What is diabetes? It is nothing more than a symptom. It is a symptom that tells us that our systemic carbohydrate (sugar) metabolism is not functioning properly. Before insulin the great physicians stood by and wrung their hands helplessly.

Before the discovery of insulin by professor Ernest L. Scott in 1911 and until the early 1930’s, when a person was diagnosed as having diabetes, they would often ask the doctor if their condition could be helped or made worse by what they were eating and should they change their diet in any way? The doctor would tell them: “Oh no, diet doesn’t make any difference — eat anything you want, you aren’t going to live much longer anyway, so live it up and eat whatever you want.” Doctors couldn’t connect the diet and diabetes. Even lay people in those days figured out that if you ate a lot of leafy green vegetables and reduced the amount of sugar you took in, you survived longer and did well — at least better than the person who didn’t watch his diet.

And so it was that after the development of insulin, doctors figured out that there is a factor in diet. In the early 1920s there weren’t very good analytical facilities available. But the doctors empirically found that the people who ate green leafy vegetables, and a few other foods, survived diabetes much better and the sugar count in their urine was much better. They had a saying in the medical community at that time that leafy, green vegetables contained “natural insulin.” It wasn’t actually the truth, but they became aware of the fact that including these vegetables in the diet did play a role and they were trying to explain it.

We’re in the same situation now with cancer. Someday, in the near future, it will dawn on the medical community that diet does make quite a difference in people with cancer, and greatly affects health in general. It can’t happen too soon. When it does, a lot of lives will be saved and a lot of lives will be lived more healthfully.

From Chapter 1 “One Answer to Cancer” By Dr. William Donald Kelley D.D.S, M.S.