Cancer battler Teresa Kay is backing a supermarket campaign to encourage customers to eat more fruit and vegetables after a new therapy is helping in her fight against the disease, writes Rebecca Smith

Teresa, 26, of Church Way, Iffley, Oxford, was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph glands, but rather than go through a painful second course of chemotherapy, she chose to fight the disease with a diet of organic fruit and vegetables.

She is into her second year drinking 13 juices every day on the Gerson Therapy and the signs are the cancer is in remission.

Tesco has launched a campaign with The Imperial Cancer Research Fund to encourage people to eat more fruit and vegetables to prevent cancers.

Teresa agrees.

She says: "The theory with my diet is that you are trying to achieve total detoxification and an abundance of nutrients so you are putting everything you can into your body to keep you healthy and build your immune system. The body has amazing powers of healing.

"I just think that we need to change the way we look at food altogether, and campaigns like this can only be a good thing. People don't realise changing your diet can have such a dramatic effect. "Just cooking an extra portion of carrots at dinner time is not going to do much, but being more aware of your diet and how that affects your health is a good thing."

She says she feels well and will be able to reduce her juice therapy next year. But it will always be on the diet in some form.

She hopes to go on to help others cope with the disease by talking about her experiences.

The former TV production assistant returned to Oxford to be with her mother, Venetia, when she learned of her illness.

Teresa decided to turn her back on conventional treatment when she was sent a book called A Time to Heal by a woman who had visited a centre in Mexico where the therapy was developed. She and her family raised funds for her to visit the special hospital in Mexico for a three-week course of treatment last year.

Tesco trading director Peter Fry says: "Advising people how to eat healthily to help prevent cancers is one if the most important things we have ever done. We are in a great position to make millions of people more aware of what they can do to reduce individual risks."

John Toy, of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, says: Many foods are likely to help, but fruit and vegetables provide the greatest protection."