We hear it time and again, consuming fat is bad for you, especially if you have prostate cancer. There have been numerous studies that all conclude that your diet should have only limited quantities of saturated fat.

MD Anderson recently published an article that showed dietary fat is unhealthy and dangerous when quantities are not strictly controlled. Men who ate high levels of saturated fat experienced worse outcomes after prostate cancer surgery for localized disease than controls who limited their fat intake. “Obese men with a high saturated fat intake had the shortest survival time free of prostate cancer (19 months), while non-obese men with low intake survived the longest time free of the disease (46 months).”

The conclusion, to slow down prostate cancer you should lose weight and limit your consumption of dietary saturated fat. The best and easiest way to accomplish this is to stick to a Mediterranean type diet.

What is a Mediterranean diet? It is one rich in vegetables and low in red meat, with poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb. According to a NEJM reference : “The moderate-fat, restricted-calorie, Mediterranean diet is best when we restricted energy intake to 1500 kcal per day for women and 1800 kcal per day for men, with a goal of no more than 35% of calories from fat; the main sources of added fat were 30 to 45 g of olive oil and a handful of nuts (five to seven nuts, <20 g) per day. The diet is based on the recommendations of Willett and Skerrett.21" It is worth a try. Joel T Nowak MA, MSW