Walnuts for prostate cancer, osteoporosis and CHD

Walnuts’ benefits suppressed by the FDA –Wiki image

Americans are being kept in the dark about a natural cure for prostate cancer and osteoporosis by none other than the US Food and Drug Administration. [Image]

More scientific evidence confirms that walnuts have some amazing properties: not only did they reduce tumor size in mice, but they also lowered LDL, the “bad” kind of cholesterol that leads to heart disease, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Nutrition last week.

“If additional research determines that walnuts have the same effect in men as they do in mice, adhering to a diet that excludes walnuts to lower fat would mean that prostate cancer patients could miss out on the beneficial effects of walnuts,” said lead researcher Paul Davis.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men. One in six men will be diagnosed with it, but only one in 36 will die from the disease because most tumors do not spread beyond the local site, according to the National Cancer Institute.

“These characteristics of prostate cancer make adding walnuts to a diet attractive as part of prostate cancer prevention,” Davis added.

Walnuts have also been shown to reduce bone loss, a serious issue especially for post-menopausal women. But food packages cannot contain such information per the FDA.

Heart disease is a growing problem for the elderly. Because walnuts have a high level of linoleic and linolenic acid, they reduce the risk of heart disease by decreasing LDL-cholesterol and increasing HDL-cholesterol, research has shown several times, even as far back as 1993.

Adding further support to the benefits of a whole food diet, the 2012 study also led researchers to conclude, “The walnut diet’s beneficial effects probably represent the effects of whole walnuts’ multiple constituents and not via a specific fatty acid or tocopherols.”

The California Walnut Board funded the research, and is also funding a follow-up mouse study (co-funded by the American Institute for Cancer Research), to validate the findings and explore possible reasons for the beneficial effects of walnuts.

Not one to allow the American public alternatives to deadly cancer treatments (basically, cut, poison and burn), in 2010 the FDA required Diamond Food to remove all links to scientific studies that support claims that walnuts lower cholesterol and reduce tumor growth.

The FDA also bans cherry sellers from making the claim that they may act as an anti-inflammatory and reduce pain, along with reducing tumor size, even though several studies have shown this likelihood.

You have to wonder why a governmental agency whose primary mission is to protect the public would ban scientific evidence showing beneficial effects of natural, unprocessed foods. The FDA bizarrely asserts that because natural foods have been scientifically shown to prevent or ameliorate disease, those foods are thus classified as drugs.

But, there’s a huge difference between what grows naturally on this planet and what chemists create in a lab. Natural foods neither require nor deserve governmental oversight. Truthful claims about curative or ameliorative effects should not be censored.

For some governmental agency to assert that natural foods are drugs because they are curative is absurd. For that agency to suppress such information about cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and pain is just plain evil.

Healers have understood the medicinal benefits of food and herbs for thousands of years. Over 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates said, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

No regulation required.

Rady Ananda is an investigative reporter and researcher in the areas of health, environment, politics, and civil liberties. Her two websites, Food Freedom and COTO Report are essential reading.