Why a plant-based diet won’t stop prostate cancer

You know I love vegetables—arguably a whole lot more than most people. But by now, you should also know how I feel about the rising popularity of so-called “plant-based” diets.

It seems like everyone has jumped on the plant-based bandwagon, hailing vegetables—and more specifically, a vegan diet—as the cure-all for every disease in the book, including colon cancer and prostate cancer.

So, since we talked about one of the true dietary causes of colon cancer earlier this week, today, let’s take a closer look at prostate cancer…

Vegetables are no panacea 

The Men’s Eating and Living (MEAL) study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year. It featured nearly 450 men, all between the ages of 50 and 80, with early stage prostate cancer confirmed with biopsy and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) scores below 10.

Researchers randomly assigned subjects to one of two groups: The first group received dietary counseling over the phone, which encouraged at least seven daily servings of fruit and veggies (including two servings of cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli or cauliflower, and tomatoes). The second group served as controls and received no dietary intervention, aside from a pamphlet from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, which encouraged a veggie-rich diet.

To ensure the new eating plan was well established in the first group, the men received six phone calls in the first month, and four over the next two months. Then, researchers called an additional four times over the next four months to prevent any backsliding. And finally, the men were called another eight times over the final 16 months for monitoring purposes.

Twelve months in, the patients in the first group were eating 2.5 times more vegetables. While the controls were eating half the amount that they normally ate.

So clearly, the counseling worked. (Too bad the average doctor isn’t knowledgeable enough to dispense such decent nutritional advice.)

But preliminary results showed no significant difference in disease progression with a vegetable-rich diet, two years down the road. Final results told the same story, showing that changing to a more plant-based diet ultimately had absolutely no effect.

The truth about effective cancer nutrition

This was the first randomized controlled trial to look at the impact that dietary intervention might have against prostate cancer progression.

And while it may not have done much in the way of telling you what you should be eating, it does at least help to dispel the modern myth that a vegan diet will do you any favors at all against prostate cancer. (Or any cancer, in my view.)

Because while I’m thrilled that more people are at least now aware that vegetables exist, the growing popularity of plant-based diets—and all the plant-based fake foods this trend has introduced—has NOT made us healthier at all.

In fact, those vegetables might even be contributing to your cancer—if they’re laced with pesticides and glyphosate.

That’s why the nutrition advice I give to my cancer patients always focuses on cleanliness and quality first. More specifically, on fresh, organic, non-GMO produce, plenty of healthy fats, and pasture-raised and grass-finished meat, dairy, and eggs. In other words, a ketogenic, Mediterranean-style plan like my A-List Diet.

And perhaps most importantly? NO SUGAR IN ANY FORM. (And that includes the garbage found in those ultra-processed “fake meat” products, too.)

P.S. I tackled the real facts behind effective nutrition for prostate cancer back in the June 2018 issue of my monthly newsletter, Logical Health Alternatives (“REVEALED: The real facts behind the latest ‘prostate panic’”). Subscribers have access to that article and more in my archives. And men with prostate cancer simply can’t afford to miss this. So if you haven’t yet, consider signing up today.

Source:

“Eating More Veggies Did Not Slow Prostate Cancer Progression.” Medscape Medical News, 06/14/2020. (medscape.com/viewarticle/923753)