UPDATE - Issue 18 - Summer 2004
Book reviews
Our President spots two new books
The very idea of Boozy Strawberries appeals to me and I have it on good authority that they do me good. The actual recipe you must discover for yourself in a book entitled Eat your way to a Healthier Prostate (94 pages, £12.99, Euromed Communications, ISBN 1 899015 50 7) by John McLoughlin, a Consultant Urologist.
For the insistent I can tell you that ingredients include fresh strawberries, caster sugar, the rind and juice of an orange and either Cointreau or Grand Marnier - but in quantities you must read yourself. The book explains how diet can improve your chances with prostate cancer and the links between them. Of course diet can influence the actual prostate cancer, reduce cardiovascular disease in men with it and can reduce obesity thereby influencing both. Naturally the magic tomato is not absent from these pages though not all tomato produce are born equal. The actual lycopene content of tomato-based produce varies depending on how it is processed. A chart shows the relative amounts of biologically active lycopene and I see that fresh tomatoes rate moderate, cooked tomatoes higher, tomato sauce and tomato purée both very high and tomato ketchup high. Some of the recipes seem most attractive.
Another, heavier, book by Professor Jane Plant entitled Prostate cancer: understand, prevent and overcome is a hardback of over 290 pages (£16.99, Virgin books, ISBN 1 85227 188 4) and is the work of a geologist who believes science is, at heart, an adversarial process.
As a geochemist combining geology and chemistry she seeks to understand the chemistry of the Earth and on the way, to probe levels of trace elements in the environment that contribute to disease. She noticed that people in rural China, where once she worked, had a very low incidence of breast (and prostate) cancer. The Chinese diet, rich in soya, and from which dairy produce is absent, has been shown to be protective.
Anthony Kilmister