Ultimate Food Fight

The Angiogenesis Foundation's Declaration of War on Cancer and Other Non-Communicable Diseases Using Diet

Inaugural World Summit on Food and Health in Paris Convened Innovative Thinkers from Science, Medicine, Culinary, Technology, and Aerospace Fields to Address Global Health Crisis

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, Feb. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The nonprofit Angiogenesis Foundation (www.angio.org) announced today its commitment to battle and prevent cancer and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) — cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory and neurodegenerative conditions — using food and beverages that contain naturally occurring bioactive factors that stimulate individuals' health defense systems. The announcement follows the Inaugural World Summit on Food and Health convened by the Foundation on November 13, 2015, in Paris, France.

"While we will continue to work with the biotech and medical community to develop disease treatments and cures, food and disease prevention will be a major new focus for the Angiogenesis Foundation," said William W. Li, M.D., President and Medical Director of the Angiogenesis Foundation. "Nearly 80 percent of chronic diseases and premature deaths, including cancer, can be prevented by dietary and lifestyle decisions. We are acting now because current efforts to reduce disease burden are based almost solely on pharmaceutical solutions — including those we helped to create — and this is economically unsustainable as the world population, incidence of non-communicable diseases, and cost of healthcare escalate." 

For the past decade, the Angiogenesis Foundation has been conducting research, and gathering scientific, clinical, and public health evidence that reveal diet can have as powerful a potential for preventing diseases as drugs have for treating them. The Foundation, said Dr. Li, will harness the scientific knowledge it has amassed in drug development over the past 20 years, and apply it to food to create an evidence-based and accessible health solution.  

Medical treatments that control angiogenesis – the process used by the body to grow new blood vessels – have become mainstream approaches for combating cancer, vision loss caused by aging and diabetes, and chronic wounds. While pharmaceuticals will continue to play a vital role for disease intervention, the Angiogenesis Foundation believes that dietary factors combined with behavioral change can aid the body's vascular, immune, regenerative, and other health defense systems to protect against disease.