(jamaica-gleaner.com) A new study finds that your diet can play a role in the risk for breast cancer. Older Chinese women who eat a Western-style diet consisting of meats and sweets appear to have a greater risk for breast cancer than women who eat mainly soy and vegetables. The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.What’s important about this study, say researchers, is that it signals a link between breast cancer and overall eating patterns – not a single food or nutrient – in Asian women, who have long had lower rates of the disease than Western women. But their numbers have started to rise as their diets have become more Westernised.
The study looked at general eating habits of about 3,000 women in Shanghai, ranging in age from 25 to 64. About half of that group had been diagnosed with breast cancer and are participants in an ongoing breast cancer study in Shanghai. All the women were interviewed at length about their diets, answering questions about how often they ate 76 different items commonly found in Shanghai. Researchers then categorised the women into one of two dietary groups.
The ‘meat-sweet’ group loaded up on red meat, shrimp, fish, candy, desserts, bread and milk. The ‘vegetable-soy’ group stuck to tofu, vegetables, sprouts, beans, fish and soy milk. Post-menopausal women in the meat-sweet group showed a 60 per cent greater risk of developing the most common kind of breast cancer, the kind fuelled by the hormone oestrogen, compared to those in the vegetable-soy group, according to United States (U.S.) and Chinese researchers who conducted the study. U.S researchers were from the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia – Intelihealth.com. (source)
