Healthy diet protects older women from deadly breast cancer

Although the association between fats and breast cancer was suggested more than 50 years ago, researchers have only recently tested it.

Post-menopausal women – those in the study were aged from 50 to 79 – reduce their chances of getting a deadly form of breast cancer if they have followed the low-fat diet for at least eight years.

Researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute put 19,541 women on the low-fat diet – where fat was reduced to 20 per cent of the diet and was replaced by more fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and their health was compared to that of 29,294 women who carried on eating their normal diet.

Fewer women in the low-fat group developed deadly breast cancer, and the survival rate was also better, with 82 per cent in the low-fat group and 78 per cent in the ‘normal’ diet group surviving following a breast cancer diagnosis.

There were also fewer heart disease deaths in the low-fat group.

(Source: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, April 16, 2016)

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