The headlines of reports in the media on a recent medical study typically read something similar to, "High-Fat Diet May Raise Prostate Cancer Death Risk". But look at how the study was actually designed:
High-Fat Diet May Raise Prostate Cancer Death RiskThe study involved nearly a thousand U.S. doctors who had developed prostate cancer and were followed for an average of 14 years after diagnosis.
Chavarro's team assessed the men's eating habits to see if they had an unhealthy "Western" diet -- high in red and processed meat, high-fat dairy products and "refined" grains -- or a healthy diet high in vegetables, fruit, legumes (such as beans), fish and whole grains.
With such a highly-confounding item as "refined grains" lumped in with red meat and dairy products in the study, the conclusions were a no-brainer . . . and probably totally incorrect. The damage caused by refined grains can easily dominate all the benefits of other foods in the diet. But look at the headlines — absolutely no mention of the adverse health risks of refined grains. All of the blame is placed squarely on the shooulders of red meat and fat. Hmmmmmm.
As Mr. Rogers would have said, "Can you say, 'Highly biased research and reporting'?"And why did the researchers choose physicians as the subjects for this study? Surely the same data were available for the general population. Call me paranoid, but my guess is that they made that choice because they knew that in general, doctors would probably be more likely to follow recommended dietary guidelines than the general population, and until very recently, grains (but not necessarily whole grains) have been heavily promoted as much healthier than red meat or fats. Therefore they reasoned that doctors might be expected to eat more refined grain, and less red meat and fat than men who were not medical professionals. IOW they selected their subjects to ensure that the results of the study would satisfy their initial agenda.
And I believe I read somewhere that as a group, doctors tend to have a lower vitamin D level than the general population. Research shows that vitamin D acts synergistically with testosterone to suppress the development of cancer cells. Therefore someone who has a vitamin D deficiency is more likely to have prostate cancer, and it is more likely to develop more rapidly.
Of course I could be all wet. Shame on me for being so suspicious of so-called medical research such as this.
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