Cooking for men's health: Professor Margaret Rayman and Antony Worrall Thompson in a British Science Festival event...

29 June 2009

The Prostate Care Cookbook was made possible by the generous support of the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation and is available to purchase.

Read the press release about the launch of the Prostate Care Cookbook.

Audio produced by the webteam.

Transcript 

Q: I’m here today with Professor Margaret Rayman, Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Surrey. Margaret, can you tell us first of all how much of a health issue is prostate cancer for men in the UK?

00.14

Margaret: Well, 35000 men are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer every year and in fact 10000 men will die from prostate cancer each year. So it’s actually the second cause of cancer death in men after lung cancer.

00.29

Q: Can you tell us more about the diagnosis of prostate cancer and how prostate cancer can be tested for?

00.35

Margaret: Well it doesn’t actually have any symptoms, I mean, men are aware that there are prostate symptoms as they get older, but these symptoms are usually just from an enlarged prostate and there is no association of that with prostate cancer, the symptoms would be if a man has a problem with his prostate, excessive urination or not being able to wait for very long. I think he would go to his doctor and he would have what’s known as a digital rectal examination and he probably would also have his blood checked for PSA which is a protein secreted by the prostate. Now this is supposed to be the diagnostic test for prostate cancer, but actually not a very reliable test. So your PSA may be elevated but you may not have prostate cancer and your PSA may be normal but you may have prostate cancer. So the best way for that test to be used really is if men have been diagnosed with a localised tumour in the prostate and then the PSA can be watched over time, let’s say every few months and if it starts to go up very rapidly, then that’s an indication that may be the man needs surgery or radiotherapy. But if it’s just going up very slowly the likelihood is that the man may die of something else long before the prostate cancer would get him. Because actually only 12% of deaths from cancer in the UK are caused by prostate cancer.

2.09

Q: Can you tell us more about the Prostate Care Cookbook and about how diet can influence prostate cancer?

2.17

Margaret: Well, prostate cancer is a very slow-growing cancer. So even if men have developed local prostate cancer that has not spread beyond the prostate, it grows so slowly that there is actually time for diet to potentially make a difference. So if you eat well or if you eat appropriately it might be that actually you can prevent that cancer from spreading outside the prostate.

2.43

Q: OK. Are there any particular potentially beneficial foods in terms of eating for prostate health?

2.49

Margaret: There are various sorts of classes of foods, for instance, allium vegetables like onions, garlic and leeks. There are the whole family of cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and lots and lots of other things you may not have thought of as cruciferous vegetables like water cress, turnip, peanuts and tomatoes. There are various categories of foods containing vital oestrogens; soy would be one, legumes, peas and beans, those kinds of foods. There are foods containing polyphenols which would largely be fruits and vegetables. There are foods containing selenium which is a very potent anti-cancer agent. There are vitamins D and E which are also linked, though not very strongly, with prostate cancer.

The other thing that people need to be aware of, is that although I’ve said that cruciferous vegetables are very important, it is actually more beneficial if you can eat them raw or lightly-cooked, than, say, steamed. For instance you could have coleslaw which is obviously raw cabbage, you could have things like watercress raw on salads, or raw broccoli. But if you are going to cook them, you should steam them lightly. Don’t over cook, because these compounds can be leached into cooking water. You could also use that cooking water to make gravies, so that you would lose that bit less. So in general, for these kind of vegetables, light cooking is best. Whereas if you are looking at tomatoes or carrots, that’s not the case, you get more of the beneficial compounds into you if cook them thoroughly.

4.48

Q: Are any particular harmful foods that people should be avoiding from the point of prostate health?

4.55

Margaret: Well it looks like you should probably cut down on saturated fats, which is in fact true for all health conditions. You should avoid eating burnt or overcooked meat and probably not eat much processed meat and you should restrict your intake of milk and dairy products to the equivalent of about pint a day, don’t pig-out grossly on cheese and milk.

5.21

Q: Is food preparation an important factor?

5.26

Margaret: Food preparation is very important, because, let’s say looking at allium vegetables, let’s take garlic as an example. Garlic contains a compound which can be converted into a very potent anti-cancer agent called diallyl disulphide and in fact garlic has lots of other beneficial sulphur-containing compounds in it too. But to release these, an enzyme has to act on precursors and convert them into these potent anti-cancer agents and this enzyme is called ‘alliinase’ and it’s released when the garlic is crushed or chopped and it’ll take about 10 minutes to do its work. So if you throw your garlic into the frying pan or microwave before that 10 minutes has elapsed, you would actually reduce the benefit because there wouldn’t be enough time for these pulp and compounds to have been formed.

6.25

Q: Margaret, thank you very much, it’s been extremely informative. We wish you the best of luck with the Prostate Care Cookbook and with your continuing research into prostate cancer.

6.38

Margaret: Thank you very much.