Vegan shmegan

interesting ...

I should add that maybe it takes longer than 2 years to have any effect, or maybe the results might be different for men with advanced PC - but there is no level 1 evidence of that.

NKinney-

I don't know all that much about BMI, but I have the impression that there is a lot of inertia to it, especially in older men. Those with low BMI tend to stay low, those with high BMI tend to stay high. So for example, if I have a high BMI and change my food intake to favor vegetables, will my metabolic rate reduce and my hunger increase? The other important ingredient is how was the total caloric intake affected by the treatment? If calories were the same, and only the mix changed, why would BMI change? Also, they specifically mention more carrots, which have a high glycemic index - for whatever effect that may have.

Washington, Oregon, and California produce 90% of the cherries picked in the United States. The other major venue for cherry picking is dietary research.

The study at hand has some weaknesses but it does represent a serious attempt at an interventional dietary study -- admittedly somewhat mildly interventional with initial counseling and follow-up interviews, they didn't lock the subjects up and video them eating study food provided -- which still makes it better than the vast majority of observational and epidemiological studies that are so confounded by other factors. I am convinced, for instance, that self-reported vegans may not be the same species as I am. If I were to attempt an Ornish-style diet I would lose weight for about a week, then I would be arrested for holding up a taco truck and after that I would eat whatever the warden told them to feed me.

Gratefully, my stomach and gall bladder help me make my dietary choices. Balanced and moderate overall with the occasional chip or slice of pie. Tried being a vegetarian 45 years ago...it didn't work out and I haven't looked back.

What you guys said about kcals and cherries is accurate, IMHO.

Thank you so much for this, TA. We've had well meaning friends push the vegan diet though we've been eating a healthy, veggie and fruit-rich diet for decades. We exercise, maintain low BMI, have low blood pressure, low cholesterol, etc. but always feel defensive when people imply that if only we were vegans, my husband wouldn't have Gleason 9 prostate cancer or a vegan diet would keep it from progressing. I wish people would stop offering well meaning advice not always grounded in fact.

Pratoman said...
I had a brownie last night. Great way to be vegan and still enjoy food.

Brownie?

Out here in CA we have brownies that not only taste good, but make you feel so extra mellow too...

Wait unti next month, something completely different will be published.
Just read a Chinese study found those who eat one egg a day have an 18% less chance of dying from a heart attack or stroke. I was always told that eggs were the worst thing for your heart.
This is the problem with any diet, wait a few years and everything you have been doing will be proven wrong.

InTheShop said...

Pratoman said...
I had a brownie last night. Great way to be vegan and still enjoy food.

Brownie?

Out here in CA we have brownies that not only taste good, but make you feel so extra mellow too...

Don’t rub it in Andrew. I live in NY and Florida. 😩

This study doesn't have anything to do with being vegan. The study TA linked to above doesn't say what the participants ate, only that the counselors "encouraged consumption of at least seven daily vegetable/fruit servings (defined as a half-cup cut up raw or cooked vegetables, fruit or 100% vegetable juice), including at least two servings each of cruciferous vegetables and tomatoes." That's little better than the Standard American Diet, not exactly a plant-based, whole foods diet which is absolutely proven to promote health and deter cancer.
So I looked up the study to see what the participants actually ate (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0090429507024211), and the intervention group's diets were a very unhealthy 28.9% fat down from the control group's 33.8% fat. Their bean consumption went from a .4 serving size to a .8 serving. 95% more beans but still not even a full serving. Their cruciferous veggie consumption went from .7 servings to 1.7 servings. 143% more but not even a full cup of veggies. The control group ate less than 1 serving per day.
I'm not surprised this diet didn't improve outcomes.

I have been a pescatarian for about 20 years. I shifted to vegan soon after diagnosis and quickly gained 15 pounds. I was eating a lot of carbs. I am now back to pescatarian and lost the weight. I like the saying that a heart-healthy diet is a good prostate diet.

One interesting thing about this study is how it means different things depending on who you are. I'm not talking about the differences we see here on this thread, where those of us who think meat consumption is linked to cancer find the study uncompelling, and those of us who suspect the meat/cancer linkage is overblown feel vindicated, and nobody plans to change what they eat. That's not what I'm talking about. We're all cancer patients. That's not who the study was for.

It was done by, and done for urologists and oncologists. What does it mean for them?

What was being evaluated was the effectiveness of providing a particular sort of dietary advice, counseling, and support as part of an Active Surveillance program. Evaluated against a set of objective measures the addition of the dietary component did not show a benefit. Maybe the dietary advice was wrong somehow. Maybe compliance was bad. But that's not the point. The program being evaluated represented a consensus of a representative sample of practicing doctors concerning dietary advice and how it would most effectively be disseminated. The negative result tells the medical community that something needs to be done differently -- the dietary advice improved or some better way found to encourage compliance -- before this sort of dietary advice is added to the routine standard of care.