J Kellogg "Kelly" Parsons initiated the MEAL intervention trial a little before 2008 & wrote the (final)? paper in 2020. That suggests a big commitment & I doubt that he would have become involved unless he really believed that vegetables must make a difference to PCa outcome. After all, it's "common sense"! LOL
The target of MEAL was "increased intakes of vegetables (particularly cruciferous vegetables and tomato products), whole grains, and beans/legumes.", not fruit. Never mind that the tomato is a fruit.
In his interview with Alicia Morgans [1], I started out feeling sorry for the guy - after all, the men in the intervention saw no advantage. Kelly, however, felt that the study was successful, since they were able to change behavior & get men to eat more vegetable. The design was good even if the concept was flawed. A nice spin; I admired his resilience.
My conclusion was that the study probably could not have been much better designed, and that you simply cannot get most men to eat a lot of veg, let alone the "15+ vegetable-fruits servings per day" that smurtaw does.
I am no doubt much older & less active, but I can only handle two meals of rather modest proportions each day & I never feel the need to snack. Even if I became a vegan, 15 servings would be too much for me, although perhaps I might get some credit for 5 concentrated servings of fruit from red wine.
I have never understood why "experts" sometimes advise getting xservings of "fruits & vegetables". Fruits tend to have a poor nutrients:sugars ratio, whereas non-starchy vegetables have an excellent nutrients:calories ratio. They are not interchangeable & I'm glad that MEAL concentrated on vegetables.
The U.S. food pyramid has starchy carbs on the bottom & fat at the top. Quite different from the Mediterranean diet, which is 40% fat.
Many, many years ago, I went to see Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who had a practice nearby when I lived in NJ. He later became well-known as a diet guru. The base of his pyramid consists of nutrient-rich foods - not the grains, etc of the U.S., which he relegates to the second tier Unfortunately, the U.S. pyramid seems to be decided by lobbyists for the food industry & tends to reflect what it actually produces. And no one in DC wants to disturb the status quo in their home state.
Fuhrman makes more sense to me, though his is not a 40% fat diet,
Ancel Keys crusade against animal saturated fat somehow morphed into the "Fat-Free" "Lo Fat" world we live in. I doubt that "Kelly"'s methods would get men to eat more fat.
Years ago, tired of reading "not of it, but with it", I wondered what most men with PCa did die of. Turned out to be cardiovascular disease. It took me a while to sign on to the adage "if it's good for the heart, it's good for the prostate", but I think it's true.
I have mentioned elsewhere that I view PCa as a potential side effect of the Metabolic Syndrome, and that provides the connection to CVD.
The only dietary intervention study with CVD credibility is the PREDIMED study. 619 PubMed hits & still going strong.
Perhap the best thing one can do is to move to the "Mediterranean" for dietary authenticity - not to mention the vitamin D. Ancey Keys spent the last 35 years of his life in Minnelea, his villa in the seaside village of Pioppi, in the Cilento region on the southwest coast of Italy. He died age 100.
-Patrick
