Eat the Steak, Starve the Cancer

'Fat' does not have a good connotation for most people, especially as America's obesity rate soars. However, what if a fat-diet could actually fight cancer? Researchers in Germany's Wurzburg University say this may in fact be the case. Picking up on work begun in 1924 by German scientist Otto Wartburg, new research is being done to exploit what is now called the 'Wartburg effect.' The idea is that highly aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar to grow. If the sugar is removed, so the theory goes, this process is halted. The rest of the body, however, can rely on energy acquired from fatty molecules, or ketone bodies. In other words, the cancer starves while the body functions on the alternate, ketogenic diet. Despite several research hurdles (e.g., only being able to use patients who have exhausted all other medical options,) the work so far has produced positive, but inconclusive results. The researchers themselves are very sober in their assessment and stress they will certainly not arrive at a all-encompassing cure for cancer.