Natural News

No Link Between Fat and Breast Cancer

Results from the largest and most comprehensive study ever conducted on diet and breast cancer may send researchers and proponents of low-fat diets back to the drawing board.

This segment of the ongoing Harvard Nurses' Health Study, which has examined the diet and health risks of more than 88,000 nurses, found no association between dietary fat intake and breast cancer. Michelle Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Mass., tracked the women's fat intake and the type of fat they ate—animal, vegetable, saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, transunsaturated, omega-3 and cholesterol—with four food-frequency questionnaires administered between 1980 and 1990. In those 10 years, 2,256 women developed breast cancer.

Using statistical analysis, Holmes found no increase in breast cancer risk resulted from eating more dietary animal fat, saturated fat, transunsaturated fat or cholesterol. Nor did increasing the intake of so-called healthy fats such as monounsaturated or omega-3 fats reduce breast cancer risk.

Researchers also grouped women by such factors as menopausal status, weight and weight gain, hormone replacement therapy, and mammogram use to see if they altered the relationship between fat intake and breast cancer. They did not.

Although limiting dietary fat may not play as great a role in breast cancer prevention as was previously thought, it still plays a critical role in preventing heart disease.

—Journal of the American Medical Association
1999 Mar 10;281:914-20