Prostate Cancer: The Truth Suppressed
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
A much publicised survey recently warned men of the risk factors associated with prostate cancer.
Several of these were things that men cannot do much about (you are more likely to get prostate cancer if you are old, if you are black or if you have a family history of prostate cancer – though knowing all that won’t do you any good at all) and only one, obesity, was of any real relevance.
But the survey completely missed out the biggest and most important cause of prostate cancer: meat.
Men who eat meat are far more likely to develop prostate cancer than men who don’t. And it is red meat which does most of the harm. In Japan, for example, the growth in the incidence of prostate cancer has matched the increase in the consumption of meat by males.
Here is an example of the scientific evidence proving the link between eating meat and developing prostate cancer:
Title of Scientific Paper
A Prospective Study of Dietary Fat and Risk of Prostate Cancer
Authors
Edward Giovannucci, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Mass, U.S.A.; Eric B. Rimm, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, U.S.A.; Graham A. Colditz, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, U.S.A.; Meir J. Stampfer, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, U.S.A.; Alberto Ascherio, Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, U.S.A.; Chris C. Chute, Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Medical School, Rochester, Minn., U.S.A.; Walter C. Willett, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Epidemiology and Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, U.S.A.
Source
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Date
October 6th 1993
Report
The authors pointed out that: ‘The strong correlation between national consumption of fat and national rate of mortality from prostate cancer has raised the hypothesis that dietary fat increases the risk of this malignancy.’ By studying information relating to 51,529 American men between the ages of 40 and 75 and sending follow up questionnaires to the men in 1988 and 1990, they examined the relationship of fat consumption to the incidence of advanced prostate cancer and to the total incidence of prostate cancer.
The authors found that ‘total fat consumption was directly related to risk of advanced prostate cancer’ and that ‘this association was due primarily to animal fat... but not vegetable fat. Red meat represented the food group with the strongest positive association with advanced cancer.’
The authors concluded that: ‘The results support the hypothesis that animal fat, especially fat from red meat, is associated with an elevated risk of advanced prostate cancer.’
They also noted that: ‘These findings support recommendations to lower intake of meat to reduce the risk of prostate cancer.’
Why on earth did this recent survey miss ‘eating meat’ from its otherwise fairly comprehensive list of things that could cause prostate cancer?
Let me hazard a guess.
The meat industry is so big and so powerful that it has, in the past, crushed attempts by both the British and American governments to warn citizens of the health hazards associated with eating meat.
And I’ve felt the power of the meat industry’s heavy hand on my collar too.
I was, for example, banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (as bent an organisation as it has ever been my misfortune to come across) for daring to detail the scientific evidence proving that meat causes cancer in an advertisement for my book ‘Food for Thought’. And the now defunct newspaper watchdog The Press Complaints Commission similarly rapped my knuckles because I dared to do the same thing in a newspaper column.
But check out the number of men involved in the research detailed above (over 50,000).
And remember that drug trials performed by drug companies often include considerably less than 1,000 patients.
The bottom line is simple: meat causes cancer. And, in particular, it causes prostate cancer.
For more information see Food for Thought by Vernon Coleman – available as an ebook on Amazon.
Copyright Vernon Coleman
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I’m afraid, however, that you have to pay for those. (But not a lot.)
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