Most men are unaware that a widely consumed part of the American diet has been linked to prostate cancer risk.
A new national survey found that only 20% of men knew about the reported association between dairy consumption and prostate cancer. After learning about it, 66% said they would be likely to avoid dairy products.
Morning Consult conducted the survey for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, polling 1,102 U.S. men. Only 20% said a health care professional had discussed how nutrition might influence their prostate cancer risk.
“Physicians and other healthcare professionals need more education on the dangers of dairy products and the benefits of a plant-based diet for prostate cancer,” says Noah Praamsma, MS, RDN, a dietitian and nutrition education coordinator with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Dairy Intake and Prostate Cancer Risk
Evidence linking dairy to prostate cancer comes largely from observational research. A meta-analysis combining 32 studies associated higher consumption of dairy products, including milk and cheese, with greater prostate cancer risk.
Individual studies have reported similar patterns. Men who consumed at least one daily serving of skim or low-fat milk had a 19% higher risk of prostate cancer than those who rarely drank it.
Another study tracked 3,612 men for 8-10 years. Those consuming the most low-fat dairy (about 3 servings per day) were more than twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as participants consuming the least (less than 1 serving per day).
Whole Milk and Prostate Cancer Deaths
Some research suggests the potential association may extend beyond diagnosis. A meta-analysis of 11 studies covering more than 700,000 participants examined dairy intake alongside cancer mortality. Men who consumed the most whole milk had as much as a 50% higher risk of dying from prostate cancer than those who consumed the least.
Survey participants showed strong support for making this information more visible. Seventy-six percent favored warning labels on dairy products that would alert consumers to the possible prostate cancer risk.
“The good news is that most men surveyed knew that consuming fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans can help protect them against prostate cancer,” adds Praamsma, “and research shows that consuming a 100% plant-based diet is the most beneficial.”
Plant-Based Diets Show Potential Benefits
The Adventist Health Study-2 found that men eating a vegan diet had a 35% lower risk of prostate cancer than those following a nonvegetarian, lacto-ovo-vegetarian, pesco-vegetarian, or semi-vegetarian diet.
Plant-based eating has also been associated with better outcomes after diagnosis. In a study of more than 2,000 men with prostate cancer, those who ate the largest amounts of plant-based foods had a 56% lower risk of disease progression and a 59% lower risk of recurrence compared with those who ate the smallest amounts.
Plant-rich diets generally supply fiber and a wide range of vitamins and protective plant compounds while containing little or no dairy. However, these studies do not establish that adopting a vegan diet will prevent prostate cancer or stop an existing tumor from advancing. Dietary choices should complement recommended screening and medical care rather than replace them.
Prostate Cancer Remains a Major Threat
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in the United States and the second leading cause of cancer death in men, according to the American Cancer Society’s 2024 annual report.
Because prostate tumors can vary from slow-growing cancers that cause few problems to aggressive forms capable of spreading, early detection and appropriate treatment remain essential. The American Cancer Society estimates that 333,830 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2026, and 36,320 will die from the disease.
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13 Comments
“and research shows that consuming a 100% plant-based diet is the most beneficial.”
This does not strike me as being an objective recommendation. It falls in the category of “being too good to be true.” Why was there nothing said about confounding variables and other life-style choices associated with the decision to drink milk? Is the same propensity for prostate cancer found among those for whom goat cheese or yak butter is a significant portion of their diet?
The authors looked at skim, low-fat, and whole milk. Did they examine lactose-free milk?
I just did a bit of web search, nothing extensive but something quickly became clear. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is not an unbiased source. They are very much into pushing veganism, not even vegetarianism over all other solutions. They push veganism as ways to fight things like breast cancer. They have extensive campaigns against all forms of animal testing. They have accepted money from PETA.
So when they say that dairy products contribute to prostate cancer, I take it with a healthy dose of doubt. I concider the source.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is strictly evidence based and has decades of exemplary performance, so it’s more trustworthy than your summarial dismissal. You can’t wave your hands, roll your eyes, mutter “vegan”, dismiss the peer-reviewed scientific studies and expect that reality will magically conform to your ignorant viewpoint. Ignore the blood-test results and statistics at YOUR OWN peril.
So you have an organization that pushes veganism. Who do you think joins this organization? Who are the peers that do the review? Are you aware of the issues and limitations of observational studies, such as information bias, selection bias, confounding variables? If you think all “scientists” are unbiased arbiters of the truth, you’re naive.
and we can be sure that the source is the milk and not some other lifestyle factor or combination of factors?
I was aware of this from previous research about 18 months ago. However it was my understanding that the risk factor was servings of milk alone and not consumption of cheese or yoghurt. The implication being that cow’s milk contains cow sex hormones which are not present in processed dairy. So this article now leaves me a bit confused.
Eighty-two years old and counting, as a ‘worse’ but not ‘worst’ case scenario I recently wrote the so-called “Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine” (PCRM), again, with no reply. What they appear to be immune to learning from a mere lay victim-discoverer is that there is a (my) kind of practically harmless individual sub-acute non-IgE-mediated food (minimally) allergy reaction (dairy/milk being common) first identified, studied and reported on by then renowned immunologist Dr. Arthur F. Coca (“The Pulse Test,” 1956) by 1935 (https://www.seleneriverpress.com/historical/nonreaginic-allergy-in-theory-and-practice/).
Because mainstream medicine still fails to recognize, research, practice and teach my kind of allergies as true allergies, they do not get factored-in to any serious medical research and most (if not all) meta-analysis of large cohorts is inherently fatally flawed, helping to account for multiple epidemics of cheaply and easily avoided chronic diseases. First learning of my personal multiple food allergies through shortly thereafter medically abandoned “cytotoxic blood testing for food allergies” in late 1981, I determined experimentally that they don’t require complete avoidance (e.g., alternate, rotate and/or intermittent fasting) and inadvertently that the near complete avoidance of dairy/milk can result in a serious calcium (minimally) deficiency. My kind of allergies are to proteins, which most plant-based foods are low in and, while as only a lone lay investigator I have no way to prove it myself, chronic low-grade inflammation with a high blood serum level of uric acid appear to be causal in the case of prostate enlargement leading to prostate cancer.
You say all that to say what?🥹
Thanks, LC, for asking. Mainstream medicine is relying too heavily on outdated, inaccurate and incomplete science and higher education is no substutute for more in-depth experience. I’m also suggesting new avenues of research if the researchers are still scientifically curious and can be scientifically objective, already followed-up with email comments to some with published email addresses doing related research. Basically, better health through DIY; https://odysee.com/@charlesgshaver:d?view=about
This study lost credibility when they asserted that a strictly vegan diet advantages prevention of prostate cancer by 35,%, over all other diets. To put lacto, ovo, pesco and semi-vegetarian diets in the same bag as non-vegan, carnivorous diets -with no fleshing out natural variations in outcomes, is telling of a distinct intellectual porosity.
Unless I missed it, the report does NOT mention “organic” milk & other dairy products which do NOT contain residual growth hormones and antibiotics.
These factors alone could very well be the direct cause of the evidence of increased prostate cancer for those of whom consume non organic dairy products.
Anyone who has studied statistics knows that observational studies are very close to worthless, even without the bias these “scientists” clearly have. I actually know someone who worked in a cancer hospital, and one of her jobs was to question cancer patients about their diet over the years. She couldn’t bring herself to pester patients who were already suffering, so she just filled out the questionnaires herself. Those questionnaires made it into observational studies.