Why the hell am I going plant based whole foods for four weeks?

Before you picture me in a field hugging a soy plant - let me be clear about what this is and isn't.

This is not because I'm going vegan, not because I think ethical, pasture-raised animal products are the enemy… but because the research on what excess animal protein does inside the body - specifically how it promotes an environment where damaged cells can thrive - is too compelling to ignore. 

The truth is, colorectal cancer runs deep in my family and in November, someone in my friend circle was diagnosed. Someone who, by most standards, lives a healthy life. No obvious red flags, no glaring lifestyle choices to point at and that sent me straight back down a rabbit hole I've visited before - the research around initiators and promoters. Because even if the initiator was there, what was feeding it? That's when I started looking harder at the promoter side of the equation.

There's a rat study that I learnt about while reading the book ‘The China Study’ by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. Two groups of rats were both given the same cancer-initiating substance. One group was then fed animal protein in the form of casein, the other was kept on plant based whole foods.  The high protein group developed tumours, got sick, and most had either died or were close to dying by the end of the study.  The plant based whole foods group? Healthy. Largely unaffected - despite having been exposed to the exact same initiator. Same carcinogen. Completely different outcomes. The only variable was what they were fed after.

Carcinogens are the initiators - the things that damage your DNA in the first place. But what determines whether those damaged cells grow into something serious is the biological environment around them, and that environment is heavily influenced by what we eat.  It’s also heavily influenced by alcohol intake, our emotional state, mental health and stress levels.

For now, let’s talk about animal protein.

Studies show that high animal protein intake elevates IGF-1 - a growth hormone that, in adulthood, has been linked to the proliferation of cancer cells. One 18-year study found that people who ate a high animal protein diet were more than 4x as likely to die of cancer during the study period. That's not a stat you can scroll past.

So, I'm doing 4 weeks completely animal product-free to reset my baseline, lower my IGF-1 naturally, and gather real data on how my body responds. After that, I'm moving into a Blue Zone-style way of eating: plant-predominant, not plant-exclusive because let’s be honest, I’ll miss cheese way too much. But who knows! I’ll see where this lands. 

I’ll also stick within fasting windows. Fasting switches mTOR off. It signals the body to stop growing and start cleaning. It triggers autophagy - your cells literally eat their own damaged parts. The same damaged cells we've been talking about this whole time.

So, the full picture is this: reduce the promoter environment through diet, then use fasting windows to actively clear what's already there.

I wrote a full article breaking down the science, the nuance around ethical animal products, and why this isn't veganism - it's something more precise than that.