McDougall offers a pretty straightforward take on the recent cancer screening changes: “Physicians, screening clinics, hospitals, medical associations, and medical societies must be forced, under the penalty of law if necessary, to tell the truth: Their testing does more harm than good.”

He also weighs in on our holiday tradition of eating nuts: “These days, eating nuts is as convenient as unscrewing the lid of a glass jar, and then pouring an ounce of shelled, oil-roasted, nuts directly into your mouth. After seven chews and a swallow, in fewer than five seconds, 120 calories of fat are gulped down. Within three hours much of that fat is stored as metabolic dollars to be spent during the next famine.”

McDougall also holds back on his view of blood pressure drugs: “blood-pressure-lowering drugs function by poisoning the body in various ways.”

On the recipe front, this is a great time of year for some Three Sisters Stew (corn, beans, and squash). Yumm…

Soy consumption improves breast cancer survival, according to a report in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers found that women diagnosed with breast cancer who consume soy products, such as soymilk, tofu, or edamame, have a 32 percent lower risk of recurrence and a 29 percent decreased risk of death, compared with women who consume little or no soy. The report included 5,042 women in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival Study, the largest population-based study of breast cancer survival, and followed them for a four-year period.

In the past, soy has been a controversial topic for cancer patients. However, an editorial accompanying this new study suggests that inconsistencies in prior research may be attributable to the comparatively low soy consumption in the United States, making beneficial effects harder to identify. In China, soy intake is higher and diets tend to include traditional food sources of soy, rather than soy supplements.

Shu XO, Zheng Y, Cai H, et al. Soy food intake and breast cancer survival. JAMA. 2009;302:2437-2443.

Ballard-Barbash R, Neuhouser ML. Challenges in design and interpretation of observational research on health behaviors and cancer survival. JAMA. 2009;302:2483-2484.

Omnivores who cut all meat out of their diets experience mood improvements, according to a poster session presented this week at the annual American Public Health Association conference. Researchers at Arizona State University divided 39 omnivorous participants into three dietary groups: control (made no changes to diet), fish (consumed three to four servings of fish per week and no other meat), and vegetarian (consumed no meat and no eggs). The vegetarian group experienced mood improvements in both tension and confusion categories, while the meat-eating participants and fish eaters showed no significant changes in mood.

Beezhold BL, Johnston CS, Daigle DR. Restriction of flesh foods in omnivores improves mood: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Poster presented at: American Public Health Association’s 137th Annual Meeting and Exposition; November 9, 2009: Philadelphia, PA.

In a new study published in Pediatric Diabetes, researchers found that women who consumed the least amount of vegetables during pregnancy were more likely to have babies who developed type 1 diabetes.

Compared with women who ate vegetables daily, those consuming vegetables only three to five times per week had a 71 percent increased risk of having a child with diabetes.

Brekke HK, Ludvigsson J. Daily vegetable intake during pregnancy negatively associated to islet autoimmunity in the offspring – The ABIS study. Pediatr Diabetes. Advanced access published September 16, 2009. DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-5448.2009.00563.x.

A new review published in the journal Diabetologia adds more evidence linking meat consumption to diabetes risk. The people who ate the most meat had the highest risk of type 2 diabetes. Intakes of red meat and processed meat were associated with 21 and 41 percent increased risk, respectively. The study was a systematic review compiling data from 12 prior studies.

Aune D, Ursin G, Veierod MB. Meat consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. Diabetologia. 2009;52:2277-2287.

In a new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, intake of soy products reduced the risk of hip factures as much as 36 percent among women who consumed more than the least amount of soy. All intakes above the least amount consumed, for example any amount greater than one-fourth cup tofu per day, averaged a 30 percent protective effect. The study was part of the Singapore Chinese Health Study and looked at more than 63,000 male and female adults.

Koh WP, Wu AH, Wang R, et al. Gender-specific associations between soy and risk of hip fracture in the Singapore Chinese Health Study. Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170:901-909.

The environmental impact of the lifecycle and supply chain of animals raised for food has been vastly underestimated, and in fact accounts for at least half of all human-caused greenhouse gases (GHGs), according to Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, co-authors of “Livestock and Climate Change”.

A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. But recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

You can read the study here: http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock and Climate Change.pdf

” I can honestly say that the McDougall Maximum Weight Loss Program is responsible for my entire 166-pound weight loss, from 331 to 165 pounds. If I could pass along one message to anyone who is considering the McDougall Program it would be to do the program exactly as Dr. McDougall prescribes. Do not count calories or do the McDougall Program with Weight Watchers. You can’t do the McDougall Program with any other diet because it is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. It has taken me years to finally get this.”
– Mike Teehan, from his Star McDougaller article

Congratulations, Mike!

In a study out this month, researchers found that consuming fish does not reduce the risk of heart failure. After 11 years of follow-up of 5,000 men and women, almost 670 had heart attacks. Those who consumed the most fish had no protective effect, compared with others. This research was part of the Rotterdam Study in the Netherlands where, like all Western nations, heart failure is common.

Dijkstra SC, Brouwer IA, van Rooij FJA, Hofman A, Witteman JCM, Geleijnse JM. Intake of very long chain n-3 fatty acids from fish and the incidence of heart failure: the Rotterdam Study. Eur J Heart Fail. 2009;11:922-928.

Meat consumption increases the risk of prostate cancer, according to a recent study looking at more than 175,000 men as part of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study. The men who consumed the most red meat had a 30 percent increased risk of cancer, compared with those who consumed the least. Processed red meat was associated with a 10 percent increased risk of prostate cancer with every 10 grams (about one-third of an ounce) of increased intake. Researchers also investigated cooking method and content of heme iron and nitrites and nitrates for the various types of meat consumed. Heme iron intake, nitrite and nitrate consumption, and grilling and barbecuing all were associated with higher risk.

Sinha R, Park Y, Graubard BI, et al. Meat and meat-related compounds and risk of prostate cancer in a large prospective cohort study in the United States. Am J Epidemiol. Advance access published October 6, 2009. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwp280.