NCI nutrition team urges Black men to heed 'Eat Nine a Day' message

African American men would stop killing themselves from diet-related diseases if they ate nine servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

That's a crude, simplistic way to put the message a National Cancer Institute (NCI) team of experts is delivering around the country.

But the underlying facts are simple, clear, and startling. African American men eat less fruit and vegetables than anyone else. They have the highest death rate of ethnic groups, get more cancer of the prostate, lung, colon, oral and stomach than do men of other racial groups, are twice as likely as white men to get diabetes, and they have higher death rates from diabetes and obesity than any other ethnic …