Pass the plant-based fats, please - Good Fat - Brief Article

PROSTATE CANCER puts 31,500 American men in the great blue yonder every year--only lung cancer strikes with more virulence. In contrast, Asian men are less likely to be felled by the disease. One reason may be that they eat more phytosterols, plant-based fats found in unrefined vegetable oils, such as virgin olive, peanut and canola, as well as in nuts and legumes, whereas Westerners eat diets high in cholesterol, an animal-based fat.

In a study funded by the Peanut Institute (no, smart guy, they're not nuts), researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo found that prostate-cancer tumors in mice given a phytosterol-heavy diet were 40 percent to 43 percent smaller than those in mice eating a diet rich in cholesterol. Also, B-sitosterol, a plant fat, inhibited prostate-cancer cell growth by 70 percent in test-tube prostate-cancer cells.

Although there are no established doses of phytosterols, researcher Atif B. Awad, Ph.D., recommends enriching your diet daily with 50 milligrams of phytosterols via 1.2 ounces of dry-roasted peanuts (about 34 peanuts), 1.3 ounces of peanut butter (a little more than two tablespoons), or one ounce of peanut oil (about two tablespoons). Just make sure you make a compensatory cut in saturated fats.