- Avoid being underweight or overweight: limit weight gain during adulthood to less than 11 pounds

- Walk briskly for one hour each day, and exercise vigorously for at least one hour in a week:

Regular exercise helps reduce all cancers by enhancing the immune system. After moderate exercise, studies show that the human body has higher level of circulating cancer fighting cells called natural killer cells. Exercise also speeds the rate at which waste products, including carcinogens, travel through the intestines. The CDC estimates that lack of physical activity causes 250,000 deaths every year in the USA.

- Increase your intake of vegetable and fruits:

Each day, eat 13-15 ounces of vegetables and fruits and 20-30 ounces of a variety of cereals (grains), legumes (such as peas and beans), roots, tubers and plantains. Try to avoid, as much as possible, highly processed food and refined sugars. Carbohydrates should be consumed as whole grains.

- Drink alcohol in moderation:

Moderate alcohol consumption may reduce mortality related to cardiovascular-causes, but excessive alcohol consumption (more than two drinks a day), is harmful and has been linked to cancer in the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, especially when alcohol is mixed with smoking.

- Limit your total daily intake of fat to no more than 20% of your total calories:

One gram of fat contains 9 calories. So if your daily intake is 2000, you should only consume 400 calories in fat (or 44.5 grams). Avoid fats that come from animals. The fats you consume should come mainly from plants and should be unhydrogenated; olive oil, especially, appears beneficial. Keep a close watch on your consumption of salad dressings, margarine, cheese, ground beef, lunchmeats and dairy products. These foods are where Americans get most of their fats.

- Limit you consumption of read meat to less than three ounces daily:

Fish and poultry are far better for you than read meat. Eat white poultry, as opposed to dark, without the skin. Not only is red meat a major source of the wrong kind of fat, but it is one of the main sources of dioxin, a toxic chemical that a 1994 report by the Environmental Protection Agency says may be responsible for anywhere from 26,500 to 265,000 cases of cancer.

- Avoid adding salt:

Limit intake of salted foods and the use of table or cooking salts. Instead, use herbs and spices to season food. You will get all the sodium you need without adding salt.

- Prepare and store food safely:

Avoid food that has been stored for a prolonged period at ambient temperature. Such storage makes food more likely to be contaminated with cancer-causing microtoxins.

- Avoid charred, smoked and cured food:

Avoid burning of meat juices. Limit your consumption of meat, including poultry that has been grilled on an open flame. Charred, smoked and cured foods cause the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the digestive tract. These cancer-triggering compounds form when nitrites in foods interact with amines in digestive juices.

- Do not smoke or chew tobacco:

435,000 Americans die each year of a smoking related diseases. According to the National Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention, each cigarette you smoke subtracts, on average, about seven minutes from your life. Do you really need to hear more?

- Avoid prolonged exposure to the sun:

Each year more than 700,000 Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer, caused by the sun's ultraviolet rays. Malignant melanoma claims 7,000 American lives every year.