CRI听力:Diet Cure for Cancer Gains Ground in China

We all know the importance of a healthy diet – but can eating the right food beat off serious diseases such as cancer? This is what controversial Chinese dietician Zhang Wuben claims, who recently hit the headlines for promoting a diet of eggplant and green beans. But as CRI's Dominic Swire discovers, he's not the only one in China that believes in this concept.



Chefs prepare food in the kitchen of a Beijing restaurant. But this is no ordinary restaurant, because here you will find no meat or fish or any dairy products. It's the city's only strictly vegan place to eat.

Li Yu is the owner of the business. A trained nutritionalist, he believes not only that eating a plant-based diet can keep us healthy but that it can also prevent and even help cure so-called diseases of affluence, such as cancer and diabetes.

"Nowadays many diseases, the so-called diseases of affluence, come from lifestyle. We should change our lifestyle. Definitely food is one of important ways to do this."

The extent to which health can be affected through diet has been hotly debated in China lately. Last week controversial Chinese diet therapist Zhang Wuben was recently able to resume work despite being discovered to have faked his professional qualifications. Zhang gained notoriety in China for recommending a diet of green beans and eggplant, which he says can cure cancer, diabetes and other serious diseases. An idea that the mainstream medical establishment finds hard to accept.

Professor Luo Yunbo is an expert in nutrition at the China Agricultural University.

"A healthy daily diet can help maintain a certain condition of health. You can't say it's like a medicine that can cure these diseases like cancer. It's impossible, just impossible."

To combat future spurious health claims China's General Administration of Press and Publication recently announced plans to step up measures to control publication of healthcare-related material. The organization aims to set up a panel of medical experts that will be able to review proposed publications with the power to impose penalties on the publishers of quack theories.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire