High-fat diets ‘linked to breast cancer’

Eating a diet high in fat could result in an increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, US researchers have said.

Previous studies on animals have suggested that there is a link between greater fat consumption and developing breast cancer, but analysis of human populations has proved inconclusive.

In the latest study on this link, researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) asked 188,736 postmenopausal women how much and how often they ate certain foods.

Of the women surveyed, 3,501 developed invasive breast cancer.

Their results found that doubling fat intake from 20 to 40 per cent was associated with a 15 per cent increase in breast cancer risk.

This increase was regardless of the type of fat consumed – saturated, monounsaturated or polyunsaturated.

“Results from this large prospective cohort with a wide intake range should contribute to the ongoing debate about the association between dietary fat and the risk of the breast cancer,” the authors write in the journal of the NCI.

But in an accompanying article in the journal, scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health argue that cutting the amount of body fat, rather than fat intake, would be more effective at reducing the risk of breast cancer.

“The modest associations that have been observed for dietary fat and breast cancer risk in observational studies and clinical trials stand in sharp contrast to the robust evidence for a strong link between [body fat] and the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer,” they write.

Cancer charities recommend that people eat a healthy diet, maintain a health body weight and exercise daily to reduce their cancer risk.