The following is a summary of “Should Men Eat More Plants? A Systematic Review of the Literature on the Effect of Plant-Forward Diets on Men’s Health,” published in the JUNE 2023 issue of Urology by Feiertag, et al.
For a study, researchers sought to conduct a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the impact of plant-based and plant-forward diets on the prevention and treatment of common men’s health conditions, including prostate cancer (PCa), erectile dysfunction (ED), and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).
The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) criteria were followed to search the PubMed and Medline databases using specific terms related to diet and the men’s health conditions of interest. The search included articles published in English between 1989 and 2022 that involved human participants. The data from the identified articles were analyzed, summarized, and assessed for bias.
The study included articles on plant-based or vegetable-forward diets, including the Mediterranean diet, as interventions. Cohort and cross-sectional studies that utilized food frequency questionnaires or diet classification indices to assess plant-based food intake patterns were included. A total of 12 articles on PCa, 4 articles on BPH, 6 articles on ED, and 2 articles on both BPH and ED were reviewed. Overall, the literature suggested that plant-forward diets protect the men’s health conditions examined.
Evaluating the literature on the impact of plant-forward diets on urologic conditions revealed a range of dietary patterns and study designs. The majority of research has focused on the application of plant-forward diets for PCa. Although high-quality evidence was lacking for the use of plant-forward diets as a prevention or treatment strategy for PCa, ED, or BPH, the reported outcomes indicated a consistently small beneficial impact alongside the well-established benefits for common chronic conditions.
Source: goldjournal.net/article/S0090-4295(23)00262-5/fulltext