There are 10 foods you should never eat if you want to live a long, healthy and energy-filled life. This is my list of deadly foods, and it wasn’t concocted on a whim; it is based on solid empirical research and decades of clinical medical histories detailing the treatment progress, lifestyles and diets of people fighting for their lives against cancer and other diseases.

Cancer is an immune system-related disease. In essence, we all “get cancer” every single day, but our own immune systems quickly search out and destroy these cancer cells under normal circumstances. We “get cancer” only when your immune systems break down or fail for some reason. (The activity of free radicals are the prime suspects in most cases).

Once a diagnosis of cancer has been made, the standard cancer-treatment protocols used in the Untied States include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation treatments or a combination of the three. Unfortunately, chemotherapy and exposure to radiation therapy tend to weaken or compromise the immune system, making it very difficult for people to recover from cancer in some cases. When cancer patients ask me how to build their immune systems, they are given the “Ten Foods You Should Never Eat” list.

High-fat luncheon meat rank number one on the list. The list includes all pork products such as bacon, sausage, ham, pepperoni and hot dogs.

Raised on Weiner-Schnitzel, Near Death at 27

Maybe your response is, “Oh, come on, Ted! We love those foods. Our kids eat these foods all the time. Most of them are lower in fat now, and they really taste good!” I know what it is like to groan over the need to give up pork products and processed meats. My parents immigrated from Germany in 1952. My first language was German, and I was raised on sauerkraut, wiener schnitzel and pork chops, plus mountains of hot dogs and sausage and everything else ingenious Germans can make with pork and pork by-products. (My dad used to jokingly say to me, “Son, if you like sausage, never watch us make it.”)

Let me ask you a question: How did my childhood diet affect my health by the time I was 27? I nearly died of a heart condition, even though I was a highly conditioned athlete. How can I be sure my health problem had anything to do with pork products or high-fat luncheon meat? I know it did, because when I stopped eating pork and processed meats (and shellfish), my life-threatening heart problems quickly improved and ultimately disappeared—even though my doctors couldn’t touch the condition with conventional antibiotics and other drug therapies.

It doesn’t get any worse than pork. If there is one thing you learn from this book, let it be this: Don’t eat pork. A pig is absolutely unfit for human consumption! It never has been fit, and never will be. As far as I’m concerned, pigs were put here by God as scavenger feeders to help clean up the environment, but they were not put here for humans to eat.

Bacon-The Strongest Carcinogen Around

Bacon, perhaps the most popular pork product in the average grocery store, is loaded with sodium nitrate. This is the same preservative that appears in most high-fat luncheon meat. I am a biochemist, and thinking about what happens to sodium nitrite when it reacts with your stomach acids makes me very, very concerned. Do you know why? Sodium nitrite reacts with the powerful acids in your stomach to form nitrosamines—one of the most potent cancer-causing agents known to man.

It is no accident that the cancers affecting the digestive tract—particularly colon, pancreatic and stomach cancer—dominate the mortality charts. In my professional opinion, these deadly cancers are directly related to the high-fat foods we eat (many of which are “preserved” with sodium nitrite) and to the lack of fiber in the typical American diet.

Meats literally can sit in the colon for extended periods of time (sometimes for weeks) before they are expelled from the body. This has clearly been associated with an increased risk of colon cancer. Smoked, pickled or salt-cured meats further compound the problem. Yet, you will find them in abundance in the luncheon meat section of every grocery store in America.

The National Academy of Sciences issued a report warning the medical community and the American public that these processed meats contain two chemicals definitely shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals; nitrosamines (sodium nitrate) and polycyclic hydrocarbons. These chemicals are used in the processing of these meats and should be avoided, especially if you have a low-fiber diet. The association between these chemicals and cancer is so strong that it would be foolish to dismiss this warning given by the National Academy of Sciences in 1982.

Again, I personally believe that pork is not fit for human consumption, even if the animals are fed grain and raised on sparkling clean floors. Pork, pork products and high-fat luncheon meat should be avoided at all cost.

The preceding is an excerpt from Ted Broer’s book, Maximum Energy. Broer, a university-trained biochemist, exercise physiologist and licensed nutritionist, nearly died of heart disease at the age of 27. He has spent nearly two decades studying the relationships between nutrition, exercise, disease and premature death. Maximum Energy details the top 10 strategies for maximized energy, along with the top 10 foods never to eat.