What is it advisable to put – or not put – on your plate to prevent tumours?

What we recommend is very similar to what cardiologists recommend for preventing heart and metabolic diseases, which are common in Western populations and are linked to a diet that is too "rich" in quantity but poor in quality. People eat too much, they put on weight, and so the first recommendation is to be careful about quantity. From a scientific standpoint, the assessment made by researchers in this field is to base one's diet predominantly on plant foods that have not been industrially refined. Wholefood, in other words. Organic is better. In the courses we run we use only organically grown foods, but those who cannot afford to buy organic need not worry – plant foods can be eaten all the same. It is foods of animal origin that are more easily contaminated by chemical substances. It is a matter of rediscovering the traditional dishes of our own and other cultures: pasta e fagioli, rice with lentils, but also the couscous with chickpeas of North Africa, the rice with soya eaten in the East, the corn with black beans of Mexico, and so on. All over the world, traditional diets have evolved in the same way: a base of cereals with some legumes, vegetables, and occasionally animal products.

How important is the cereal/legume combination? Is it comparable in protein quality to meat? Can it replace it?

Absolutely yes. Cereals and legumes can replace meat. That said, we do not recommend avoiding meat entirely, but rather reducing its consumption to once a week. When a person eats cereals and legumes they have all the protein they need. Cereals are low in one amino acid, lysine, which is found in legumes; legumes are low in sulphur-containing amino acids: if we combine them we have everything that is needed, without going to excess. A diet too rich in animal protein causes excessive acidification in the body. Eating too much meat, too much cheese or milk is one of the causes of osteoporosis, because an acidic environment causes calcium to be lost from the bones.

Is the Mediterranean diet recommended?

Certainly, but the one of the past, with many different vegetables, little animal fat, legumes and wholegrain cereals. Today, however, there is a tendency to eat every day what were once dishes reserved for feast days. I am not saying that one must eat monotonously, like the Sicilian peasant who ate pasta with broad beans every day and could only eat something different during celebrations. One should have a great variety of food, choosing from the plant-based dishes of the Mediterranean diet, but it must be said that there is no need to eat fish every day (twice a week is enough), nor meat (once a week is enough). Cereals are foods we recommend every day.

Let us turn to sugars. What are the health risks if we eat too many?

Our diet is characterised by too many sugars and too many refined foods. 00 flour is one example. It could be said that this flour is even worse than sugar: it raises blood sugar levels too quickly. This rise in turn causes a large increase in insulin, and this raises the growth factors that drive the majority of tumours. Finally, these insulin spikes promote obesity, because they send us into hypoglycaemia, and this makes us crave sugars. The more sugars we eat, the more we crave them. In our kitchen at the Istituto dei Tumori, we make desserts every day, but we make them without sugar. They are delicious, and in them we use fruit (raisins, dried figs) to sweeten, along with unrefined flours.

For information on natural nutrition courses organised by the Istituto Nazionale Tumori, you can call the freephone number 800 22 32 95.