Albany Times Union

Contributor

child muffin car snack 

African-American Woman Taking Medication Top View

Nuts Dispenser In A Zero Waste Store

An illustration of five kids wearing birthday party hats playing in a hyperactive way on a giant piece of birthday cake. 

The Washington Post

Does eating too much sugar really make kids hyper?

Sean Elliot

iStock

stock

Eating at specific time

Cinnamon sticks and powder

Italy Olive Oil

Smooth golden honey dropping from spoon in jar

Headquarters of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

olive oil 

Dairy vs. plant milk: Which beverage wins?

Burger

coffee

Sour Cherry

FTWP

Eating Lab Milk 

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Middle East conflict live updates: U.N. says roads ‘jammed’ as more than 110,000 flee Rafah; cease-fire talks stall

Biden’s weapons sales to Israel breach legal limits, former officials say     

China’s Xi wades into Europe’s political divides

To get outs with his fastball, Trevor Williams put his ego aside

Vegetables star at Mita, where you get taste after taste (after taste)

Jayden Daniels will learn about NFL policies after $10,000 bet with Malik Nabers

Paul Manafort, poised to rejoin Trump world, aided Chinese media deal

Trump might not go to jail, but this trial is a close second

Trump team throws out GOP plan and builds a ‘leaner’ 2024 operation 

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

Ask Amy: Man doesn’t want cancer to define him

Carolyn Hax: In-laws stalk the live stream to check couple’s attendance at church

Miss Manners: Why were other diners laughing at us?

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

In the campaign against Donald Trump, do the ends justify the means?

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

Indy Star bars columnist from Caitlin Clark’s games after awkward exchange

Find your Westminster show dog name: You may be a CH Lolly’s Marble Tuxedo MX

What actually happens within your lawn when you don’t mow it

Kanter on the DOJ’s new healthcare task force

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

5 big travel lessons from a Patagonia CEO-turned-conservationist

Cruise ship drags dead whale into New York, prompting investigation

Apple apologizes for iPad ad after blowback 

Google’s new ‘Find My’ device network is useful but a stalking risk

Hack targeting hospital chain Ascension is impacting patient care

US-POLITICS-BIDEN

A diet heavy in plant-based foods — fresh fruits and vegetables — can reduce both the progression of prostate cancer and the likelihood that it will return, new <a href="https://meetings.asco.org/abstracts-presentations/217028" target=_blank>research</a> shows.

Eating fruits and vegetables has many health benefits, such as reducing the risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and contributes to a longer life span, said <a href="https://osher.ucsf.edu/people/vivian-liu" target=_blank>Vivian Liu</a>, clinical research coordinator for the Osher Center for Integrative Health at the University of California at San Francisco and lead study author.

“Now, we have evidence that they can influence this very common — and sometimes deadly — cancer in men,” she said.

Prostate cancer is the second-most <a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/about/key-statistics.html" target=_blank>common cancer</a> in men, after skin cancer, with an estimated 288,300 new <a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/about/key-statistics.html" target=_blank>cases</a> and 34,700 deaths projected for this year. <a href="https://www.cancer.org/cancer/prostate-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html" target=_blank>Risk factors</a> include age, with most cases occurring in men older than 65; race, with African Americans at an increased risk; and certain gene mutations.

“This is something men can do for themselves with a healthy grocery shopping list,” Liu said. “And it doesn’t require drugs or other medical interventions.”

Want to live a longer life? Try eating like a centenarian.

Higher amount of plant-based foods, lower cancer growth risk

The link between diet and cancer risk has been explored in many studies. Eating certain foods such as low-fat products and shunning others such as red meat have been <a href="https://aacrjournals.org/cancerres/article/41/9_Part_2/3685/485796/Epidemiological-Correlations-between-Diet-and" target=_blank>linked</a> to a lower risk of certain cancers, chief among them <a href="https://www.cancer.org/healthy/eat-healthy-get-active/acs-guidelines-nutrition-physical-activity-cancer-prevention/diet-and-activity.html" target=_blank>breast and colon</a>. For prostate cancer, eating foods rich in the antioxidant <a href="https://prevention.cancer.gov/news-and-events/news/nutrition-frontiers-winter-2020" target=_blank>lycopene</a>, such as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/134/12/3486S/4688710" target=_blank>tomatoes</a>, appears to lessen the risk.

Liu and her team focused on men who already had prostate cancer and were at risk of the cancer growing or returning after treatment. The researchers found that men with prostate cancer who reported diets containing the highest amounts of plants had a 52 percent lower risk of disease progression and a 53 percent lower risk of recurrence compared with those whose diets had the lowest amounts of plants.

The disease advanced in 204 of the more than 2,000 participants during the study period, Liu said. “This is a small number, which is significant,” she said.

She said the analysis involved scoring for good and bad foods, and though the participants reported the amounts they ate, it was not possible to state the amounts as individual or recommended servings of fruits and vegetables.

The 2020-2025 <a href="https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans_2020-2025.pdf" target=_blank>Dietary Guidelines</a> for Americans recommend that adults should consume 1½ to 2 cups of fruit equivalents and 2 to 3 cups of vegetable equivalents daily.

The results of this as-yet-unpublished <a href="https://www.iwh.on.ca/what-researchers-mean-by/observational-vs-experimental-studies" target=_blank>observational study</a> will be presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) <a href="https://conferences.asco.org/gu/attend" target=_blank>Genitourinary Cancers Symposium</a> this week in San Francisco. The research was a sub-study of the Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor, or <a href="https://urology.ucsf.edu/research/cancer/capsure" target=_blank>CaPSURE</a>, which is a large multisite study of 15,000 men started in 1999 and looking at many aspects of prostate cancer.

The plant-based sub-study research began in 2004 and involved 2,038 men with early-stage prostate cancer — cancer that had not spread or whose spread was limited.

They completed questionnaires about how often they ate about 140 foods and beverages, including such items as broccoli, red meat and potatoes, trying to gauge both the good foods and the bad, Liu said.

“We did not tell the men what to eat, since this was an observational study,” she said. “They ate what they wanted to eat and told us what it was.”

Many things influence cancer — people who eat <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/11/08/microbiome-fiber-immunotherapy-cancer/" target=_blank>healthy foods</a> often engage in other healthy habits — and the investigators took other factors into account, including <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11764-015-0426-2" target=_blank>walking</a> pace — a faster pace seems to help prostate cancer patients — smoking, diabetes, family history of prostate cancer, household income, education level, height, body mass index, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/27/dry-january-health-benefits/" target=_blank>alcohol</a> use, and multivitamin and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/02/06/kava-lobelia-supplements-to-avoid/" target=_blank>supplement</a> use.

The simple diet swap to help you lose weight and lower health risks

These findings are consistent with previous research “and extend the health benefits” and “few risks of a plant-based diet,” said <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/biographies/hensrud-donald-d-m-d-m-s/bio-20053543" target=_blank>Donald Hensrud</a>, associate professor of preventive medicine and nutrition at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, who was not involved in this recent research. One <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/115/3/662/6427339" target=_blank>large study</a>, for example, found that consuming plant-based foods was linked to a lower risk of developing aggressive forms of prostate cancer, especially among men younger than 65.

Other scientists called the work important but said future research needs to include more specific analyses of genetics and metabolism to better understand the impact of foods on prostate cancer.

“More such studies in larger populations of cancer patients, with even more detailed studies of dietary elements and measures of blood and tissue levels of nutrients, will be very helpful in designing a more specific cancer-risk reducing, and even cancer-therapeutic diet,” said <a href="https://www.bcm.edu/people-search/jeffrey-jones-24026" target=_blank>Jeffrey Jones</a>, professor of urology at Baylor College of Medicine and a urologic oncology specialist. He was not involved in the study.

“Future studies also need to look at the molecular and genetics of the people, and the mutations driving the cancer,” said <a href="https://health.ucdavis.edu/cancer/team/43215/nicholas-mitsiades---cancer---oncology-sacramento/" target=_blank>Nicholas Mitsiades</a>, professor of medicine and chief translational officer at the University of California at Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, who also was not part of the research. “We need to know how [the patients’] metabolism is programmed because different people may process food differently.”

Mitsiades also pointed out that socioeconomic status may discourage some populations from eating a healthful diet, as fresh fruits and vegetables often are costly or inaccessible. “It’s more expensive to eat a plant-based diet than to go to McDonald’s and have a burger,” he said. “So, it’s not always easy.”

Still, he always advises his cancer patients to avoid animal saturated fats — especially red meat — and to increase plant intake. “This diet is healthy for many other cancers,” Mitsiades said. “Unfortunately, we have not been able to put all these diets into a pill, which is probably what most Americans would like.”

Liu and her colleagues next plan to analyze plant-based diets in relation to prostate cancer-specific mortality, or death, and quality of life at specific intervals — two, five and 10 years — following diagnosis.

Meanwhile, Liu suggested that men — with or without prostate cancer — fill their plates with plants and stick to fresh foods, avoiding plant-based meat substitutes, which tend to be high in fat, she said.

“I love those burgers myself, but unfortunately not all diets are equal in terms of risk factors,” she said.

Stick to the basics, she advised, “fresh fruit and vegetables — and whole grains. The more you can fit in, the better.”

It is a common refrain that fruits and vegetables are good for you, Liu said. “And now, here’s another reason to say it.”

Sign up for the Well+Being newsletter, your source of expert advice and simple tips to help you live well every day