Native Africans have a colorectal cancer rate that is 1/65th that of African Americans and 1/50th that of Caucasian Americans. But this difference in cancer rate disappears once native Africans move to the United States and begin to eat a typical Western diet.

In the past, it was thought that the reason for Africans’ low cancer rates was that they ate a much lower concentration of animal fats. But newer, better analysis has shown that it has nothing to do with the fat in meats. Rather, it appears that the heme iron in the meat is the culprit.

Westerners also eat considerably higher amounts of sugar than native Africans. Sugar and heme iron both dramatically raise the level of free radicals and lipid peroxidation products in colon tissues, causing inflammation.

Sugar also stimulates insulin release, intensifying the movement of fats into abdominal fat cells. This results in inflammation throughout the body.

Inflammation, in turn, stimulates the release of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), which is a powerful fertilizer for cancer growth.

The native African diet consists mainly of maize meal, which is rich in insoluble starches and fiber. When fiber is fermented by probiotic organisms within the colon, it produces high levels of short chain fatty acids, such as acetate, propionic acid, and butyrate. These short chain fatty acids, especially butyrate, play a major role in colon tissue health, and powerfully prevent colon cancer.

African Americans and Caucasian Americans both have much lower levels of butyrate than native Africans.

Butyrate not only supplies energy for the cells lining the colon, it also inhibits cancer by a number of processes, including:

• Inhibiting metastasis

• Promoting differentiation (changing cancer cells to normal cells)

• Reducing angiogenesis (development of new blood vessels)

• Affecting anticancer gene expression

• Reducing inflammation

• Inhibiting cancer invasion

Butyrate is also an inhibitor of histone deacetylase (HDAC), an enzyme that regulates gene expression. Inhibiting HDAC makes cancer cells more susceptible to immune destruction.