Professor Robert Thomas

My name's Robert Thomas.

I'm a mainstream oncologist specialising in breast and prostate, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and biological treatments most of the time.

But I also am what we call an integrative oncology in this building where we are now, the Royal Hospital for Integrative Medicine.

And that job is to look at nutritional and self-help strategies to support cancer treatment and improve outcomes.

On top of that, I'm very fortunate to lead a research laboratory looking at specific elements of food and how we can enhance those for better effects.

And I'm happy to talk more about that.

It seems a long time ago, doesn't it?

26 years.

Yeah, but Mike Richards at the time asked us to do a chapter on diet and how that affects the risk of cancer and improve cancer outcomes.

So, you know, we're very pleased with that.

And although the current cancer plan is actually a very good document for many things, so I don't want to discredit it, it's very good for looking at early diagnosis and having access to high-cost drugs.

But it's a little bit surprising that there's very little mentioned on nutrition.

So we seem to, on that regard, we seem to have gone backwards over the last 26 years.

Well, we looked at the evidence to show that people who have a good diet and specific things in that, fibre and phytochemicals and things, you know, reaps benefit.

You can reduce the risk of cancer.

And looked at the evidence for, you know, people who've changed their diet after cancer and how it reduces the risk of relapse, which are all positive.

So, you know, really that message, I think, should have been reinforced in the current cancer plan.

You know, it could be that they just wanted a clear, crisp message.

But, you know, it could come down to the fact that the type of research which supports nutrition tends to be observational and population.

And the grade A type, double-blind, randomised, robust data research,