---
title: '7 Surprising Foods That Help Fight Cancer'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=rEE7yamHeoo'
video_id: 'rEE7yamHeoo'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 513
channel: 'Nutrition Made Simple!'
---

# 7 Surprising Foods That Help Fight Cancer

> Source: [7 Surprising Foods That Help Fight Cancer](https://youtube.com/watch?v=rEE7yamHeoo)

## Summary

This video explores seven foods with strong scientific evidence for cancer prevention, going beyond common advice like eating vegetables and exercising. It details how nuts, coffee, citrus, whole grains, soy, tea, and flax seeds can reduce cancer risk and explains the mechanisms behind their protective effects.

### Key Points

- **Nuts and Cancer Risk** [00:16] — High nut consumption is linked to lower cancer risk, especially for digestive system cancers like colorectal and pancreatic. Tree nuts show a linear association up to about 20 grams per day. The effect is attributed to tocopherols and ellagitannins.
- **Coffee's Protective Role** [02:35] — Coffee drinkers have up to 50% lower risk of liver cancer and reduced endometrial cancer risk. Decaf shows similar benefits, indicating caffeine isn't the key. Polyphenols and improved liver health are likely mechanisms. Avoid very hot coffee and excess sugar/cream.
- **Citrus Fruits** [04:08] — High citrus intake lowers stomach cancer risk and lung cancer risk in smokers. Benefits come from vitamin C and carotenoids. Eating whole fruit is better than juice due to fiber and lower sugar concentration.
- **Whole Grains and Colorectal Cancer** [05:37] — Whole grains like oats and quinoa show probable evidence of decreasing colorectal cancer risk. Viscous fiber produces short-chain fatty acids that reduce inflammation and improve insulin sensitivity. Choose unprocessed grains over instant varieties.
- **Soy and Breast Cancer** [07:09] — Soy contains phytoestrogens that counter estrogen in breast tissue, leading to lower recurrence and death in breast cancer patients. One to two servings daily (e.g., a cup of soy milk, 3 oz tofu) are recommended.
- **Tea and Flax Seeds** [08:08] — Tea, especially green tea, is linked to lower bladder cancer risk. Flax seeds show promising early results for breast and prostate cancer due to lignans. The evidence for these is less strong but suggestive.

### Conclusion

Incorporating these seven foods into a balanced diet may help reduce cancer risk, supported by observational studies and plausible biological mechanisms. However, no single food guarantees prevention; a healthy overall lifestyle remains crucial.

## Transcript

When it comes to cancer, everybody says the  same thing. Eat your vegetables, exercise,   and don't smoke. And that's great advice. But  there's other foods that have impressive evidence   behind them that don't get any love. So, in this  video, we're covering seven surprising foods that  
help fight cancer. First on our list are nuts.  We often think of nuts as heart food. Some people   even worry about nuts because they're fatty.  They have concentrated calories, so maybe they   lead to weight gain and excess weight is a risk  factor for cancer. But nuts are actually linked  
to less weight gain, possibly because they're  satiating and the fat is wrapped in fiber. And we   consistently see lower risks of cancer in people  who consume more nuts. One meta analysis found a  
high consumption of nuts was associated with lower  risk of developing cancer. This protective effect   was especially seen for cancers of the digestive  system like colorectal cancer and pancreatic  
cancer and it was specifically seen for tree nuts.  So almonds, walnuts, cashews, not peanuts which   grow underground. And they saw what we call a  linear association. So the more nuts consumed, the  
lower the cancer risk up to about 20 grams a day,  which is less than the palm of your hand. They've   also seen lower risk of dying of cancer with high  intake of nuts. Now, cancer is really difficult  
to study because it takes so long to develop. It  takes decades. So we usually don't have randomized   trials. So we do two things. We look at this type  of link between intake of the food and risk of  
cancer. And we carefully try to rule out obvious  explanations like differences in smoking, alcohol,   BMI, total calories, exercise. And after we take  those out of the equation, this relationship  
between high intake of nuts and lower risk of  cancer still remains. And the second thing we do   is we try to understand how a certain food might  affect cancer risk. So nuts for example contain  
tocopherols which are powerful antioxidants and  nuts are also good sources of ellagitannins which   are converted by your gut bugs, your microbiome,  into compounds that have anti-inflammatory  
effect. So these compounds together with the  tocopherols are thought to play a role in this   cancer protective effect of nuts. Caution. When  it comes to nuts, we're talking about the actual   nuts with no additives, not chocolate covered, not  honey roasted, not an excessive amount of salt,  
just the nuts, unprocessed. Okay. Another food  with impressive evidence when it comes to fighting   cancer is coffee. I know coffee is not really a  food, but who's counting? Coffee gets a really   bad rep. Maybe because it contains caffeine. We're  very suspicious, it's a drug. But we consistently  
see lower risks of cancer in coffee drinkers,  especially liver cancer where we see up to a   50% lower risk in high coffee drinkers consuming  around five cups of coffee a day and endometrial  
cancer which is a type of cancer of the uterus.  In fact, coffee shows one of the strongest links   between a specific food or a specific item that we  consume and cancer protection. Interestingly, we  
see a similar relationship for decaf. So, it's not  the caffeine, it's something else in the coffee.   Okay. How would coffee protect against cancer?  Well, coffee is a good source of polyphenols,   which are potent antioxidants. Coffee also helps  reduce insulin resistance and liver fat. So,  
it improves overall liver health. There's some  concerns with acrylamide in roasted coffee,   but scientists have measured it, the levels  are far below the thresholds where it causes   any problems. Do pay attention. Avoid very hot  coffee because it can raise risk of oral cancer,  
damage to the cells in the mouth and the throat,  and also the additives. When we start adding a   boatload of sugar and cream to coffee, that's  often when we ruin it. All right, moving on.  
When it comes to fighting cancer, we hear a  lot about green vegetables and some fruits like   berries. But another type of fruit that doesn't  get as much attention is citrus, like oranges,   tangerines, grapefruit. We see lower risk of  stomach cancer with high citrus intake and lower  
risk of lung cancer among smokers. One reason  citrus is beneficial is their high content of   vitamin C which is a powerful antioxidant and  also their content of carotenoids which also  
have antioxidant function. All right, what if  I just drink a glass of OJ instead of actually   eating the orange? As a general rule, it's better  to eat the actual fruit because the juice lacks  
the fiber which feeds our microbiome. We also get  a lot more of the naked sugars in the juice than   we would the fruit. It would take three or four  oranges to get the same amount of those sugars  
as we do in a large cup of orange juice. Now,  sometimes this is exaggerated. I've heard people   say drinking fruit juice is the same as drinking  soda. That's not true at all. The fruit juice   still has a lot of vitamins and other nutrients as  long as it's actual fruit juice, fresh squeezed,  
or just 100% fruit juice without sugar added.  Bottom line, drinking a glass of orange juice   is much healthier for you than Mountain Dew.  It's not even close. But as a general rule,   if you can, favor the actual whole unprocessed  fruit. Okay. Next, we have another food that  
lights the internet on fire, and that's whole  grains. So, oats, barley, quinoa, whole grain   bread. I've heard people say all kinds of things  on the internet. Whole grains are just sugar.  
They contain no nutrients. They cause diabetes.  But the actual scientific evidence tells a very   different story. We see a consistently lower risk  of colorectal cancer with whole grain intake. This  
link is strong enough that the American Institute  for Cancer research has stated there is probable   evidence that whole grains decrease risk of  colorectal cancer and the evidence is strong   enough to justify dietary recommendations. And  these organizations are pretty strict. They don't  
say this for just any food. Whole grains provide  viscous fiber which our microbiome then converts   into short chain fatty acids like butyrate which  feed our gut wall and protect the gut barrier.  
Short-chain fatty acids also reduce inflammation  and promote insulin sensitivity. And whole grains   are also a good source of resistant starch  which is very powerful in reducing liver fat.  
Caution with instant oats. They come in different  flavors: strawberry flavored, chocolate flavored,   and these are processed forms of oats that  have been chopped, pre-cooked, and have a lot  
of refined sugars added. So, you want to favor the  actual unprocessed grain, steel cut oats or rolled   oats with no additives. Okay. At number five, we  have one of the most misunderstood foods when it  
comes to cancer, and that is soy. Soy contains  phytoestrogens. So, it sounds like estrogen   and so the belief is it causes breast cancer,  but we don't see that. In fact, if anything,  
we see the opposite. In women diagnosed with  breast cancer, those who consume more soy have   a lower risk of death and recurrence, the cancer  coming back. This is because in breast tissue,  
phytoestrogens actually do the opposite of  mammalian estrogens. They counter the effect   of estrogen. In addition to the effect on breast  cancer, there's also some suggestive evidence of   lower risk of lung cancer in never smokers with  soy intake. The dose recommended is about 1 to  
two servings a day. Examples of what one serving  of soy would look like would be, for example,   a cup of soy milk, 3 ounces of tofu, or half a  cup of edamame. And we'll wrap up with two more   foods where the evidence isn't quite as strong as  some of the others, but there's some suggestive  
promising evidence there. Tea is linked to lower  risk of bladder cancer, especially green tea.   And flax seeds show promising early results for  breast and prostate cancer, possibly because of  
their high content of lignans. What about dairy?  Is it true that dairy causes cancer? We covered   that question and a few more in this previous  video, so check it out. I'll see you in there.