From papayas to pasta, chicken tikka to tortillas, the choice grows ever wider. Television serves up generous helpings of programmes such as Masterchef and TV Dinners Cookery books are best-sellers Food has become a lifestyle strand You are what you eat

It’s true, of course, but in a deeper sense. Scientists know that diet plays a role in determining not only how we live, but in influencing the way we die.
One in three people in the UK will develop cancer. Smoking remains the single biggest cause, but experts think least a third of all cancers are due to diet. For some, such as bowel or stomach cancer, the links between diet and disease seem even greater.The message that healthy eating may protect against cancer has been filtering down for some time.

The difficulty for consumers, pushing their trolleys down aisles stacked with more than 100,000 different items, is how to decide what is really good or bad for one’s health.Sometimes, official advice seems contradictory. And one day – maybe even in our children’s lifetime – cancer will become history.. Supermarkets offer us the world on a plate. We need to know more about what causes cancers, why some people develop them and others do not.Hopefully, research will provide the answers. Nine out of ten cases of testicular cancer can be cured.But the war continues. We need to know more about the enemy, why genes are altered in cancer cells and how gene therapy could reverse the process.

We need to know more about how cancer drugs work, how best to use them in conjunction with surgery and radiotherapy. Prof Frampton quickly counters this.”Recombinant DNA technology has now advanced to the point where we can make tons of the stuff by genetic engineering,” he said. “UCL have already developed a fermentation vessel for the job. This will not only increase the yield of biologically active material, but will also appease the animal rights lobby, who object to the wholesale slaughter of fireflies.”. Cancer – one word for a disease that can have more than 200 forms. Breast cancer, bowel cancer, prostate cancer – the list seems endless One in three of us get it And one in four of us still die of it

But there is good news On some fronts we are winning the war against cancer We know more about prevention than our parents did There are better treatments available. And genetic discoveries offer new hope that a cure will be found.
In the 1920s, no one knew that smoking caused cancer, that it was important to keep out of the sun or that what you ate could make a difference.If children got cancer, they nearly always died.