Sun's soup
Sun's soup, originally known as Selected Vegetables (SV), is a nutritional supplement formulated by Dr. Alexander Shihkaung Sun in the late 1980s. This plant-based concoction includes ingredients like shiitake mushrooms, mung beans, and various Chinese herbs, believed to enhance immune function and potentially aid in cancer prevention. Dr. Sun developed the soup as a personal response to his mother's lung cancer diagnosis, aiming to incorporate phytochemicals traditionally used in Asian medicine.
While the soup has been commercially available since its patent in 1995 and can be found in health food stores and online, its anticancer effects remain largely unverified by rigorous scientific studies. Initial trials conducted on mice and later on humans showed some promise, but the research methodologies have faced criticism for their limitations and lack of control groups. Observations suggest that while Sun's soup may offer some benefits when used alongside conventional cancer treatments, solid evidence supporting its efficacy is still lacking. Notably, it has not received endorsement from the US Food and Drug Administration, which does not regulate dietary supplements as strictly as medications. Overall, while Sun's soup is marketed as a health supplement, further large-scale studies are necessary to substantiate the claims surrounding its use in cancer care.
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Sun's soup
ALSO KNOWN AS: Selected Vegetables (SV)
DEFINITION: Sun’s soup is a nutritional supplement consisting of plant nutrients containing phytochemicals believed to enhance immune properties and disease prevention.
Cancers treated or prevented: Cancerous tumors; effectiveness not scientifically verified
Delivery routes: Oral by diet
How this agent works: Sun’s soup is believed to boost the immune system, although how it works and whether it is effective are considered unverified scientifically.
In the late 1980s, Dr. Alexander Shihkaung Sun (1939–2006), a Taiwanese American biochemist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, investigated the use of specific foodstuffs, mainly shiitake mushrooms, mung beans, and Chinese herbs associated with reinforcing immune systems, to aid his mother after she became ill with lung cancer. Affiliated professionally with Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Yale University School of Medicine, Sun chose ingredients with phytochemicals that Asian physicians had incorporated into treatments.
Sun freeze-dried his concoction, which he initially called Selected Vegetables (SV), as a supplement to medical treatments to extend the life spans of patients with cancerous tumors. In the early 1990s, he conducted trials with mice to assess the impact of SV on tumors. He then tested SV in humans, focusing on patients diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer, who orally consumed one ounce of hydrated SV powder daily and a control group who did not ingest SV. Everyone in the trial simultaneously received chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. Sun revised his recipe for a frozen version, which included soy and legumes, and conducted a second clinical study for sixty months in which patients ate ten ounces of Sun’s soup every day.
Applying for a US patent, Sun sought protection for his recipe to mitigate cancerous conditions and received a patent on August 1, 1995. Sun, who established the Connecticut Institute for Aging and Cancer, summarized his results with colleagues in two Nutrition and Cancer articles published in 1999 and 2001. He hypothesized that some aspect of SV battled cancer and extended lives but did not address or control for the impact of chemotherapy. Sun’s testing was flawed because of the limited number of subjects, most of whom volunteered, knowing about his soup’s anticancer possibilities, and not representing a random test group. Also, the freeze-dried powder and frozen soup thawed for consumption in the two trials differed chemically. Researchers acknowledged that Sun’s soup needed more scientific trials before definitive results regarding its ability to impede cancer could be determined.
Sun stated that his mother was free of cancerous growths fifteen years after he created his first soup, crediting it for her health. Founding Sun Farm Soup Company in Milford, Connecticut, Sun oversaw the production of Sun’s soup for commercial sale. In the 2020s, Sun's soup remained for sale at various health food stores and Internet wellness sites.
The anticancer benefits of Sun’s soup remain scientifically unproven. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not endorse Sun’s soup because it is advertised as a supplement, and by law, the FDA does not regulate supplements as stringently as it does drugs. According to Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center, Sun’s soup did show anti-tumor priorities in animal studies, but its effectiveness remained unproven in legitimate clinical human studies. While the potential had been seen for Sun’s soup to prolong the life of cancer patients when used with traditional therapies, larger, randomized studies were necessary to prove these claims.
Side effects: There are no known side effects to ingesting Sun’s soup, other than a bloated sensation felt by those who participated in Sun’s early studies. Later study participants who ingested a frozen formulation of SV rather than the earlier freeze-dried formulation did not report bloating.
Bibliography
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Amer. Cancer Soc. American Cancer Society Guidelines on Nutrition and Physical Activity for Cancer Prevention. N.p.: ACS, 2012.
Amer. Inst. for Cancer Research. Dietary Phytochemicals in Cancer Prevention and Treatment. N.p.: Springer, 2011.
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“Selected Vegetables/Sun's Soup (PDQ®).” National Cancer Institute, 24 Aug. 2018, www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/suns-soup-pdq. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Sun, Alexander S., et al. "Pilot Study of a Specific Dietary Supplement in Tumor-Bearing Mice and in Stage IIIB and IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients." Nutrition and Cancer, vol. 39.1, 2001, pp. 85–95.
“Sun Farms Vegetable Soup.” Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 23 Feb. 2022, www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/sun-farms-vegetable-soup. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Watson, Ronald Ross. Bioactive Foods and Extracts: Cancer Treatment and Prevention. Boca Raton: CRC, 2011.