Mediterranean diet may help reduce breast cancer risk in elderly women.
26 Oct 2009
Juan Valverde
A recent prospective cohort study on cancer risk and dietary patterns indicate that a Mediterranean diet is associated with a reduced cancer risk in postmenopausal women in France. A Mediterranean diet comprises intake of essentially fruits, vegetables, fish/ seafood and olive/sunflower oil. On the other hand western type foods identified with the intake of essentially meat products, French fries, appetizers, rice/pasta, potatoes, pulses, pizza/pies, canned fish, eggs, alcoholic beverages, cakes, mayonnaise, and butter/cream... is associated with breast cancer risk.
This cohort study conducted in France was initiated in 1990 and involved more than 50,000 women living in that country, born between 1921 and 1950. Dietary data was collected via self-administered diet history questionnaire assessing the consumption of 208 foods and beverages.
Although researchers of this study conclude that results show a reduced risk in breast cancer associated with the Mediterranean diet, they also highlight the difficulty to determine which particular components of the Mediterranean diet explain this reduced risk.
Other recent cohort studies (April 2009) have tried to identify criteria amongst the Mediterranean diet in order to explain reductions of risk in other diseases such as coronary heart diseases (for more info check the following link).
Cottet, V.; Touvier, M.; Fournier, A.; Touillaud, M. S.; Lafay, L.; Clavel-Chapelon, F.; Boutron-Ruault, M.-C., Postmenopausal Breast Cancer Risk and Dietary Patterns in the E3N-EPIC Prospective Cohort Study. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2009, kwp257.
Direct link to this paper at:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/kwp257
