come from 3 sources that were nonexistent when our genes were developing. Those calories are, refined sugars (cane and beet sugar, corn syrup, etc.), bleached flour (white bread, white pasta, etc.), and vegetable oils (soybean, sunflower, corn and trans fats). Funny enough, none of these 3 sources contain any of the proteins, vitamins, minerals and omega-3 fatty acids that our bodies require to function, however, the one thing that they do nurture is cancerous cells.

So we know that foods can contribute to cancer cell growth but certain foods can also give cause to cancer death and prevention. This was first discovered when researchers noticed a significant difference in cancer rates in the West compared to Eastern nations. One of the major differences between these two groups of people was their food and beverage consumption.

In the East, the second most consumed beverage following water is green tea. Soon research uncovered that chemicals in green tea were capable of blocking angiogenesis (growing tumors need a large blood supply), using the same mechanisms as existing medication. This in turn pointed researchers to foods and nutrition as methods of cancer treatment and prevention. Soon after, they came up with the "it" list for foods that fight cancer. These are among the more important: various kinds of cabbage, broccoli, garlic, soy, green tea, turmeric, raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes and dark chocolate (as long as it's at least 70% cocoa).

You might be wondering what makes these foods so special. Well, "in nature when confronted with aggressions, vegetables can neither fight nor flee. To survive they must be armed with powerful molecules capable of defending them against bacteria, insects and bad weather. These molecules are phytochemical compounds with antimicrobial, antifungal and insecticide properties," said Servan-Schreiber.

Those properties are the things that people with cancer need most in order to fight infection and block the cancer cell growth highways. If people with, or without cancer, can arm their bodies with the correct nutrients for healthy cell growth and mutated cell destruction, then they are well on their way to living the anti cancer lifestyle.